The Miseducation of Women

Women's studies

THE MISEDUCATION OF WOMEN
By James Tooley
Continuum Publishing. 258 pages. £16.99
ISBN 0 8264 5094 6

Feminists have a lot to answer for. That is what James Tooley says in his meaty and thought-provoking book, 'The Miseducation of Women'.

James Tooley is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Newcastle. He writes, not from any Christian perspective, but from a solid basis of research and experience, motivated by a deep sadness and a chivalrous, manly (steady, now!) desire to protect women from a cruel injustice. That is one reason why I wholeheartedly recommend this important book to anyone interested or concerned about the muddle secularist post-modern society has made of gender.

Tooley's starting point is what he calls 'the Bridget Jones syndrome'. Helen Fielding's bestseller struck a chord with four million readers across 30 countries. Perhaps Fielding herself was surprised at its success. She wrote: 'Well, my first book was about a woman running a refugee camp in Africa. No one bought it. Bridget Jones's Diary is about a woman struggling to lose weight, and four million women all over the world bought it.'

Fulfilment?

Bridget Jones is typical of a generation who have been told they must seek fulfilment in a career. The one thing they cannot express ambition over, in a schools career interview, is the aspiration to be a wife, mother or a homemaker. But an astronaut or engineer is just fine. This is because feminists of 30 years ago effectively changed public education policy so that women would be forced to be free of 'domestic drudgery' and of the 'slavery' of childcare. The national curriculum is, by law, gender neutral.

In addition, all sorts of initiatives seek to direct girls into the traditionally male choices of mathematics, science and engineering. Women must be forced into the world of men. And to some extent they have made it, but at a cost, Tooley suggests, to their personal happiness and fulfilment. Even some of the first wave of feminists, like Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer, acknowledge that something is badly wrong. The evidence is that many women, far from having it all, reach their late 30s yearning and sad. They have been sold a dummy. It is the men who have it all! In the end, the career wasn't enough: these women long to be able to prioritise family life, or even to have a family to prioritise for.

Equality and liberationists

Tooley makes distinctions between equality feminists who fight for sameness, equal proportions of men and women in every profession, but particularly the perceived high status ones, and liberationist feminists who accept that men and women are different and that these differences should be celebrated. It is the equality feminists who have shaped educational policy and indoctrinated young women with the idea that they should not be fulfilled in their marriages and families, even if they feel they are, and that they should be looking outside to the world of work.

Tooley, however, poses the question: what is so great about the world of work, the public sphere, that everyone must aspire to it and define themselves in relation to it? Why have we denigrated the domestic sphere to such an extent that a woman is embarrassed to say that she is 'just a housewife'? The equality feminists have perhaps placed too much value on the public over the private, and in doing so have perpetrated a huge injustice on their sex.

'Liberation feminists do not think that women should simply ape the world of men. They think that something is very awry if female values and predilections are lost, in curriculum, in family life and society. But their voices are lost to the debate about gender equality in schools. No Ministers for Women take up the causes of female values. No Secretaries for Education champion the causes of what many women find valuable and wish to prioritise. Virtues of femaleness, like domesticity and motherhood, are put to one side.'

Or again: 'The working-class women whom the feminists want to see liberated from the drudge of domesticity are likely to be liberated only into working-class jobs. Is it not possible that such wage-slave drudgery is even worse than domestic drudgery, particularly as it cannot be romanticised? And even for professional jobs, just because men say they are worthwhile does not mean that women have to acquiesce in the male valuation of them. The argument is all about the 'private-public' distinction that is so crucial to feminists' ideas on women's oppression. But by turning the argument on its head, we suggested that there was nothing oppressive about men and women in general valuing different spheres, and that this alternative valuation could lead to benefits for the whole of society.'

It is crucial to Tooley's argument that the differences between men and women are proved to be a consequence of biology rather than socialisation, and he spends two chapters examining the theories of evolutionary psychologists. A Christian reader will find all this rather tortuous and difficult to swallow, but in the end, as Tooley admits, it doesn't matter whether you go down Darwin's route or simply believe that God made male and female different by design. What matters is that the acknowledgement of a biologically-based difference is allowed to impact policy, not to limit choices for women, but to liberate them from the diktats of those feminists who claim to speak for all women, but clearly do not.

Sensible proposals

In the final chapter the author makes some proposals about what could or should happen at the policy level to redress this wrong. These proposals are sensible and well-argued. They constitute a plea for the calm recognition of gender differences and a valuing of a true interconnectedness between men and women. No one who believes the Bible will disagree with that.

Women's studies

Fulfilment?

Equality and liberationists

Sensible proposals

Ann Benton

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