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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 19. 2nd August 1973

Sexual Bargaining

Sexual Bargaining

Germaine Greer points out that the bargaining and competitive element between women in our society is partly due to their lack of self-respect. The competitive element is reflected in phrases like 'she caught her man. Similarly women see their 'techniques of sexual bargaining jeopardised by the disregard of women who make themselves cheap." As Germaine Greer points out 'if women are to be better valued by men they must value themselves more highly."

Some of the features of women's attitudes to each other reinforce the argument that women are a minority group in our society. They judge each other as harshly or more harshly than men judge them, in many cases. Philip Goldberg, a social psychologist, demonstrated the fact that women consider themselves to be inferior in an experiment which presented for assessment the same article to a group of women students under a male authors name for some women and a female author for others. Male authors received more favourable ratings in all occupational fields; statistically significant differences were found in the fields of law, city planning and linguistics. "There is a general bias by women against women and it is strongest in traditionally masculine fields." He said there was a tendency among women to downgrade the work of a professional of their own sex. This was true even in traditionally female fields such as dietetics, nursing and teaching. It seems that women must learn to respect each other as a first step in the fight for equal status in our society.