Why did Prabhupāda say women are less intelligent?
Nowadays, women attain high positions in society. Having this in mind, how can we understand passages where Prabhupāda defines women as less intelligent?
Why did Prabhupāda say women are less intelligent?
Nowadays, women attain high positions as university teachers, doctors, engineers, computer programmers, researchers, and even spiritual leaders. Many other historical examples can also be added from different times and cultures. Having this in mind, how can we understand passages where Prabhupāda defines women as less intelligent?
The main point is that he is not denying that women can be talented; he himself acknowledged the qualities in his lady disciples and encouraged them to use these talents for Kṛṣṇa. When Prabhupāda speaks about women being less intelligent, he refers to intelligence in the Vedic sense, as the ability to discriminate between spirit and matter. In that sense, a female body brings certain challenges, just as a male body brings challenges in other areas. The point is to understand how to surpass these limitations and attain love for Kṛṣṇa.
One of the greatest problems in our spiritual society is that many men have an exploitative attitude towards women, constantly trying to put them down in an effort to assert superiority. This is a tendency that comes from the lower modes and is naturally not an acceptable behavior for anyone, especially from an aspiring transcendentalist. This creates a polarizing situation that divides instead of unifying.
Not many would disagree that, on average, women are physically weaker than most men. A woman can usually carry less weight when going up a flight of stairs, for example. Any man of good character, seeing a lady struggling to bring her groceries up the stairs, would offer to help. Contrary to popular dogma, men and women are different. The question is that people of good character are interested in assisting and cooperating, and not in putting others down. A true transcendentalist will respect everyone and humbly try to help each and every soul to advance in the spiritual path.
What about the specific point of intelligence? In modern society, intelligence is measured according to the capacity of one to acquire technical skills and mundane information and manipulate material energy to obtain sensual satisfaction. Any person who is capable of understanding new technologies, speaking articulately, and using this to enjoy life is called intelligent.
In Vedic culture, however, intelligence means being able to understand spiritual knowledge, control one’s senses, perform austerity, and solve life’s real problems: birth, disease, old age, and death. The learned brāhmana, living in simple conditions, is considered intelligent, while the expert materialist, who may be very proficient in technical knowledge and social skills, but uses them to expand his involvement with matter, is considered foolish. A person living under a bodily conception of life is not considered intelligent according to the Vedic standard.
Kṛṣṇa gives us a direct definition in the Bhagavad-gītā, 13.8-12:
“Humility; pridelessness; nonviolence; tolerance; simplicity; approaching a bona fide spiritual master; cleanliness; steadiness; self-control; renunciation of the objects of sense gratification; absence of false ego; the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease; detachment; freedom from entanglement with children, wife, home and the rest; even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; constant and unalloyed devotion to Me; aspiring to live in a solitary place; detachment from the general mass of people; accepting the importance of self-realization; and philosophical search for the Absolute Truth – all these I declare to be knowledge, and besides this whatever there may be is ignorance.”
Attachment to children, wife, and home means attachment to family life. Although family life is an opportunity to deal with our material desires, live a pious life, and advance, it is still part of this material world, and thus, ultimately, intelligence includes understanding this and learning to perform our duties within the family with a detached, dutiful mindset, as Kṛṣṇa teaches us in the Gītā.
Another definition of intelligence is given in the 18th chapter, when Kṛṣṇa describes intelligence in the mode of goodness, which is real intelligence, illuminated by knowledge:
“O son of Pṛthā, that understanding by which one knows what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, what is binding and what is liberating, is in the mode of goodness.” (Bg 18.30)
Why does this type of intelligence matter? In Bg 3.42, Kṛṣṇa gives the hierarchy of the different layers that cover the conditioned soul: the senses, the mind, and the intelligence. Prabhupāda explains that intelligence must be used to understand the constitutional position of the soul and engage the mind in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Intelligence is thus not just the ability to learn new material skills; it is the instrument by which we can control and direct the mind. The mind and senses pull us everywhere, making us progressively more entangled in material life, and real intelligence is the capacity to check them, concentrate the mind on Kṛṣṇa and engage the senses appropriately. If the intelligence becomes weak, the mind dominates. If the mind dominates, the senses drag us into material life.
We tend to think of intelligence as cleverness, but Kṛṣṇa offers a different concept in the Gītā: intelligence as the sobriety of understanding the difference between spirit and matter. In the beginning of the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa indirectly calls Arjuna a fool because, while speaking learned words, he was lamenting for a temporary, material situation. He then gives the real benchmark:
“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.”
The word used is dhīra, which means an intelligent, learned, sober person, who can see beyond the material illusion. The opposite is the adhīra, the materially agitated, controlled by the senses, absorbed in the body, and prone to material lamentation.
Anyone can be clever, but the intelligence Kṛṣṇa describes in these verses is a more refined and uncommon quality. There is no difference between the soul in a male body or a female body; in both cases, the body is just a temporary condition. A woman can be better than a man at learning languages or speaking in public; she may have gone further in her studies, built a career, and so on, but it is harder for women, on average, to excel in this special set of qualities described by Kṛṣṇa in these verses. It is harder not to be disturbed by heat and cold, honor and dishonor, success and failure, etc. That’s the central point.
Prabhupāda gives this direct definition connected with material enjoyment in his purport to SB 3.23.54:
“Devahūti is lamenting her position. As a woman, she had to love someone. Somehow or other, she came to love Kardama Muni, but without knowing of his spiritual advancement. Kardama Muni could understand Devahūti’s heart. Generally all women desire material enjoyment; they are called less intelligent because they are mostly prone to material enjoyment. Devahūti laments because her husband had given her the best kind of material enjoyment, but she did not know that he was so advanced in spiritual realization.”
When Kardama Muni met Devahūti, he was almost a pure devotee. The only material desire he had left was to have a qualified wife and beget a few children to assist his father, Brahmā, in his mission of populating the universe. During the time Devahūti was serving him in his hermitage, he became purified from this last impediment, and attained love of Godhead. Devahūti was a great woman, and also a great yogī. However, her desire was still directed toward family life and material fulfillment. As such, she asked instead for him to give her a child (SB 3.23.10).
Kardama Muni then created the flying palace, took her on a trip through the celestial regions of Bhū-mandala, and gave her nine daughters and one son. Later, when he was about to leave to take sannyāsa, she lamented spending her time with him enjoying materially, instead of benefiting from his spiritual realization. This is the context of Prabhupāda mentioning that women are less intelligent for being more inclined to material enjoyment. Even a well-qualified woman like Devahūti may still preserve this tendency.
Many women are quite sharp intellectually, more than most men; the point is that often this intelligence is used to better enjoy their senses instead of spiritual realization. However, context is also important. When we say that a person is more intelligent or less intelligent, we are making a comparison with someone else. So, what about the men?
Most men in Kali-yuga are also inclined to material enjoyment, and thus also less intelligent. In fact, men in Kali-yuga are put together with the śūdras, and this happens for the same reason: more often than not, they also lack the intelligence to inquire about spiritual topics, preferring instead to pass their lives absorbed in material subjects. Many men have no better goal in life than to drink beer and watch football games.
“Less intelligent” is thus a comparison with men who come to control their senses, attaining the qualification of brāhmanas and Vaiṣnavas. That’s why Śrīla Prabhupāda often said that his lady disciples had brains with “64 ounces,” giving the idea that he considered them as intelligent as their spiritual godbrothers since both were properly using their intelligence to understand Kṛṣṇa.
Ordinary ladies who are interested in just enjoying life are considered less intelligent. Vaiṣṇavīs, who engage their senses in the service of Kṛṣṇa are a separate category. The broader meaning is that a woman should transcend the conditioned nature of a sense enjoyer and realize her position as a pure soul. A man may be born a śūdra, but should not remain a śūdra. Similarly, a woman should progress on the path of spiritual realization, realizing the true nature of this world and the goal of life.
A separate point is that women, in general, are also more emotional than men, and this can also cloud one’s judgement. In the Vedic framework, intelligence means the faculty that governs the mind and senses. Emotion belongs largely to the field of the mind; therefore, when the emotional impulse is strong and not governed by a purified intelligence, it can cloud our discrimination. This applies to both men and women, but Prabhupāda presents feminine nature as softer and more prone to be influenced by emotions. Material emotions are useful in many circumstances. They help to prevent us from falling into impersonalism and can be connected with the service of Kṛṣṇa, but at the same time, they create challenges.
On SB 1.7.42, Prabhupāda makes the point that the emotional nature can cloud the judgement of even very elevated women. In the passage, Aśvatthāmā had just killed the five sons of the Pandavas in an extremely treacherous way, murdering them during their sleep. He had thus fallen from his brāhminical position and was thus eligible to be punished. Because of her mild nature, however, Draupadī, could not avoid offering him respect due to his birth as a brāhmana. She asked for Aśvatthāmā to be released, despite his crimes, and this gave him the opportunity to try to kill Parīkṣit in the womb using a brahmāstra. It does not mean men never make mistakes, but a more emotional nature is surely a factor.
Raw emotion coming from the mind falls within the category of material attachment: fear, euphoria, lamentation, affection, attraction, rejection, grief, sentimentality.
The negative side of these emotions is that they make our material existence feel more intense, and make us more prone to being affected by its ups and downs. The positive is that these emotions can be spiritualized when properly engaged. In this case, they can be transformed into compassion, motherly affection, tenderness toward others, concern, and so on. These spiritualized emotions can then be used in the service to Kṛṣṇa.
In general, it is more difficult for women to regulate their emotions through philosophical introspection alone. It is possible, but the whirlwind of the mind makes the task harder, especially if the material situation is not completely stable. If a woman has the good fortune of being under the care of a mature and affectionate man, the peaceful environment makes the task much easier.
All of this does not mean that women cannot ascend to the highest levels, even in terms of renunciation, asceticism, and other spiritual qualities. We have such examples in our culture, as in the case of Jāhnavā Mātā and Gangāmatā; the point is that it is less common, and in many cases not even recommended.
That’s why the Vedic model considers it advantageous for a woman to be under the protection of a qualified man, who has learned to control his senses and offers good spiritual example and emotional stability, balancing the feminine emotional nature. Nowadays, of course, such men are rare, and that’s the center of the problem, but here we are speaking about a principle. If a responsible and self-controlled man is available, that’s an advantageous position. If not, one has to see what to do based on the circumstances.
We should, however, not take an additional challenge as incapacity. Every human has the potential for developing pure love of Godhead; the question is just how to navigate the different challenges we face.
This brings us to yet another perspective: women who are able to surpass material limitations and become genuinely advanced spiritually should be respected, for their achievement in controlling their senses is proportionally even greater than in the case of men.
Prabhupāda’s statements should not be used by men to feel superior. On the opposite, should be a reason to be more serious in the spiritual process. A woman could use passages about women being more prone to sense gratification to justify weakness, but a man has no excuse. Apart from that, most men are themselves absorbed in bodily consciousness and have not yet developed the intelligence described by Kṛṣṇa. If a woman rises above bodily attachment, learns to control her senses, and dedicates herself to Kṛṣṇa, she becomes more intelligent than any ordinary man. Such women are not a contradiction to Prabhupāda’s teachings; they are examples of his success in raising us beyond bodily limitations.
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