WOMEN’S EQUALITY
WOMEN’S EQUALITY

THE FINAL REDEMPTION

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to correct a historical error, one that I will argue is at the heart of the contemporary feminist movement: the ancient claim, grounded in a flawed understanding of the reproductive act, that woman is inferior to man. I will show that the lineage of this can be traced as far back as the pre-Socratic philosophers, finally finding its earliest concrete expression in a claim most have either dismissed, forgotten, or never heard: Aristotle’s argument that women are merely “malformed males” and are therefore “inferior to man”. The theory found support in the first century with a historical interpretation of Genesis 2:18-23, traceable in particular to the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo (BC 13-AD 54). Philo’s own theory about woman echoed that of Aristotle’s; his legacy includes the vague feeling that Scripture itself declares that, since woman is created after man, she is necessarily subservient to him. She becomes, as it were, the “second sex”. The combination of Aristotle and Philo proved too persuasive even for the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas and the theory accelerated and then spread through the university system inaugurated during the Middle Ages, subsequently informing the social structures and norms of Western civilization, going mostly unchallenged throughout human history, silently persisting even into the present time. This error represents what can be called a chronic “wound” in our intellectual tradition. And it is a wound that must be healed. I argue that the antidote is to correct this account and that it can be defeated on its own terms. Through the lens of Hebraic and Aristotelian-Thomistic anthropology, and building on the insights of St. John Paul II, I provide a robust, philosophically and theologically grounded account of man and woman from within the Catholic exegetical tradition, showing that man and woman are both equally human, equally endowed with intellect, will, and freedom while at the same time reflecting two different ways of being in the world.

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