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WOMEN IN THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE
”288 In¬
i.e. to those aspects of it from which he/she derives some satisfaction.
terestingly, a certain attitude can be observed by the representatives of the
alternative type, which was detailed by Tajfel with regards to the intergroup
behaviour in general, despite belonging to the cluster of women being funda¬
mentally different from the groups he was researching. Still, an enhanced
accent regarding the positive differentness of women (as opposed to the other
types) is equally present in this model as well.
There is no equality, as men cannot bear children [...] this distinction is thus always
in favour of women. (Subject no. 29, natural sciences)
We can see that gender-associated attributes can be indicators of their
social roles as well, thereby appointing the position of an individual. After
analysing the conversations and following the logic of the interviewees present
in this group, some questions can be raised. Namely: How and on what foun¬
dation have the artificial signifiers of social gender and the characteristics
rooted in biological gender shaped into attributes, and how can the manly¬
womanly attitudes be categorised? How can we state that a particular social
action, performance, characteristic is manly and/or womanly? Why is creation
“masculine”, if biology has determined the woman to be the creator (the one
giving life), and why does the man not turn “feminine” by the act of creation?
These questions appear in a similar manner in the modern theory of sense.
“And because this is a type of question — let’s call it historical still - whose
conception, formation, gestation, labour, we can today only glimpse. And I say
these words with my eyes turned, certainly, towards the operations of child¬
birth.”?* These problems are thereby touching onto the fields of narratives and
linguistic discrimination. We could consider the following quotation: “Cer¬
tainly metaphors of literary maternity predominated in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries [...] Describing Thackeray’s plan for Henry Esmond, for
example, Douglas Jerrold jovially remarked, ‘You have heard, I suppose, that
Thackeray is big with twenty parts, and unless he is wrong in his time, expects
the first installment at Christmas’.”?*°
The interpretations of the interviewees allow us to conclude that nature and
society are separated in their minds, and, according to their reading, the
woman is the creator in nature — identified with family — while in society, the
public sphere, the task of creation falls onto the man. Consequently, the real
288 Tajfel, H.: Csoportközi viselkedés, társadalmi összehasonlítás és társadalmi változás, in
Lengyel, Zs. (ed.): Szociálpszichológia, Budapest, Osiris, 1997, n.d.
289 Derrida, J.: A struktúra, a jel és a játék az embertudományok diszkurzusában, Helikon. Vol.
40, No. 1-2, 1994, 34.
290 Jerrold-Tillotson, guoted by Showalter, E.: Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, Critical
Inguiry Vol. 8, No. 2, Writing and Sexual Difference, Winter, 1981, 188.
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