Let us look minutely at these phrases ` Allah has given the...

Let us look minutely at these phrases ` Allah has given the one more than the other .”: This phrase refers to the natural strength of man in comparison to woman. Man and Woman: Physical Differences It has been mentioned earlier that there are certain important anatomical and physical differences between man and woman, which equip them for different roles in procreation. To these major differences can be added other secondary ones involving skeletal and muscular variations.

Reference to any physiology book will show that the regulation for the maintenance of these differences is largely a chemical one: the hormones (the name given to the chemicals which animals and human beings produce to regulate procreative and other functions) produce physical and functional differences.

It can also be shown scientifically that these hormones produce distinct emotional effects and they are agents which cause emotional changes such as those seen in women before and after child-birth. It should be mentioned here that it is the hormones which produce the marked general difference between man and woman, described earlier, which make the latter more suited to the task of rearing young children, and the former better able to withstand the rigours of competitive existence.

Farid Wajdi Afandi quotes an authority to the effect that the psychology of a woman is nearer to that of a child. A child will start crying if confronted with an unpleasant situation; and will start jumping and merry-making when happy. Just the same is the case with woman who, in comparison to man, is more affected by such feeling. Allah has made woman more sensitive than man because it is more in keeping with the role for which she has been created, i.e., Motherhood.

Pointing to this fact Kenneth Walker writes in The Physiology of Sex : [^1] In order that she may succeed in the world to which she rightly belongs, woman has been equipped with a greater sensitiveness to effective stimulus than has a man. She sees life through her feelings, and emotionally reaches to many a truth to which a man, working laboriously through the medium of his reason, remains permanently blind.

The fact that in the sphere of intellectual abstraction she is at a disadvantage is no sign of inferiority, for it is no exaggeration to say that a man's judgment is as often warped as it is helped by this intellect.