WOMAN. - I. NATURE AND PERSONALITY. - Philosophy, as regards natural perfection and the dignity of the person, and divine Revelation, as regards supernatural perfection and relations with God, teach that woman is equal to man. For like man she possesses all the properties and faculties that belong to the human personality, and she too is called to share in the supernatural life of Grace and through it to attain the final end: the possession of the eternal reward.
This sublime equality is taught us in Sacred Scripture: "God created man in his own image: in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27); and in the New Testament: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27-28). From the manner in which Jesus treated women it appears that He placed her, in all things and especially as regards the supernatural life, on the same level as man. An example is found in his relations with the two sisters of Bethany, Mary and Martha.
Although both realize humanity in its essential elements, man and woman are nonetheless divided from one another by certain differences which it would be a most grave error to wish to deny or even merely to diminish; for God himself willed this difference in view of the very different function to which he destined the one and the other.
Indeed, man and woman cannot maintain and perfect their equal dignity unless they respect and put into practice the particular qualities that nature has bestowed on each of them, physical and spiritual qualities that are indestructible, whose order it is not possible to overturn without nature itself restoring it anew.
In harmony with the proper character of man and of woman, Jesus willed that in his Church only men should be called to have and to exercise authority and spiritual power, with the absolute exclusion of women, who therefore are not capable of validly receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders. All this is carried out by men, not because woman is less than man, but because woman is different from man.
II. WOMAN IN PUBLIC LIFE
No less than man, woman is a member of society, both civil and ecclesiastical. Therefore she too has the right and the duty to exercise her own influence to promote the common good. What, according to the norms of a just distribution of burdens, may be asked of woman depends on many elements: on her character, on her natural gifts, and on the special tasks to which the Creator has called her. Precisely the great natural difference between man and woman makes it clear that it is not a requirement of natural law that woman take part in public and political life in the same way as man. Therefore it is an error to say that woman's right to the political vote in the active and passive sense (as elector and as eligible for election) is a natural right. However, the opposite error is also to be avoided, namely that of declaring that the granting of political rights to woman is in conflict with natural law or with the principles of Christianity.
Since it is beyond doubt that good government and good legislation are matters of great importance also for woman, it follows that she has the right (and the obligation) to exercise her own influence to that end. But besides the vote, there are for woman also other ways of exercising a very great influence on the course of political life, and the principal and most effective one is her activity as a good wife and good mother, a shaper of the character of her children, future citizens and perhaps future rulers.
Where, however, the right to vote is granted to women, they also have the duty to make use of it; a duty all the more grave the more necessary the intervention of honest persons is in the place, in order to avoid grave harms, both temporal and spiritual, for the people.
III. WOMAN AND SOCIAL LIFE
That woman has a social task is certain, but it lies above all within the family. Indeed, no one does more for the temporal and spiritual well-being of her people than the good mother of a family. Certainly, a considerable number of women are called to social tasks, even though they are not wives and mothers. But even they ordinarily make themselves more useful to the good of society and of the people if they choose properly feminine occupations, to which they are led by their very physical and psychic constitution: for example, as governesses, as nurses of every kind, as schoolteachers, directors or assistants of children's colonies, and the like.
IV. WOMAN AND WORK
It is not in itself contrary to morality for a woman to work outside the home (in factories, banks, offices, etc.). It is clear, however, that such work is not very compatible with the task of a married woman, whether or not she has children. The most effective means of combating this grave social evil is to keep alive, or, where necessary, to strengthen among the people the conviction that according to good morals a married woman does not go to work outside the home and employers do not accept married women as workers. It is clear that there can be exceptions, as in the case of widows, for whom work is often the only means of earning enough to support the family. However, the common good suggests providing for these cases through a system of social insurance. The founding of a family on the earnings of both spouses' work is also an evil to be combated. The practice brings with it grave moral dangers, such as the near necessity of preventing the birth of children.
For the married woman, work outside the home is often necessary or very useful, whether to earn a living or to avoid an idle and useless life. Here too, however, there are dangers both for society and for the woman herself. Often women occupy men's positions, so that the latter are unemployed and remain unable to found a family, and thus indirectly the woman closes off the path to her own vocation: to become a spouse and mother. Work in industrial factories has grave drawbacks for the young woman, especially of a moral nature.
V. HISTORICAL NOTES
In ancient times woman was generally rather the servant of man and an object of use for enjoying sexual pleasures and procreating offspring. There were, to be sure, exceptions. Thus among the ancient Egyptians woman, although subject to man, was held in great honor; likewise, though to a lesser degree, among the Greeks and Romans. Among the Semites (Arabs, Shrei, etc.) woman was considered of inferior rank to man, even spiritually, and excluded from public and political life. However, there are texts in the Old Testament that show that the married woman enjoyed a certain freedom of action even with regard to the economy of the household.
Christianity, while preaching that in the family the husband is head and therefore exercises authority also over the wife, greatly raised the personality of woman, placing her, as was just, on the same spiritual plane as man. The honor given to the state of virginity led to the founding of female communities of great importance, in which woman held positions of authority. The Renaissance, with its pagan tendencies, and the Reformation, which did not admit the state of virginity as an ideal of the supernatural order, brought about a decline in esteem for the personality of woman. Modern life, with the development of industry, which has drawn woman out of the home and the family, has not contributed to increasing esteem and reverence toward her. Woman's ordinary participation in public life is a fairly recent phenomenon, as is the so-called feminist movement for the equalization of woman with man on the civil, social and political plane (v. FEMMINISMO).
Bibliography5 works
VI. WOMAN IN LAW
Modern law (unlike that of other epochs) gives woman a position little different from that of man, and in particular recognizes in her almost the same juridical capacity (v.) as is recognized in man. Various differences nevertheless exist, especially in public law (in many States woman is not granted the right to vote or eligibility for office, or her capacity to hold public posts or offices is very limited), and, to a lesser degree, in criminal law.
Canon law, besides the provisions of divine law (for example, woman has no capacity to receive Orders and therefore not the power of order either; and from this there also follows the incapacity to hold the power of jurisdiction and to fill ecclesiastical offices: cf. CIC, cann. 968 § 1 and 118), lays down various other norms relating to women: thus they are considered to have reached puberty upon completing their twelfth year, and may contract marriage upon completing their fourteenth, whereas for men the age is in both cases two years higher (cann. 88 § 2 and 1067 § 1); women are forbidden to take an active part in confraternities, being able to be enrolled in them only to gain indulgences and spiritual graces (can. 709 § 2); however, associations of women or unions of several of them at churches or oratories of religious women, whose purpose is to devote themselves to prayer and which enjoy only communicated spiritual graces, may be permitted by the local Ordinary (can. 712 § 3); save in special cases, they should not be charged with administering Baptism, if a man can do so (can. 742 § 2); they cannot hold offices relating to the administration of ecclesiastical property (cann. 1520 § 1 and 1521 § 1); particular procedures are prescribed for their confession (can. 910) or so that they may serve at Mass (can. 813 § 2); it is established that in church they are to have their heads covered and be decently dressed, and, if possible, separated from the men (can. 1262); they cannot act, in causes of beatification or canonization, except through a procurator (can. 2004 § 1); only a woman can be the passive subject of the crime of abduction (v.; can. 2353) and only the abduction of a woman (not that of a man) constitutes an impediment to Matrimony (can. 1074). For other provisions concerning married women and religious women, v. respectively CONIUGI, DIRITTI E DOVERI dei; RELIGIONE.
Pio Ciprotti
VII. WOMAN IN ETHNOLOGY
The subject will be treated from the ethnological standpoint by examining the situation of woman, not among individual peoples, but among the various types of culture as established by ethnology.
1. Among the so-called gathering peoples
Among these, who are ethnologically the most ancient, woman's situation with respect to man is good, since she is considered his equal and her activity is rightly coordinated with his. There is furthermore between the two sexes a convenient division of labor: the man, a hunter or fisherman, attends to hunting, fishing, the gathering of honey, etc., to the building of the canoe, to the building of a more solid house, of bows, arrows and other tools for the various tasks; he must assist his wife in the care of the children, in guarding the fire; he must procure the material necessary for weapons and tools, etc.; in case of serious need he also procures wood and water; the woman attends essentially to the family. Marriage is monogamous and made for mutual love between the spouses, who, after marriage, regularly observe fidelity until death. Divorce either does not exist or is rare; adultery is held to be a great crime and is punished even with death. There is the belief, as among the Bambuti Pygmies of the Ituri, in Africa, and among the Andamanese, that God punishes adulterers with lightning, diseases and in other ways. Sons and daughters are loved equally by the parents, without distinction, and this paternal and maternal love is repaid by the sons and daughters until death and without distinction.
Even the State, which among these peoples is barely in germ, has the same care for both sexes, as is clearly manifested in its only truly solemn act, that is, in the initiation of the youth of both sexes, which consists in education in the traditional religion and morality, in the customs and usages of the clan, and finally in the declaration of majority with the right to marriage, if from the initiatory tests they are judged fit. The only difference is this, that the head of the clan and the council of elders — where this organization exists — are made up of men and not of women, although the wife of the head enjoys the same honors as her husband. Indeed, by the laws of separation of the sexes, observed among some of these peoples, whereby an elder brother is a person of the ascending generation and cannot speak or have any relations with the wife of a younger brother and of a relative of the descending generation, she has the same authority as her husband over all the women of the clan who are inferior to her in age.
In the most ancient civilization, therefore, because of this situation of natural equality of the sexes and their relatively harmonious social activity, woman is truly the companion of man, the spouse, the mother. Such a situation of equality, however, is no longer observed, or only rarely, as will be seen briefly, in civilizations that are economically and socially superior, which for this reason acquire truly special characteristics and represent human experiments, exceedingly rich in profound lessons.
2. Woman among nomadic pastoralists
She is an eternal minor; before marriage she depends on her father; after marriage she depends on her husband; at his death she depends on the eldest son. The sons inherit, the daughters do not. Since pastoralism is an entirely male activity and requires unity of action and a great number of head of livestock, so that the family may live, there has developed the overwhelming authority of the head of the family, the desire to have a great number of male children, and the necessity has been felt that these, even after their marriage, should remain under paternal authority to tend the numerous flocks. Therefore, woman becomes economically insignificant, especially among those pastoral peoples where woman is even forbidden to milk. If a pastoralist had no offspring or had only daughters, he would be reputed unfortunate. A sign of a situation of inferiority of woman is the purchase of the bride, since in contracting a marriage the family of the groom must pay a sum to the family of the bride, although pastoralists wish to deny this act the character of a purchase. While polygamy is permitted to the man, chastity is required of the woman and her adultery is judged severely. This virtue of chastity certainly entails in woman the exercise of virtue and self-mastery. Among nomadic pastoralists there is no longer the initiation of the youth. The family, developing greatly with five, nine and more generations of blood relatives and their wives, reduces almost to nothing the life of the State (tribe). The authority of the father of the family becomes despotic, the freedom of the children diminishes, indeed he takes it from them completely in marriage, which is arranged only by the parents, or rather, generally by the head of the family through intermediaries. Such despotism is manifested especially in the right of life or death over the sons and daughters. If one reflects that among pastoral peoples marriage is in itself monogamous, and as such founded on religion, the fidelity of the spouses until death is the rule; divorce is rare; adultery is a grave crime, which can be condemned even with the penalty of death; one will easily understand that the position of woman, if not juridically, at least practically, is quite good. The civilization of nomadic pastoralists is the most important of all in human history, because in its intermingling with other civilizations it gave rise to great States and empires, which we know particularly from history.
3. In totemist civilization
Here the great pre-eminence of man immediately strikes the scholar's eye, the exaltation of his strength, of his warrior and brutal instincts and of sexual passion; woman is in a situation of abasement, of great inferiority, and becomes above all an instrument of man's pleasure. But precisely in this civilization one can well observe the meaning, the importance of feminine forces and activities in the formation of the human personality and in ordered social organization; one can see furthermore what is the field reserved for woman, and what is her own kingdom. The totemist economy is the great hunt, and this is an entirely male thing with all the activities connected with it; woman has the work of the house and other secondary activities. Woman is like an eternal minor, and without any rights. With initiation the young man is separated from his mother and from his family and placed in the house of the circumcised youths, and from then on he must observe the laws of separation of the sexes, that is, the prohibition of meeting, of being together, of conversing, of living together, even if they are wife and husband. Thus among the Tugheri of New Guinea the husband can work in part with his wife, but cannot live with her, but only with the other old men of his age. The initiation of young women does not exist, and where it exists it is of a sexual character like that of the young men. These and all adults are divided into age classes, which often find their correspondence also in the groupings of the women of the clan, which, for example, among the Tugheri, begin for girls at 11-12 years of age. In this case there are not only the houses of the young men, but also of the young women, with the prohibition of access to the other sex. Among other totemist peoples, as among the Masai of East Africa, these houses serve the opposite purpose, because here the young men of the tribe are permitted to choose a young woman or a group of young women, with whom they can have sexual relations, whence the young women of the tribe become a kind of prostitutes.
However important, therefore, may be the manifestation of social progress achieved in totemist civilization under the aspect of free and state associations, this progress has cost a high price, that is, it has come about with great harm to woman and to the family. In totemism the perversion moral led to religious perversion and gave great development to magic and superstition.
4. In the matriarchy
The woman, contrary to what happens in totemism, occupies here a situation such that in the first stages of the development of this civilization, that is, as long as man does not react, it brings about the abasement of man as such and as father. The woman, who in the most ancient culture contributed to the support of the family by gathering the spontaneous fruits of the earth and vegetable foods, turned her thoughts to the cultivation of the soil, in order to obtain them thus through her own labor, thereby giving origin to agriculture. Naturally the woman became the owner of the field, of the granary, of the house and of the tools of labor, of pottery and of weaving, which are her inventions and which she transmits as an inheritance to her daughters. The sons and daughters belong to the family and tribe of the mother and take her name. The husband does not live with the wife; he, belonging to the family of his own mother, is like a stranger in the family of the wife and is regarded as such also by the children. From time to time he goes to visit the wife; thus precisely did it happen in Japan until the 7th century after Christ. In this first form of matriarchy the brother or the eldest of the family occupies a special place in the family with respect to the children of the sister, these being often in very close social relations with him, as if he were their father; for the sister, moreover, he becomes a procurator. The maternal uncle continues to occupy this special place with respect to the nephews, the children of the sister, even when the husband, in another period of the development of the matriarchy, goes to live with the wife, as happens, for example, among the Cham of French Indochina; indeed, he leaves his property not to his own offspring, but to the offspring of the sister, who therefore did not inherit from their own father.
5. In mixed cultures
From what has been said it results that the situation of the woman, except for that of equality in almost all the manifestations of life in the most ancient civilizations, is a situation of inferiority, more or less profound, whether among totemist peoples and cattle-breeders as well as among matriarchal ones, through the reaction of the male sex. This situation changes when such peoples come to interbreed with one another. Ethnology teaches that when totemism interbreeds with the matriarchy the situation of the woman worsens greatly. In fact the totemist, who despises the woman for himself, observing the usefulness that can come to him from the woman as cultivator of the soil, will seek, guided by his organizing spirit, to procure as many women as he can in order to make them work.
When the nomadic shepherds interbred and mingled with the peoples of the other civilizations, there came about formations of States and empires, as has been said, with the often luxuriant development of material, social and intellectual culture (writing and literature, law, science, philosophy and art), formations and development due to the dominating and organizing force of the shepherds and to the coexistence of totemist industry and art and of matriarchal agriculture. The new civilizations, resulting from interbreeding and mingling, assume very varied forms, that is, according to the power and the force of absorption and resistance of the totemist and matriarchal peoples, organized and dominated. Giving a general judgment of this civilization, one can say that external or intellectual civil development did not bring with it an elevation of the human person, because there was generally lacking a just and harmonious correlation between family and State, between male and female activities, and there was a moral and religious regression. The situation of inferiority of the woman either does not change or becomes more profound and humiliating. There arises, in fact, the harem of kings, of emperors, of princes and of the rich; polygamy, concubinage, the slavery of the woman and, for various reasons, also of man, are made systematic.
6. Concluding considerations
From the rapid survey that has been given of the different types of human civilization under the feminine aspect, it results clearly first of all that every human progress is linked necessarily, naturally to the harmonious correlation between man and woman, between the family and the State. Even admitting the identical nature and the fundamental parity of rights, one must recognize the different social functionality of the sexes: the activity of man is principally in society and in the State, that of the woman in the family. There are laws, placed by God the creator in human nature, which man must recognize and follow, suitably, in order to live a well-ordered life and attain the end of the family and of the State and above all the perfection of his personality, a perfection willed by God and toward which all family, social and state activity must tend, as toward its natural end, for the glorification of God, creator and end of the universe.
Bibliography17 works
Luigi Vannicelli