Technological development can cancel out women’s physical disadvantage relative to men

Evidence

In the past, when it was a question of carrying heavy clubs and of keeping wild beasts at bay, woman’s physical weakness constituted a flagrant inferiority: if the instrument requires slightly more strength than the woman can muster, it is enough to make her seem radically powerless. But on the other hand, technical developments can cancel out the muscular inequality separating man and woman: abundance only creates superiority relative to a need; having too much is not better than having enough. Thus operating many modern machines requires only a part of masculine resources; if the necessary minimum is not superior to woman’s capacities, she becomes man’s work equal. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 142

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure piece — human capability as a function of tools, not bodies. — connects to: Technology can increase human weakness even as it increases power — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 822; Modern science distributes benefits to the advantaged and costs to the disadvantaged; The machine cancelled physical-force differences, enabling women’s return to productive work — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 258
• SEED: Angle: technology is the great equalizer/canceler of embodied difference — a lens on feminist materialism and contemporary debates about bodily equality.

Broader Connections

• The machine cancelled physical-force differences, enabling women’s return to productive work #exemplifies (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 258
• Technology can increase human weakness even as it increases power #qualifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 822
• Modern science distributes benefits to the advantaged and costs to the disadvantaged #complicates (0.70)