[96] Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 423-424 D-425 A-C.
Common life, education, drill, collective life, and duties, for Guardians of both sexes. Views of Plato respecting the female character and aptitudes.
The purpose being, to form good and competent Guardians the same training which will be best for the boys will also be best for the girls. But is it true that women are competent to the function of Guardians? Is the female nature endued with the same aptitudes for such duties as the male? Men will ridicule the suggestion (says Plato) and will maintain the negative. They will say that there are some functions for which men are more competent, others for which women are more competent than men: and that women are unfit for any such duty as that of Guardians. Plato dissents from this opinion altogether. There is no point on which he speaks in terms of more decided conviction. Men and women (he says) can perform this duty conjointly, just as dogs of both sexes take part in guarding the flock. It is not true that the female, by reason of the characteristic properties of sex — parturition and suckling — is disqualified for out-door occupations and restricted to the interior of the house.[97] As in the remaining animals generally, so also in the human race. There is no fundamental difference between the two sexes, other than that of the sexual attributes themselves. From that difference no consequences flow, in respect to aptitude for some occupations, inaptitude for others. There are great individual differences between one woman and another, as there are between one man and another: this woman is peculiarly fit for one task, that woman for something else. But speaking of women generally and collectively, there is not a single profession for which they are peculiarly fit, or more fit than men. Men are superior to women in every thing; in one occupation as well as in another. Yet among both sexes, there are serious individual differences, so that many women, individually estimated, will be superior to many men; no women will equal the best men, but the best women will equal the second-best men, and will be superior to the men below them.[98] Accordingly, in order to obtain the best Guardians, selection must be made from both sexes indiscriminately. For ordinary duties, both will be found equally fit: but the heaviest and most difficult duties, those which require the maximum of competence to perform, will usually devolve upon men.[99]
[97] Plato, Repub. v. p. 451 D.
[98] See this remarkable argument — Republic, v. pp. 453-456 — γυναῖκες μέντοι πολλαὶ πολλῶν ἀνδρῶν βελτίους εἰς πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὅλον ἔχει ὡς σὺ λέγεις. Οὐδὲν ἄρα ἐστὶν ἐπιτήδευμα τῶν πόλιν διοικούντων γυναικὸς διότι γυνή, οὔδ’ ἀνδρὸς διότι ἀνήρ, ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως διεσπαρμέναι αἱ φύσεις ἐν ἀμφοῖν τοῖν ζώοιν, καὶ πάντων μὲν μετέχει γυνὴ ἐπιτηδευμάτων κατὰ φύσιν, πάντων δὲ ἀνήρ· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ ἀσθενέστερον γυνὴ ἀνδρός (p. 455 D). It would appear (from p. 455 C) that those who maintained the special fitness of women for certain occupations and their special unfitness for others, cited, as examples of occupations in which women surpassed men, weaving and cookery. But Plato denies this emphatically as a matter of fact; pronouncing that women were inferior to men (i.e. the best women to the best men) in weaving and cookery no less than in other things. We should have been glad to know what facts were present to his mind as bearing out such an assertion, and what observations were open to him of weaving as performed by males. In Greece, weaving was the occupation of women very generally, whether exclusively or not we can hardly say; in Phœnicia, during the Homeric times, the finest robes are woven by Sidonian women (Iliad vi. 289): in Egypt, on the contrary, it was habitually performed by men, and Herodotus enumerates this as one of the points in which the Egyptians differed from other countries (Herodot. ii. 35; Soph. Œd. Kol. 340, with the Scholia, and the curious citation contained therein from the Βαρβαρικὰ of Nymphodorus). The process of weaving was also conducted in a different manner by the Egyptians. Whether Plato had seen finer webs in Egypt than in Greece we cannot say.
[99] Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A.
His arguments against the ordinary doctrine.
Those who maintain (continues Plato) that because women are different from men, therefore the occupations of the two ought to be different — argue like vexatious disputants who mistake verbal distinctions for real: who do not enquire what is the formal or specific distinction indicated by a name, or whether it has any essential bearing on the matter under discussion.[100] Long-haired men are different from bald-heads: but shall we conclude, that if the former are fit to make shoes, the latter are unfit? Certainly not: for when we inquire into the formal distinction connoted by these words, we find that it has no bearing upon such handicraft processes. So again the formal distinction implied by the terms male, female, in the human race as in other animals, lies altogether in the functions of sex and procreation.[101] Now this has no essential bearing on the occupations of the adult; nor does it confer on the male fitness for one set of occupations — on the female, fitness for another. Each sex is fit for all, but the male is most fit for all: in each sex there are individuals better and worse, and differing one from another in special aptitudes. Men are competent for the duties of Guardians, only on condition of having gone through a complete musical and gymnastical education. Women are competent also, under the like condition; and are equally capable of profiting by the complete education. Moreover, the chiefs must select for those duties the best natural subjects. The total number of such is very limited: and they must select the best that both sexes afford.[102]
[100] Plato, Republic, v. p. 454 A. διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασται κατ’ εἴδη διαιρούμενοι τὸ λεγόμεον ἐπισκοπεῖν, ἀλλὰ κατ’ αὐτὸ τὸ ὄνομα διώκειν τοῦ λεχθέντος τὴν ἐναντίωσιν, ἔριδι, οὐ διαλέκτῳ, πρὸς ἀλλήλους χρώμενοι. 454 B: ἐπεσκεψάμεθα δὲ οὐδ’ ὁπῃοῦν, τί εἶδος τὸ τῆς ἑτέρας τε καὶ τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως, καὶ πρὸς τί τεῖνον ὡριζόμεθα τότε, ὅτε τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα ἄλλῃ φύσει ἄλλα, τῇ δὲ αὐτῇ τὰ αὐτά, ἀπεδίδομεν. Xenophon is entirely opposed to Plato on this point. He maintains emphatically the distinct special aptitudes of man and woman. Œconom. vii. 20-38; compare Euripid. Electra, 74.
[101] Plato, Repub. v. p. 455 C-D.