The Natural Superiority of Women

Rating:
Summary: Very informative
Review: I learned so much of the truth of women and men from reading this book in college. I can't believe it's gone out of print. Every teenage daughter (and maybe son) should be given a copy. - Nevin

Rating:
Summary: Bigotry in Action
Review: If the book were entitled "The Natural Superiority of Men" or "The Natural Superiority of Whites" or virtually any other group of people, the book would be called bigoted. No amount of research presented in the book would hold back the negative comments and criticisms. It that regard, it's unfortunate that people praise this book. It shows that bigotry is still alive and well in the world, if you target the right group: men. Mr. Montagu's book is a case of supporting a preconceived idea (the superiority of women) with selected research and biased interpretations. I know a great deal of people. I find that women are not any more or any less compassionate, loving, intelligent, unselfish or anything else, then men. It's unfortunate that a distinguished researcher like Dr. Montagu published such an unscientific book. It's even more unfortunate that people will use this book, even subtly, to drive a wedge between male and female relations. After all, people are individuals and must be treated as individuals on a daily basis. For antidote to "The Natural Superiority of Women" and how to build trust in male/female relations read Warren Farrell's "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say".

Rating:
Summary: Bigotry in Action
Review: If the book were entitled "The Natural Superiority of Men" or "The Natural Superiority of Whites" or virtually any other group of people, the book would be called bigoted. No amount of research presented in the book would hold back the negative comments and criticisms. It that regard, it's unfortunate that people praise this book. It shows that bigotry is still alive and well in the world, if you target the right group: men. Mr. Montagu's book is a case of supporting a preconceived idea (the superiority of women) with selected research and biased interpretations. I know a great deal of people. I find that women are not any more or any less compassionate, loving, intelligent, unselfish or anything else, then men. It's unfortunate that a distinguished researcher like Dr. Montagu published such an unscientific book. It's even more unfortunate that people will use this book, even subtly, to drive a wedge between male and female relations. After all, people are individuals and must be treated as individuals on a daily basis. For antidote to "The Natural Superiority of Women" and how to build trust in male/female relations read Warren Farrell's "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say".

Rating:
Summary: This book made me re-examine everything I thought I knew
Review: Ironically, the seminal work in the feminist movement was written by a man. "The Natural Superiority of Women", by noted anthropologist Ashley Montagu, was first published in 1952. It was serialized in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, leading to the formation of the National Organization of Women in 1966. Earlier this year, the author completely revised and updated the book to take recent studies into account. Remarkably, the structure of his argument remains largely intact--only the details have changed.

Montagu is well aware of the cultural dangers inherent in discussing this topic, and he goes about it with tongue in cheek. He acknowledges up front that men are as important and necessary to the human equation as are women. And he concedes that men possess the "bruited advantages of larger size and muscular power", which offers certain athletic benefits. While these benefits may have been useful in earlier times, they have been rendered largely superfluous in our highly mechanized industrial society. And the same hormones that produce this size and power also give rise to aggressive and violent behavior. Men constitute the vast majority of criminals, psychopaths, drug users, and suicide attempts; they also instigate and wage most wars.

But the central question of the book is: which sex is superior, from an anthropological perspective? Well that, of course, depends on what you mean by 'superior'. Montagu offers this definition: "Superiority in any trait, whether biological or social, is measured by the extent to which that trait confers survival benefits upon the person and the group." With this benchmark in place, he then goes about showing how women excel in a wide variety of domains: intelligence, physical and emotional health, sensory perception, sociability, and longevity, to name only a few.

Montagu gives ground on only one topic: creativity. He admits that throughout history, the vast majority of artists, musicians, writers, inventors and scientists have been men. However, he never assumes for a minute that this is due to an inherent genetic superiority. Instead, he shows that it is a consequence of men's traditional subjugation of women. Men have always kept women "in their place": cooking, cleaning, taking care of the household and the children. Although this is finally beginning to change, the glass ceiling is still in place: women are even now paid only 67 cents to each dollar a man gets for the same job. Given such disincentives, he finds the supposed lack of creativity unsurprising.

I propose another possible explanation: women's creativity is expressed differently. I have long suggested that fully 50% of the funds allocated toward any new research or development project be used to investigate possible negative consequences of that project. So many discoveries have turned out to have nasty undersides; we don't find out until years later about nuclear waste, holes in the ozone due to CFCs, genetic damage due to hormone disrupters, and a great variety of other technologically-induced horrors. Could it be that women somehow intuitively sensed that these were genies better left in the bottle? Perhaps they devoted their creative skills instead to more practical matters, such as storytelling and crafts. These fields, while undervalued in today's world, have much greater utility in a socially-oriented culture. The craftspeople and the storytellers are the ones who preserve the fabric of society, producing its artifacts and passing on its legends.

This theory is, of course, highly speculative and fanciful at best. If true, and if the world were less patriarchal, it would imply a vastly different lifestyle than the one we enjoy today. We would not have all the blessings of indoor air conditioning, nuclear power, and plastic milk jugs. We would be more like indigenous people, living close to the land. Or perhaps we could combine the best of both worlds. The point is only that the kind of creativity we value determines, to a large extent, the shape of the world we inhabit.

Reading this book makes me wonder what other consequences would result from true equity between the sexes. How would it change our lives, for better or worse? Certainly it would affect our reproductive rates. Nafis Sadik, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), recently gave a speech in which she lamented the slow pace of progress for women. She cited the Programme of Action, produced by the UN's International Conference on Population and Development. Its primary goals are to encourage universal availability of reproductive health, including family planning; to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality; and to provide universal access to education. While there have been small successes, much remains to be done. Dr. Sadik made it clear that our present overpopulation woes are a direct result of gender inequity. The sheer enormity of humans on the planet--a number that is about to hit six billion--is directly or indirectly responsible for virtually all of our environmental problems.

"The Natural Superiority of Women" is as relevant and as true today as it was half a century ago. It should be required reading for any person who claims allegiance to a gender. As the cover of the original paperback edition says, "A must for every woman--a challenge to every man."

Rating:
Summary: This book made me re-examine everything I thought I knew
Review: Ironically, the seminal work in the feminist movement was written by a man. "The Natural Superiority of Women", by noted anthropologist Ashley Montagu, was first published in 1952. It was serialized in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, leading to the formation of the National Organization of Women in 1966. Earlier this year, the author completely revised and updated the book to take recent studies into account. Remarkably, the structure of his argument remains largely intact--only the details have changed.

Montagu is well aware of the cultural dangers inherent in discussing this topic, and he goes about it with tongue in cheek. He acknowledges up front that men are as important and necessary to the human equation as are women. And he concedes that men possess the "bruited advantages of larger size and muscular power", which offers certain athletic benefits. While these benefits may have been useful in earlier times, they have been rendered largely superfluous in our highly mechanized industrial society. And the same hormones that produce this size and power also give rise to aggressive and violent behavior. Men constitute the vast majority of criminals, psychopaths, drug users, and suicide attempts; they also instigate and wage most wars.

But the central question of the book is: which sex is superior, from an anthropological perspective? Well that, of course, depends on what you mean by 'superior'. Montagu offers this definition: "Superiority in any trait, whether biological or social, is measured by the extent to which that trait confers survival benefits upon the person and the group." With this benchmark in place, he then goes about showing how women excel in a wide variety of domains: intelligence, physical and emotional health, sensory perception, sociability, and longevity, to name only a few.

Montagu gives ground on only one topic: creativity. He admits that throughout history, the vast majority of artists, musicians, writers, inventors and scientists have been men. However, he never assumes for a minute that this is due to an inherent genetic superiority. Instead, he shows that it is a consequence of men's traditional subjugation of women. Men have always kept women "in their place": cooking, cleaning, taking care of the household and the children. Although this is finally beginning to change, the glass ceiling is still in place: women are even now paid only 67 cents to each dollar a man gets for the same job. Given such disincentives, he finds the supposed lack of creativity unsurprising.

I propose another possible explanation: women's creativity is expressed differently. I have long suggested that fully 50% of the funds allocated toward any new research or development project be used to investigate possible negative consequences of that project. So many discoveries have turned out to have nasty undersides; we don't find out until years later about nuclear waste, holes in the ozone due to CFCs, genetic damage due to hormone disrupters, and a great variety of other technologically-induced horrors. Could it be that women somehow intuitively sensed that these were genies better left in the bottle? Perhaps they devoted their creative skills instead to more practical matters, such as storytelling and crafts. These fields, while undervalued in today's world, have much greater utility in a socially-oriented culture. The craftspeople and the storytellers are the ones who preserve the fabric of society, producing its artifacts and passing on its legends.

This theory is, of course, highly speculative and fanciful at best. If true, and if the world were less patriarchal, it would imply a vastly different lifestyle than the one we enjoy today. We would not have all the blessings of indoor air conditioning, nuclear power, and plastic milk jugs. We would be more like indigenous people, living close to the land. Or perhaps we could combine the best of both worlds. The point is only that the kind of creativity we value determines, to a large extent, the shape of the world we inhabit.

Reading this book makes me wonder what other consequences would result from true equity between the sexes. How would it change our lives, for better or worse? Certainly it would affect our reproductive rates. Nafis Sadik, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), recently gave a speech in which she lamented the slow pace of progress for women. She cited the Programme of Action, produced by the UN's International Conference on Population and Development. Its primary goals are to encourage universal availability of reproductive health, including family planning; to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality; and to provide universal access to education. While there have been small successes, much remains to be done. Dr. Sadik made it clear that our present overpopulation woes are a direct result of gender inequity. The sheer enormity of humans on the planet--a number that is about to hit six billion--is directly or indirectly responsible for virtually all of our environmental problems.

"The Natural Superiority of Women" is as relevant and as true today as it was half a century ago. It should be required reading for any person who claims allegiance to a gender. As the cover of the original paperback edition says, "A must for every woman--a challenge to every man."

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for men and women today.
Review: Modern civilization has traveled far in knowledge and advanced technologies, yet from other perspectives -- in morals, in education, in equality, in peace -- we have a long long way to go. Last year in Kosovo the world saw how false ideas can generate destructive actions, how an ideology of hatred leads to genocide. More recently we have been shocked to hear that a pro-Nazi sympathizer has secured a foothold in the government of Austria; and a professional baseball player in Atlanta has unashamedly announced, in effect, that minorities are an inferior species. Always, after news like this, the commentators pop out of their holes like groundhogs, glare at the shadows, then tell us what we already know. Bigotry, intolerance, and racism are evil and horrible and base. Much rarer are the thinkers who write about the root of these events, and explain what we must do to understand the causes and conditions which poison our culture with prejudice and hate. The most influential of these foresighted thinkers was Ashley Montagu, who died on November 26, 1999 at the age of 94. One of the key forces behind the United Nations UNESCO statement on race, Montagu was the author of more than sixty books. His works and lectures, which explore a wide variety of subjects, focus primarily on these four topics: anthropology; the fallacies of racism and sexism; the nature of human nature as loving and cooperative instead of selfish and aggressive; and the renewal of culture through education. Montaugu's last book, The Natural Superiority Of Women (originally published in 1952) has been expanded and updated to fortify his highly-controversial theme: women are superior to men. The book argues that the female of the species is biologically, sexually, emotionally, and even intellectually superior to the male. Montagu explains that this thesis is supported by scientific evidence. Like Socrates, he challenges his readers to distinguish between facts and opinions. He reminds us that facts are either true of false, and he welcomes all evidence that questions any of his facts and the conclusions deduced from these. Since 1952 when Montagu first made his claims in an article for the "Saturday Review", the book has angered many feminists and been applauded by many others. A woman, Montagu claims, should not attempt to blindly imitate the type-A, money-crazed, commercial-driven lifestyle of the typical executive male. The most fulfilling life for the mother can be realized only if she spends the first years caring for the new baby, and only later joins (or rejoins) the workforce. Montagu's great goal is not to promote a society dominated by women, but a to bring about a world of equality where the beautiful characteristics of women rule: a world of cooperation, sensitivity, and human kindness. This 1999 fifth edition contains significant new material compared to the previous 1992 release, and includes Montagu's new preface, an insightful introduction by Susan Sperling which explains Montagu's ideas in the context of current feminist theory, and the text of the important 1967 United Nations resolution titled "Declaration of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women." Admirers of Montaugu's previous books will find many of his important themes repeated here, especially his credo, as H.G. Wells explained, that "civilization is a race between education and catastrophe." For those of us who at times believe that catastrophe is winning, the noble ideas in this work will provide insight, courage and inspiration. The Natural Superiority Of Women will help every thinking man to better appreciate the true essence of women, and help every woman to gain the vision and confidence to fulfill herself, nurture her family, stand up for her rights, and make the world a better -- a more equal and a more loving -- place to live. Michael Pastore, Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Irrefutable Evidence
Review: Montagu's masterpiece should be read, rather than dismissed off-hand as folly. It is a frank and liberating revelation of female superiority. As humans, we should strive for enlightenment and this book will surely expose your fundamental assumptions (i.e., myths) and demolish them. It is the most intellectually honest, scholarly and well-written book I've read on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: The evidence the book provides does not convince me.......
Review: The evidence the book provides does not convince me as to the natural superiority of women, or even their equality. This is despite the fact of my feelings which are women are equal if not superior.