The ethical concerns of treating one gender as more valuable than the other are obvious to anyone. Nevertheless, in any discussion when I mention how chivalry is detrimental to women, people listen much more closely and are much more likely to agree.

By holding men to a higher standard of behavior than women, you are essentially programming women to become less well behaved, less mature and less accountable. Chivalry also comes with the inherent suggestion that women are less capable than men, that they need help (because they’re women) and that they are more fragile and require more protection. While nobody disputes that women are physically weaker than men, the typical manifestations of chivalrous behavior don’t enter that difference at all. In other words, holding a door for a woman is hardly necessary. So anyone who justifies chivalry by the fact that women are weaker is suggesting that they can’t even open a door (if that particular one is on their list).

In this way, chivalry infantilizes women meaning that it treats them like children and on a social scale it pushes the female gender into a position of less accountability and less competence and, more importantly, less independence. This doesn’t agree well with individual freedom and gender equality by any definition.

Many women appreciate chivalry and actually want to take a more child like role in society as well as in the family. This is everyone’s personal choice and, although I have no understanding for it, I still wouldn’t push my way onto others. The problems arise when women face discrimination as a result of chivalry. In the work place, it might result in women being less likely to be given responsibility and thus give them less opportunities to advance.This is particularly prominent in areas like the armed forces, police or rescue services where protecting, rescuing and saving lives is the principal goal.



On the other side is how women see themselves and how the world relates to them. Very often we hear women, who enter a competitive male dominated field, complaining that men are conspiring against them or that they’re not accepted by the men as peers. Well perhaps many of them are simply experiencing the absence of chivalry for the first time. Many women have received special treatment from men all their lives and think of it as normal. They only notice when it suddenly stops and it will naturally seem like unfair treatment to them – even if it isn’t. So those particular women want to be treated by the men just as the men treat each other. But what they don’t know is that [chivalrous] men are a lot less forgiving towards each other – especially when they’re in competition and being on the receiving end of that male competitive behavior will, no doubt, come as a shock to any woman who’s used to the special treatment that chivalry imposes on her. I’m not saying that there never is the problem of men giving women a hard time when they enter a male dominated field, but you can be sure that chivalry does nothing to prepare women for it and actually denies them the chance to experience life on equal terms with men.