THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

complaints. And when complaints are made, he can use every defence that this grey area of social attitudes and innuendoes provides. When it is so hard for a rape victim to prove she has been violated, one can imagine how much harder it is for a victim of the less dramatic forms of violence to prove her case. In such instances, if the offenders are their supervisors, women who resist or complain find themselves burdened with an increased workload, scathing work evaluation, unwarranted reprimands and sheer hostility. So many quit their jobs rather than go to court. When neither alternative seems feasible, they give in, quietly.25 This is the condition of the American female worker, in spite of laws having been passed assigning equal status to both sexes. There are even laws prohibiting harassment of women workers by men, but this has not prevented women being victimized by unprincipled male colleagues and superiors. Their helplessness stems from the fact that they have already left their parents and husbands and need to work for a living. If they left their offices as well, there would be nowhere left for them to go. If the factory or office were not last in the line of social and economic refuges for women, many workplaces would find their female task force becoming rapidly depleted. The state of women workers in western offices is no mere accident, so that legislation can do little to improve the situation. It is such a serious and complex matter that no rule or regulation can effectively deal with it. If we hold that a bird and a bull are equal and bring them into a field to fight a duel on an equal footing, as a result of which the bird gets crushed, can we then stop this cruelty by imposing laws to this effect? Can there be a law to prevent a bird from being trampled on when it encounters a bull? It has to be conceded that nature has cast men in the stronger and women in the weaker and more delicate mold. This accounts for nature making different demands upon men and women, resulting in a convenient division of labor. Any alteration in the division of labor is a deviation from nature: the solution to the ensuing problems lies only in a reversion to nature. They can never be solved while continuing on the path of rebellion from nature. A flower, for instance, finds a prestigious position for itself as part of a bouquet, but if the same flower is placed under a rock, it will get crushed beyond all recognition. The same is true of a woman. In her own natural setting — the home — she is in a position of honour and prestige, and all her qualities shine forth as a result. But the moment she steps out of it to enter a crassly competitive world, she descends from the pedestal on which her family has placed her, and sinks deep into the mire of masculine oppression. Instead of her feminine talents coming into play quite naturally within the domestic framework, and bringing joy to herself and to her nearest and dearest ones, they become the object of the lustful exploitation of total strangers, and sources of frustration and stultification to the woman herself. The humiliations of the office, the shop and the factory are no fair exchange for the honor of family life. Outside the home, a woman feels constantly under siege.