Page 39 - HIRS - Eng
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RESPECT AND PROTECTION 5
Nowadays, the notion of gender neutrality is becoming popular.
The belief is that men and women are more or less identical but
think or act differently only because of cultural conditioning.
On these grounds, the women’s liberation movement proposes
doing away with the notion that women are the ‘weaker sex’
and need men as their protectors. Their conviction is that
women don’t have inherent feminine traits of being emotional
or gentle and men don’t have the inherent masculine traits
of being rational or physically boisterous. They appear to be
that way because that is what the society expects them to
be, and if we were to train them differently, men would be as
emotional as women and women as rational as men.
This concept of gender neutrality sparked the ‘nature vs.
nurture’ debate on the origin of gender-based behaviors;
in other words do men and women behave the way they do
because of the biological differences they are born with, or
due to their upbringing? It is generally accepted that both
factors play a role in an individual’s behavior, but the debate
continues regarding which of the two is dominant. In either
case, the Vedic understanding is that the ‘nurturing’ ought to
be based on that which is given by ‘nature.’ It would be wise
to consider that perhaps gender ‘stereotypes’ are an inherent
part of cultures all over the world, not due to a perverse
desire of men to exploit women, but because they take into
consideration the biological and psychological makeup of men
and women.
Śrīla Prabhupāda elaborates:
A sixteen-year-old boy can go safely all over the world, but
a sixteen-year girl cannot. That is not possible. By nature,