Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 2 The Weber's private, sex defined values.
48
for the equal rights of women; if woman is physically weaker than man, this does not justify
man's refusal to grant her civil and personal rights. On the contrary, woman's natural
weakness - her lack of the male aggressive and sexual drives - can be made to serve the
general interest of humanity; equal rights for women will have a humanizing effect on
society.
Weber-Schnitger's historical argument can be summarized as a combination of the pre-
Bachofen view of the family as having existed in the same form since time out of mind and
Hobbes' theory on the warlike origins of society.
79
According to her in pre-historical times the
'right of the strongest' ruled; for this reason the oppression of women by men who were
physically strong was heaviest in that period. Only the growth of law, in particular law
concerning marriage, has given women some protection; developing civilization has created
ideals concerning the relation between the sexes as moral equals which will have to be
realized in the future. The natural differences between the sexes, though, still have to be
recognized; they will for instance prevent full economic equality between them. According to
Weber-Schnitger women who are 'periodically tied through their sexual functions' will never
be able to be equal competitors in the labor market
80
; furthermore the 'sexual vanity'
('Geschlechtseitelkeit') of men will cause them to refuse to work under the direction of
women.
81
Weber-Schnitger's views corresponded with those of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine;
82
both wanted to protect marriage and motherhood against feminism; both also claimed a right
to paid labor in order to reinforce woman's position in marriage and so to reform it (according
to Weber-Schnitger woman's nature could unfold only in a relation of spiritual equality).
Weber-Schnitger's central criticism of feminist and vulgar-socialist theories is directed toward
the supposed connection between private property and the oppression of women, thus
towards the socialist aspects of Engels' theory; she saw the theory of patriarchy as victorious
over an original matriarchy primarily as a 'vulgar-socialist' construction; it connected private
property, monogamy and oppression of women, which real scientists should break into its
component parts.
83
between man and woman are not total; they share in 'das allgemeine Menschlichen' (Van Vucht Tijssen (1987) p.
11, id. (1988) p. 91; Schnitger (1919) p. 132-3, see also EuM p. 300); therefore the humanity of men would be
furthered if they would come to share the caring tasks of women.
79
See concerning the 17th century theorists of the original social contract Pateman (1988), p. 44 ff. (Hobbes) and
p. 51 on Pufendorf: 'The assumption is that a woman a l w a y s agrees to subordinate herself as a wife, because
of the man's degree of superior strength, and the fact that the man 'enjoys the superiority of his sex'. Locke uses
the same words: the man is 'the abler and the stronger', see Elshtain (1981), p. 124; his theory, however, is
based on a presumed development 'from status to contract' (see Elshtain p. 118, Pateman p. 9) which Weber
repudiated explicitly (see Ch. 3, 4).
80
EuM p. 8; see also p. 86, 271 (2 x), 390, 391, 394.
81
EuM p. 394.
82
According to Van der Vucht Thyssen (1987) p. 10 this belief led in the BDF to an identification of motherhood
and emancipation, which destroyed feminism; see for the connections between the BDF and national-socialism
Evans (1976) and Koonz (1987).
83
She criticized any idealizing of the past; she particularly criticized any conservative glorification of a 'germanic
past' where marriage would have had such an extraordinary profoundness ('Innigkeit'), EuM p. 237.
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