The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan [180]
These high-dominance women were not “feminine” in the conventional sense, partly because they felt free to choose rather than be bound by convention, and partly because they were stronger as individuals than most women.
Such women prefer to be treated “Like a person, not like a woman.” They prefer to be independent, stand on their own two feet, and generally do not care for concessions that imply they are inferior, weak or that they need special attention and cannot take care of themselves. This is not to imply that they cannot behave conventionally. They do when it is necessary or desirable for any reason, but they do not take the ordinary conventions seriously. A common phrase is “I can be nice and sweet and clinging-vine as anyone else, but my tongue is in my cheek.”…Rules per se generally mean nothing to these women. It is only when they approve of the rules and can see and approve of the purpose behind them that they will obey them…. They are strong, purposeful and do live by rules, but these rules are autonomous and personally arrived at….
Low dominance women are very different. They…usually do not dare to break rules, even when they (rarely) disapprove of them…. Their morality and ethics are usually entirely conventional. That is, they do what they have been taught to do by their parents, their teachers, or their religion. The dictum of authority is usually not questioned openly, and they are more apt to approve of the status quo in every field of life, religious, economic, educational and political.16
Professor Maslow found that the higher the dominance, or strength of self in a woman, the less she was self-centered and the more her concern was directed outward to other people and to problems of the world. On the other hand, the main preoccupation of the more conventionally feminine low-dominance women was themselves and their own inferiorities. From a psychological point of view, a high-dominance woman was more like a high-dominance man than she was like a low-dominance woman. Thus Professor Maslow suggested that either you have to describe as “masculine” both high-dominance men and women or drop the terms “masculine” and “feminine” altogether because they are so “misleading.”
Our high dominance women feel more akin to men than to women in tastes, attitudes, prejudices, aptitudes, philosophy, and inner personality in general…. Many of the qualities that are considered in our culture to be “manly” are seen in them in high degree, e.g., leadership, strength of character, strong social purpose, emancipation from trivialities, lack of fear, shyness, etc. They do not ordinarily care to be housewives or cooks alone, but wish to combine marriage with a career…. Their salary may come to no more than the salary of a housekeeper, but they feel other work to be more important than sewing, cooking, etc.17
Above all, the high-dominance woman was more psychologically free—more autonomous. The low-dominance woman was not free to be herself, she was other-directed. The more her self-depreciation, self-distrust, the more likely she was to feel another’s opinion more valid than her own, and to wish she were more like someone else. Such women “usually admire and respect others more than they do themselves’ and along with this “tremendous respect for authority,” with idolization and imitation of others, with the complete “voluntary subordination to others