PARTISAN REVIEW
193
countries has been voluntary, for few women can stand up to the dis–
approval unleashed when they deviate from the stereotypes of "feminine"
submissiveness and illogicality. (Thus, it is disparaging to describe a
woman as "ambitious" or "tough" or "intellectual"; and she will be
called "castrating" for behavior that would be viewed, in a man, as
normal or even commendable aggressiveness.)
Granted that almost all jobs available in modern societies could be
described as alienating, I am more impressed by the double alienation
from which women suffer - by being denied even those limited satis–
faotions that men can derive from work. By entering the world of work
in
its present forms, women have much to gain. They acquire skills, by
wruch they can take care of themselves and organize themselves better.
And they acquire a specific arena of struggle, in each job or profession,
where they can press the demands for their liberation.
These demands must go beyond "equality" as that may be achieved
between individuals in the work situations to which women are admitted.
Far more importarnt than getting the same pay for the same work
(though that minimal "liberal" demand as not yet been met in
any
country in 'the world, including Ohina) ,is breaking down the sex-ste–
reotyping according to whiah the world of work is organized. Wom–
en must become surgeons, agronomists, lawyers, meohanics, soldiers,
electricians, astronauts, faotory executives, orchestra conductors, sound
engineers, chess players, construction workers, pilots - and in numbers
large enough so that their presence is no longer remarked. (When
women become the vast majority doing a job formerly monopolized by
men, as in the medical profession in the Soviet Union, the challenge
to sex-stereotyping is much slighter. The result is that the hitherto
"masculine" role of doctor has become a "feminine" role.)
As long as the system of sex segregation in work remains strong,
most people - women as well as men - will continue to rationalize
it by insisting that women lack the physical strength or the capacity for
rational judgment or uhe emotional self-control to do many jobs. As that
system weakens, women wm get more competent. And when they are
not merely tolerated in but
expected
to perform the jobs from which
they are now barred, large numbers of women wiII in fact be able
to do them.
When work becomes fully desegregated sexually, women will
be
better qualified to join with their co-workers who are men in question–
ing
its fundamental terms, as presently defined. The bureaucratic style
in
which work in modern society is laid out must be redesigned to
provide more democratic, decentralized ways of planning and making
decisions. Most important of all, the very ideal of "productivity" (and
