The Professional Woman's Dilemma: Love and/or Power

I want to address an age-old dilemma for women: love and/or power, a dilemma which might just as easily be called “ancient myths and stereotypes.” The first myth concerns two kinds of women: Venus, the goddess of love, full of gaiety and charm, interested only in herself, arose out of the sea foam, enchanting men with her sensual beauty; Minerva, goddess of wisdom, sprang from Jupiter's brain fully formed-as a leader of armies and a defender of the city (always fighting on the side of justice), she was, indeed, her father's daughter. She exerted great influence and power, but she never married nor presumably had any love affairs. A third type of woman is exemplified by Juno, Jupiter's wife. She had no source of power within herself but exerted great power over her powerful husband and thus had power secondhand, so to speak, achieving success through association with a man.

At least the Romans recognized that women could have characteristics usually attributed to men, although they could not condense Venus and Minerva into a single woman combining both sets of traits. Other cultures did not permit even this. Male/female stereotypes have been passed down through the ages to a greater or lesser degree. Women are emotional, nurturing, dependent, passive! These myths have been handed down to the present day. For illustrative purposes, I would like to quote from a 1927 Century Magazine article by Dr. Louis Bisch, nerve specialist. It is titled “Are Women Inferior?” (2):

Undoubtedly on the purely intellectual side-pure, mind you-women's capacities are as good as a man's. [But] what are these emotional trends? Unquestionably they can be summed up in one word: Maternity. Take intuition, for instance.

This paper was presented at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center Symposium “The Public and The Private Woman,” January 21, 1984, New York.

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Women depend more upon that faculty than upon any other. With it she makes decisions, solves problems, evaluates individuals and situations. A f