When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on t...he parent-child-relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we mak...e inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Traditionally in American society, men have been trained for both competition and teamwork through sports, while women have been r...eared to merge their welfare with that of the family, with fewer opportunities for either independence or other team identifications, and fewer challenges to direct competition. In effect, women have been circumscribed within that unit where the benefit of one is most easily believed to be the benefit of all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizi...ng, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »