Claim. Because rights are prerequisites for accomplishing one’s life task and men and women have physiologically different life tasks, perfect equality of rights between men and women is impossible; the equality that must absolutely be realized is equality of love, personality, and joy, not equality of rights.
Elaboration. Lee argues that men’s musculature, narrow hips, and broad shoulders fit them for ‘external activities’ requiring strength, while women’s broader hips, developed breasts, and narrower shoulders fit them for childbearing and family-raising (Divine Principle Way of Order and Equality). Since rights serve life tasks and life tasks differ, equality of rights cannot be perfect: ‘a man cannot give birth to a child, nor can his breast feed a baby, and a woman cannot carry out the power-requiring tasks which a man is able to.’ Lee invokes the proverb ‘the crow which tries to imitate a cormorant will be drowned.’
The diagnosis of post-WWII feminism: legal guarantees of equality between men and women have produced ‘discord between husband and wife’ and ‘family breakdown’ because the underlying impossibility of perfect rights-equality was ignored. The corrective is to redirect equality language toward equality of love and personality: when husband and wife give and receive God’s love, ‘any sense of discrimination or inequality will completely disappear.’
Lee then partially concedes external equality: a woman can hold the same social position as a man — school principal, company president — not because men and women are interchangeable but because schools and companies are extensions of family, and a woman occupies such positions as ‘mother of the school’ or ‘mother of the company.’ Particularly for world peace, women should take the lead because ‘women are peaceful by nature’ and men are ‘strong and aggressive by nature.’
This is the position most likely to provoke strong external pushback. It rests on (i) physiological essentialism about life tasks, (ii) the assumption that legal equality caused family breakdown rather than other social factors, and (iii) gender-essentialist temperament claims. Sympathetic readers will note that Lee does affirm equality of personality and full female participation in leadership; critics will note that the framework still subordinates female agency to a maternal frame. Worth a thread once a counter atomic on gender equality exists.
See also. divine-principle-equality-is-equality-of-love-through-order, man-yang-substantial-woman-yin-substantial, complementarity-as-deeper-resemblance