I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that women are considered “overly emotional.” As the creatures of emotion that society paints us as, we are in a constant state of unpredictable ups and downs – we can change our minds about important decisions on a whim depending on the time of the month or if we’ve just seen a touching commercial.
Women have been fighting for decades to receive the kind of respect given to men. The respect to be thought of as the hard workers and leaders we know we can be. This isn’t a battle only fought in secular society, but also in religious society. In fact, probably some of the stereotypes women have had to overcome have stemmed from religious philosophy.
In Orthodox Judaism, women are known to be so swayed by emotion, that not only can’t we be rabbis or leaders of mixed religious institutions, but we can’t even participate in Jewish legal proceedings as witnesses. Our testimony is just too unreliable. Likewise, one of the reasons bandied about as to why a woman can’t finalize divorce proceedings, is that as the volatile females that we are, we would be taking our husbands to divorce court at least once a month.
The double standard I see is that by anyone’s observation, men can just as easily be stereotyped as being ruled by emotion as women. Yet, the types of emotions they are swayed by to the point of irrationality, aren’t penalized.
For example, how many times have we seen men flying into a rage over a car on the road that cuts them off? How many times have we seen men come to blows over jealous affection for a woman? Anger and subsequent violence are traits most often often associated with men, yet we don’t discount men with trigger tempers for leadership roles.
What about lust? We penalize women for their biological functions – saying that because of the hormonal challenges of menstruation and pregnancies, they are unfit for communal position of power. Yet men’s hormones often cause them to make very poor decisions, sometimes causing very public downfalls, yet we don’t disqualify them for leadership based on their wild hormonal fluctuations.
Why are men allowed their emotional and hormonal tempests, yet women aren’t? Can’t we agree that we are all creatures subject to our biological and psychological limitations which we strive to overcome? Doesn’t it seem like a double standard to punish one sex more than the other because of these challenges? Isn’t there a place at the leadership table for both genders – warts and all?
