From “Abundant Lives: A Progressive Christian Ethic of Flourishing” by Amanda Udis-Kessler
The intellectual, cultural, artistic, and moral creativity of men has long been far more highly valued than that of women, such that men have been encouraged in ways that women have not been, though this situation is changing. Men have been provided with access to the resources, experiences, and opportunities that allowed them to develop their ideas and create their work, while women have had far less access to those resources, opportunities, and experiences. Men have been encouraged to use their bodies in a range of ways not accessible to women; sports, for example, has been a male domain for most of its history. As a result, in what sociologists would call a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton 1948), men’s success has been taken as evidence of their greater capabilities while pundits have asked why there were no great women artists (Nochlin 2015), astronomers, athletes, or anthropologists. It is still more common to consider men brilliant and to expect great things of them (Gajewski 2020). These are just some of the concrete ways in which society supports the flourishing of men more than the flourishing of women.