I'd only like to add that NDawg's perceptions are dead on the money; and the response to her astute observations from other females on the thread is troubling, to say the least.
As I mentioned in my original theory, society pits females against each other by devaluing them as they mature, unlike men, who accrue value.
In this atmosphere, women's lives become a desperate and ultimately futile struggle to maintain their positions in society, to hold on to their status, their value.
However, when the primary indicators of a woman's value are beauty and fertility (aka, "youth"), women are ultimately expendable, interchangable, and can be easily replaced when they lose these so-called "assets", with one of the millions of other women in the world who possess these same "assets", who are attractive and capable of bearing children.
A person only has real value if their assets- their virtues- are not something they will quickly and inevitably outgrow (ie, youthful looks and fertility, both of which are already in decline by the time a woman graduates college and grows her wisdom teeth).
A person should be valued for what they do, and for who they are inside; their minds, their personal strength, their wit, cleverness and acumen, their diligence and conscientiousness, their generosity of spirit, their capacity to love others, the hard-earned wisdom they've accumulated over years of living.
These things increase over time.
A society that values these qualities in women (as it does in men) is a society that truly values women as human beings.
In such a society, women would not have to constantly compete with each other for "status"- the prettiest, the sexiest, the best mother, the best wife, the most feminine- because the qualities they would be valued for would be unique to them (unlike physical attractiveness, unlike fertility, unlike conventional "femininity"), and so they could not be easily replaced.
And the qualities they would be valued for would be lasting qualities that increased as they matured and aged, so they would not be routinely displaced.
Society's perception of females as being primarily valuable and utile as mothers or as sex objects is hurtful to women as they age, and lose both their superficial "beauty" and ultimately, their fertility as well.
By the time women approach middle age (the age, coincidentally, that men are presumed to be entering their prime, seasoned and experienced, suited to running a company or a nation in a way that younger men are not), their value to society has decreased to nil.
Although biological sex is an undeniable reality, gender roles are a social construct. And not a very healthy one, I don't think, for most women.
I will concede that they are fine for some (those who claim to like traditional prescribed gender roles and feel comfortable in them).
But they are overly constricting for those who do not wish to be defined by their (ever-diminishing) looks and fertility.
Some people wish to be seen as people first, men and women second (or third, or fourth, or tenth, or...).
Some people wish to be defined by what they believe and what they do, not by who they are in relation to others (mother, wife, girlfriend) or by which type of genitalia they happen to be sporting.
Allow us that.
Allow us to recluse ourselves from your "competition", from your ranking system, your judgement.
I don't perceive looks or fertility as indicators of human value. Don't tell me I must.
My value system is not yours.
And this goes for other people as well.
Our ideas of parenting, of ethics, of morality, of humanity, are obviously irreconcilably different.
In my view, a woman has no obligation to bear children simply because she is a woman, simply because she is capable of doing so.
In my view, a woman's ability or inability, inclination or disinclination to carry a pregnancy to term indicates absolutely nothing about her value as a human being, as a woman, or even as a mother to her existing children.
Can you possibly understand this?
The things you value aren't things that I value.
This being the case, why not just recluse me (and all others who do not share your values or your belief in prescribed gender roles, in women's biological "duties" or obligations)?
You could, for instance, decide something like: "I believe that women have certain biological duties and obligations. Fulfilling these duties is what gives women value. Terminating a pregnancy is something I could never do, because it would compromise my perception of myself; it would devalue me as a woman. It would cause me to lose my self esteem and become worthless, in my own eyes as well as in the rest of society's. But if another woman does not feel compromised or devalued by terminating an unwanted pregnancy, if it does not cause her to lose her self-esteem or become worthless in her own eyes, and if she doesn't care that society at large deems her to be "immoral" and worthless... then why stop her? Why even judge her? What's it to me?"
This is called tolerance.
It's one of those lasting qualities I was talking about, one that I value in myself and in others.