Kealey, Linda

English

Journals @ The Mount

phase of one-dimensional " r a d i c a l femin-ism." She was a d o c t r i n a i r e l e f t i s t at the time (and probably s t i l l i s ) . A f t e r warmly p r a i s i n g Women in the Canadian Mosaic, t h i s young woman refe r r e d back to the period of our acquaintance around 1970. "Those were the good o l d days. 1" she exclaimed with an a i r of n o s t a l g i a . And then she added rather w i s t f u l l y , "But things have never been so simple s i nee." Linda Kealey A REPLY TO GWEN MATHESON It is unfortunate that Gwen Matheson (whom I have not met) takes my c r i t i c a l review of Women in the Canadian Mosaic as a personal a t t a c k . Her reply i s i n -d i c a t i v e of the low le v e l of c r i t i c a l t h i n k i n g in f e m i n i s t c i r c l e s (academic and non-academic). My review addressed the problems in the a n a l y s i s and or g a n i -z a t i o n of the c o l l e c t i o n , not her per-sonal motives. The lead sentence of the review, to which she ob j e c t s , does not question her motives but rather those of the present government. My point i s that not every feminist p u b l i -c a t i o n deserves a pat on the back and a chorus of "well-done." The review takes issue with a number of c r i t i c a l areas: 1. The simple i d e n t i f i c a t i o n w i t h , and d i s t o r t i o n o f , N e l l i e McClung and the brand of feminism she represented, namely, maternal feminism. The book lacks a c r i t i c a l d i s c u s s i o n of the phenomenon of maternal feminism (except in Deborah Gorham's piece) and does not de l i n e a t e the c l a s s roots of t h i s type of feminism. C l e a r l y maternal feminism was dominant i n Canada and the U.S. in the l a t e nineteenth and e a r l y twentieth c e n t u r i e s . That i s not the issue. The issue, in h i s t o r i c a l terms, i s why did such a large number of fe m i n i s t s adopt t h i s model in t h i s period? How did these women come to adopt a philosophy with strong e v a n g e l i c a l and missionary overtones, and with a l l the negative aspects of fear of the f o r e i g n e r , race-s u i c i d e , e t c . , rather than a p h i l o s -ophy based on equal r i g h t s . Why did they shy away from c l a s s s t r u g -gle and opt fo r " C h r i s t i a n stewardship?" The idea of the woman as redeemer of c a p i t a l i s m f e l l f l a t on i t s face in the period a f t e r World War I. B a l l o t s in the hands of women di d not challenge the basic i n e q u i t i e s . McClung and other f e m i n i s t s f a i l e d to see problems of working women, of women without c h i l d r e n and thus provided no "model" for them. Maternal feminism, despite Matheson's inadequate defense, provides very l i t t l e in the way of a r a t i o n a l e f o r modernfeminists p r e c i s e l y because i t i s based on l a t e nineteenth century ideas of sex d i f f e r e n c e s . The male i s aggressive and a c t i v e ; the female, pas-s i v e and nurturant. It i s c e r t a i n l y s i g n i f i c a n t that the d i s c o v e r i e s of endocrinology i n the e a r l y twentieth century undermined the idea of a sp e c i a l s o c i a l r o l e f o r women while f a i l i n g to challenge the idea that biology i s destiny. Various s c i e n t i f i c theories have been put forward to ex-plain female temperament in the course of history. Surely the lesson to be learned is to distrust social theories based on biological evidence and to place science within a social context. Men and women are biologically di f f e r -ent in some respects but women's repro-ductive and hormonal differences pro-vide no proven basis for a superior (or inferior) role. 2. The second point the review made was the need to be more precise about the influence of class on female exper-ience. It is not sufficient to say that " a l l women are working women." This essentially mystifies the vast dif-ferences between women rather than shedding any light. The middle class women's movement, past and present, has not been able to bridge those dif-ferences. This is not to deny, however, the social welfare benefits brought a about by the reform movement. Social reformers of both sexes in the period 1880-1920 were genuinely distressed by the havoc wreaked on society by the coming of industrial capitalism. At the same time, profound ambiguity is evident in the reformers' attitudes to the work-ing class. Social control was an inte-gral part of social welfare. Similarly, in today's movement, feminists from the professional and middle classes bring benefits to women in the working classes. This does not mean that the problems of working class women are understood and dealt with directly. The gap has yet to be bridged. It is my contention that recognition of class is central to any discussion of social movements, including feminism. This is not the same as insisting on a "one-dimensional view" as Matheson as-serts; nor does a recognition of class lead to an analysis s t r i c t l y focused on working class women in "overalls and kerchiefs." The issue of class has to be addressed generally. 3. The third and final point the review makes is the need to recognize the im-portant influence of radical politics (on both sides of the border) in the making of a Canadian feminist identity. I never implied that the Canadian women's movement was a simple offshoot of New Left activities; rather, I was attempting to point out the influence of political ferment in the late 60's and early 70's on the directions taken by the women's movement. Similarly, in historical perspective, the early Can-adian feminist movement was not immune to currents from Great Britain and the U.S. These interrelations have yet to be investigated in a systematic fashion. It is sufficient to say for now that Matheson's assertion of Canadian nation-alism vis-a-vis the women's movement is a weak answer. I»too, hope that Women in the Canadian Mosaic inspires others to produce books on the questions raised here; but, I also hope that, in the process, future authors and editors will seek out and accept c r i t i c a l commentary in the sp i r i t that i t is offered. "Sister-hood" must recognize the need for s t i f f standards of analysis and must reject the pervasive tendency to see criticism as personal attack. If we cannot be c r i t i c a l of each other's ideas, how will we make any progress towards an understanding of women's role, past and present, in Canadian society? Ellane Silverman AND Margaret J. Osier WOMEN IN SCIENCE: A DISCUSSION James Watson's The Double Hel?x (1968) and Anne Sayre's Rosalind Franklin and DNA (1975) cast new light on the social roles of scientists at work. The Double Helix, describing the process of the d iscovery of the molecular structure of DNA, a discovery which won the Nobel Prize for James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962, challenges the popular conception of science as a rational and dispassionate search for the truth, instead, we find the pro-tagonists engaged in a competitive race, ruthless in their quest for a solution. One of the victims of their single-mindedness was Rosalind Franklin, a member of the King's College, London, research group and a colleague of Maurice Wilkins. The X-ray diffraction data she had gathered on the DNA mole-cule provided a key element in the u l -timate unravelling of the problem. At a crucial juncture in Crick and Watson's model building, Wilkins, unbeknownst to Franklin, provided them with her data. Throughout Watson's account of this in-triguing story, his personal contempt for Franklin is unabashed: he disdained her intelligence and creativity and found her deeply unattractive, c r i t i c i z -ing everything from her appearance to her personality. A perfunctory epilogue, which Watson wrote after Franklin's early death in 1958, is coolly polite but does not change the overwhelming impression given throughout the book of an unimpressive, uninspired, yet aggres-sive and hostile colleague. In response to Watson's book, Anne Sayre, a novelist and a friend of Franklin, attempted to redeem her friend's reputation. Sayre described Franklin's early inclination to science, her training at Cambridge in physical chemistry, her large number of important papers in that f i e l d and her well-developed sense of self-respect. Por-traying a more attractive person than Watson had seen, she ascribed Watson's perceptions of Franklin to his profound-ly hostile and demeaning attitudes to-wards women. The juxtaposition of these two books raises significant questions about the role of women in science and, more generally, the sociology of sc i e n t i f i c research. In a recent review in Atlantis, Thelma McCormack undertook to discuss some of these problems, particu-larly in the light cast by Franklin's career on discrimination against women 

A Reply to Gwen Matheson

https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/download/4930/4128

A Reply to Gwen Matheson

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