In my last column I discussed a few current examples of discrimination against women and how this is called “misogyny”.  Misogyny is a topic that never seems to go away, and currently one of the leading voices against the hatred of women is rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Boteach asserts that a primary reason men today hate women is because they are competing with men in the political and business worlds.  Boteach says “The idea of a softer, gentler creature being possessed of an inner strength that was greater than that of a man made men feel emasculated.”  This, he says, is the reason women have been and continue to be repressed.

If there is any truth to Boteach’s belief that the repression of women stems from male feelings of “emasculation” (a very painful topic to males for obvious reasons), then I have to wonder if the causes aren’t so much women succeeding in fields that were once dominated by men as in the biological ways men and women interact.

Now women have long protested pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s famous remark that for women “biology is destiny.”  And in many ways women have proven Freud wrong.  But Freud did do much to demonstrate that we are all governed by forces we aren’t consciously aware of and current research is showing that men and women interact on a very deep unconscious level in ways we‘ve previously never suspected. 

It turns out that that “alpha males,” those driven, hard-nosed negotiators and managers who have traditionally dominated both business and politics, have a particular vulnerability to women.  Men with the highest testosterone levels drive the hardest bargains and thus tend to rise highest in the corporate and political worlds.  And while it would seem that men like this would not feel threatened by anyone — male or female — recent studies have shown that these same males will literally fall apart if shown a photo of a provocative woman or given lingerie to handle. 

Why this is isn’t clear, but the more aggressive and tough-minded a male is, the more susceptible he is to losing his “manliness” in the presence of women and things feminine (like having to hold his wife‘s purse).  Perhaps this gives women a mating advantage with such men; gives them more control in intimate relationships.

Another recent study shows that women display distinctly different behavior towards men with high and men with low testosterone levels (often evident from facial features — the more rugged the features, the more testosterone).    

Women prefer long-term relationships with men possessing softer facial features and thus lower testosterone levels because these males are less violent and aggressive and more committed to their relationship and child-rearing responsibilities.  But women will actively seek to have affairs with rugged, high-testosterone males.  Researchers have come to believe this is because men with higher testosterone levels also have stronger immune systems — the ability to fight off disease — a valuable genetic trait if offspring of either gender are to survive.

It appears that immunity is a very important factor in women’s mating choices.  Another recent study has demonstrated that women are attracted, apparently through scent, to males with dissimilar immune systems.  Not only is a strong paternal immune system an aid to producing healthier offspring, the genetic difference between the father and mother‘s immune systems is also.  There is a surprisingly strong correlation between immune system similarity and infidelity — the more similar a couple’s immune systems, the more likely the wife is to stray.

Since the survival of her offspring is a primary concern of a woman, the immune characteristics of her partner are especially important. Thus genetic dissimilarity and testosterone level are two of the most important factors determining who a woman will choose as a mate.  By nature, high-testosterone males — males with the strongest immune systems — are apt to lose much of their aggression and hard-bargaining abilities in the presence of an attractive woman (Boteach would say they are emasculated by attractive women).  This makes them all the more likely to succumb to “feminine wiles” and pass on their immune system’s strength.

Given powerful men’s fundamental vulnerability to women, perhaps it makes sense that they fear women.  And men and women alike tend to hate what they fear.  Perhaps in looking for the roots of misogyny we should focus more on the unconscious biological ways men and women interact.  It is, after all, only when we come to understand the unconscious forces influencing our behavior that we can overcome them.

Women who write plays don’t get much respect.  But this isn’t because they don’t write good plays.  It’s because they are women.

It should come as no surprise that women are still discriminated against.  But what was  interesting about a study that explored bias against female playwrights was that much of that bias came from other females.

Emily Glassberg Sands sent four unpublished scenes written by accomplished female playwrights to a variety of artistic directors — both men and women — to be rated.  On some scenes Ms. Sands made up a man she claimed had written them while on others she attributed them to a fictional woman.  To her amazement, the female artistic directors rated the scenes with female attribution lower than either the male directors did or the female directors who read the same scenes thinking a man had written them.

Ms. Sands speculates that women are aware of deep-seated biases against them so they hold  women to higher standards.  Women know women have to be a LOT better than men to make it.  Playwright Theresa Rebeck commented “Broadway of late seems to celebrate a lot of male writers writing about how much men hate women.” 

I’ll admit I’m an unsophisticated rube, but why is Broadway dominated by plays about hating women?

This past Sunday’s Omaha World-Herald ran a feature article about the absence of women in leadership roles in Omaha.  Nebraska was recently ranked 45^th in the nation as to where women stand in managerial and professional occupations.  The World-Herald interviewed 30 prominent Omaha women about this ranking.  While some discussed reasons openly others did not, calling the topic “too toxic for their careers,” a topic which “…can be a dangerous one in Omaha — a lot of us are pretty fearful” about discussing the reasons things are this way.

The World-Herald’s article made it clear that a small group of wealthy businessmen runs the city.  The article also presented research by the Catalyst organization.  In 80% of the industries it studied, having more women on the board translated into better total return to stockholders. So it isn’t economics that’s preserving the “glass ceiling” — the invisible barrier that prevents women from rising to the top of their professions.  Then what is it?

A number of possible reasons were discussed in the article, ranging from the comparatively short time women have been in the business world to women taking time off for their families.  And while these and many other factors no doubt contribute, it’s hard to escape the odor of misogyny — the fancy word for hatred of women.

In his book Hating Women prominent rabbi Shmuley Boteach asserts that despite the strides women have made since the “women’s lib” movement of the 60s and 70s, women have never been held in lower regard than they are today.  The father of five daughters, Rabbi Boteach is a passionate advocate of returning to more traditional views of women.

Boteach contends that in the process of becoming competitive with men in a wide variety of occupations, women have lost respect for what our society traditionally considered “feminine” virtues, virtues such as nurturing, gentleness, compassion and respect for the feelings of others.  While women activists have fought hard to open everything from executive positions to blue collar jobs to women, they have abandoned the woman who wants to be a homemaker.  That woman is seen as a reminder of a distasteful past.

Boteach believes that while opening economic and political doors to women has been a great thing, it has been accompanied by a rejection of traditional femininity.  And with women abandoning traditional femininity they’ve inadvertently ceased functioning as the civilizing force in human society.  Boteach points out that in the absence of women men become increasingly coarse and violent.  He says it is women, starting with mothers and continuing with wives, who civilize men.

Reading Boteach is difficult.  While I agree with some of his points I find his arguments simplistic and reactionary.  I can’t agree that women were treated better in the past when they acted more “feminine” but I do agree that the feminine does balance and temper the masculine.  I also agree that the concerns of more traditional women have been neglected by the modern women’s movement.

I am forced to agree with the Rabbi that our society does sometimes seem to hate women — there’s evidence to be found from Broadway to the boardroom.  But I don’t believe it’s because they aren’t sufficiently feminine anymore.  I’m not completely sure why our society is misogynistic, but I will discuss some possibilities in my next column…