Oldal 81 [81]
WOMEN IN THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE
Separating womanhood and femininity, categories of identification with
women and feminists
It can be concluded from the subheading that certain authors” separate
femininity and womanhood from each other. The concept of womanhood
refers to biological considerations, sex in our interpretation, while femininity
however refers to womanliness, signifying characteristics that are picked up
during socialisation, or those characteristics considered feminine.”“* Toril Moi
has been able to create the most comprehensive summary as to how the latter
are interwoven or differentiated. Moi believes that no matter how we interpret
femininity (be it the classical, patriarchal or the new, feminist approach), one
thing remains true: that “patriarchalism intends to make us believe there is
something we can view as the essence of womanhood, and that this is what we
can call femininity. Feminists intend to dissolve this belief however; they
posit that women do without a doubt belong to the female gender, this in itself
does not mean that they all become feminine.”
Similarly to a number of other social identities, gender carries a strong
cultural component as well.*“° Moreover, learning the social gender role and
the categorisations attached to it is one of the earliest and strongest forms of
the internalisation of a collective identity. People are much more likely to tend
to categorise and define others based on their gender rather than their race,
age or social status. The foundation of the social gender is discrimination
stemming from physical differences.**° This is exactly why the initial point of
papers examining female identity is that while one could not consider them
to be ahomogenous collective, women do feel some kind of commonality with
their own collective (which has developed upon the shared destiny, the shared
political-ideological minority identity originating from the onset of suffrage
movements). Maria Neményi writes that the situation of women is therefore
similar to other disadvantaged and/or minority groups.*”” Feminism is a po¬
litical discourse, the history of which can be interpreted through the effort to
242 Moi: Feminista irodalomkritika, 240.
2 Chen and associates, when asking women in their survey to name five characteristics that
can be applied to women as a collective, found that those strongly identifying with women
have listed the same traits as those identifying themselves to a lesser degree. Those having a
stronger identification with women have rather defined themselves with positive traits used
to describe women, unlike those having a lower commitment to women as a collective. (Chen
et al., quoted in: Van Breen et al.: A Multiple Identity, 2) This latter phenomenon appeared
in group no. 5 of the groups established by me.
Moi: Feminista irodalomkritika, 239.
245 Van Breen et al.: A Multiple Identity, 2.
24 Glick-Fiske: The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, 492.
247 Acsády: Megtettük-e azt..., 179.
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