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Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 9 No. 5 November 2002

From Orgasms to Organizations:

Maslow, Women's Sexuality and the
Gendered Foundations of the Needs
Hierarchy
Dallas Cullen* and Lise Gotell1

One of the most enduring theories in management is Abraham Maslow's

hierarchy of needs, in that its basic concepts, such as the needs for self-
esteem and self-actualization, are accepted without question. This
adoption of Maslow's theory has generally occurred without an examin-
ation of its empirical basis, which was his own 1930s' study of the
relationship between self-esteem and sexual behaviour in young college
women. In this article, we locate Maslow's study of women's sexuality in
the sexological research of his time, and contrast it with a study
undertaken by Katharine Davis in 1929. These two studies present very
divergent pictures of women's sexuality. We argue that Maslow's
portrayal, which is subsequently embedded in the needs hierarchy, has
implications for our understanding of dominance and subordination in
organizations, because implicit in Maslow's portrayal is an assertion of
the naturalness of female submission and the eroticization of male
dominance.

Keywords: motivation theory, sexuality, sexology, needs hierarchy, Maslow

Introduction

O ne of the most enduring theories in management is Abraham Maslow's

(1943) hierarchy of needs. Despite its lack of empirical evidence (e.g.
Mitchell and Moudgill, 1976; Wahba and Bridwell, 1976), the hierarchy both
stands alone as a theory of motivation and underlies other theories such as

Address for correspondence: * Dallas Cullen, Women's Studies Program, 13±15 HM

Tory Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4, e-mail: dallas.
[email protected]

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538 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Porter and Lawler's (1968) version of expectancy theory to such an extent

that its basic concepts, such as the needs for self-esteem and self-
actualization, are accepted without question and constituted as universal.
This adoption of Maslow's theory has generally occurred without an
examination of its empirical basis, which was his own 1930s' study of the
relationship between self-esteem and sexual behaviour in young college
women.
Maslow's study, according to his biographer (Hoffman, 1988, pp. 75±6),
was innovative in American sexological research because it relied on
lengthy personal interviews with `normal' subjects. The small number of
previous studies had relied either on written questionnaires or interviews
with people who could not be considered representative of the population at
large because, for example, they were in psychoanalysis at the time. In this
article, we locate Maslow's study of women's sexuality in the sexological
research of his time, and contrast it with a study undertaken by Katharine
Davis in 1929, a study that Maslow knew of but dismissed (Maslow, 1942,
p. 267). These two studies present very divergent pictures of women's
sexuality. We would argue that Maslow's portrayal, which is subsequently
embedded in the needs hierarchy, has implications for our understanding of
dominance and subordination in organizations. Implicit in Maslow's
portrayal is an assertion of the naturalness of female submission and the
eroticization of male dominance and this assertion, in turn, forms the
gendered foundation of the needs hierarchy.

Maslow and Davis within inter-war sexology

Developments in sexological research in inter-war America were framed by
intense cultural anxieties about gender roles. In the first thirty years of the
twentieth century, a rapid expansion of the wage labour system and
urbanization had created a context for increasing numbers of working-class
women to live outside the heterosexual family. The newly-won right to
education also produced opportunities for employment and independence
among white, middle-class women. It has been estimated that from the
1870s through the 1920s between 40 to 60% of women college graduates
remained single, at a time when 90% of all American women married
(Smith-Rosenberg, 1985, p. 253). With the rise of the economically inde-
pendent middle-class woman came the solidification of female support
networks and friendships (ibid). In addition, some feminists had begun to
politicize sexuality and articulate an explicit resistance to the system of
hetero-relations through advocating `spinsterhood' (Jackson, 1994, p. 14). As
Jackson (ibid, p. 23) contends, spinsters were a significant force in early
twentieth-century feminism, embodying `female sexual autonomy' and
challenging in both their words and lives the heterosexual imperative that a

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 539

woman without a man is sexually incomplete. The `New Woman',

unmarried, educated and economically independent, came to represent
these feminist challenges and the anxieties they produced. The New Woman
as cultural symbol was `transposed into a sexually freighted metaphor for
social disorder', expressing the transgression of gender roles and erosion of
heterosexual marriage (Smith-Rosenberg, 1985, p. 246).
According to feminist critics such as Jackson (1994) and Faderman (1991),
early twentieth-century sexology was a response to this threat, through a
rearticulation of normative heterosexuality and a pathologization of love
between women. Sexology research provided a new inducement for women
to becomes wives and mothers `by holding out the promise, not of ``equal
rights'', but ``erotic rights''; in other words, sexual pleasure, in a form
defined and controlled by men, and a form which eroticized male domin-
ance and female submission' (Jackson, 1994, p. 123).
This broad critique of sexology as inherently antifeminist fails to appre-
ciate the nuances and internal contradictions of sexological texts that could
be at once disempowering and empowering for women. Sexology as an
endeavour reflected the shift away from moral and religious regulation and
embodied the modernist belief that, through science, the sexual could be
revealed and social problems addressed. This shift, emerging in the nine-
teenth century, had the effect of constituting a conception of sexuality as
identity Ð that is elaboration of fixed and bounded identity categories
rooted biologically and/or psychologically and the concomitant hardening
of the heterosexual/homosexual binary. Broadly, as Foucault contends, the
medico-scientific discourse of sexuality constituted a new technology of
power deployed by the bourgeoisie to extend their influence through
increasingly elaborate definitions of `normalcy' and `perversion' (Foucault,
1990; Francis, 1998, p. 87). But the scientific study of sexuality could be
harnessed for vastly divergent objectives, including the decriminalization of
homosexuality and the loosening of repressive norms around autoeroticism
and birth control, on the one hand, and promotion of eugenics and the
imperatives of heterosexuality on the other. While recognizing how sexology
rooted gender roles in nature and tended to reinforce heteropatriarchal
norms, the construction of sexology as `backlash' ignores significant differ-
ences between sexologists and shifts in individual sexologists' theoretical
perspectives (Bland and Doan, 1998, p. 4).
If it is sweeping and dismissive to cast all of early twentieth-century
sexology as straightforwardly antifeminist, this interpretation does seem to
capture the thrust and implications of Maslow's sexuality study. In contrast
to the volumes of work on sexuality published over decades by researchers
such as Havelock Ellis, Maslow's publications are confined to a few articles,
the central one being `Self-esteem (dominance-feeling) and sexuality in
women' (1942). If contradictory and confusing, especially in attempting to
account for the relative influence of biological and cultural influences, his

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540 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

sexual narrative is coherent. Maslow explicitly attempts to reconstitute

normative heterosexuality, to erase the challenge of lesbianism and to
eroticize and sexualize male dominance. Given that his research subjects
were American college women, Maslow's study represents a very thinly
veiled attempt to tame the renegade figure of the New Woman.
The Davis (1929) study also represents an effort to interrogate the New
Woman; indeed, the majority of her sample of 2200 married and unmarried
woman were college graduates. This study, like that of Maslow, must also
be set within a context and a set of concerns, in particular a social reform
agenda whose aim was to cast the objective light of science on `normal'
women's sexuality in order to better understand and control social problems
related to `sexual deviancy'. Nevertheless, even if the Davis study sets out to
elaborate heterosexual normalcy, it resists the pathologizing thrust that so
dominates Maslow's writings. The Davis study revealed extremely high
rates of same-sex desire and behaviour among unmarried college women,
and the presentation of her findings, while focused upon quantitative data,
also included case studies through which Davis' subjects could and did
construct their own sexual narratives, some that were explicitly narratives of
resistance to heterosexual normalcy.

Studying the New Woman's sexuality: Maslow and Davis

Maslow's sex study was part of his life-long attempt to understand the
fraught nature of the relationship between women and men. He wrote in his
journal in 1960 that, since his graduate school days, he had been trying to
determine
the 2-fold motivation of women (1) to dominate the man, but (2) then to
have contempt for him, go frigid, manipulative, castrating, and (3) secretly
to keep on yearning for a man stronger than herself to compel her respect,
& to be unhappy, & [sexually] unfulfilled & to feel unfeminine so long as
she doesn't have such a man. (Lowry, 1982, p. 28)
He speculated that this often unsatisfied female quest for a sufficiently
dominant man was born out of a series of demographic changes in the
United States, causing `the average dominance level of women . . . to [rise]
steadily' (ibid). Here Maslow is clearly identifying increases in women's
education and labour force participation as the fundamental cause of a
crisis in heterosexuality. This explicit concern with the New Woman frames
his interest in sexuality and dominance.
At the time of his sexuality studies, he observed that, although his interest
was the relationship between dominance, sexual and social behaviours in
humans, his initial attempt to study this relationship in people had been a
`failure', both because of the `complexity of the problem', and because his

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 541

`own personality and social norms acted like a sieve' (Maslow, 1937a,
p. 488). He therefore turned to animal studies, more specifically, controlled
observation and experiments with laboratory or zoo-housed monkeys and
apes, which enabled him to develop `hypotheses to be tested, methods to be
used, and in general a specific objective criterion or scale by which to judge
human behaviour' (ibid, p. 489). Primate sexuality became, for him, a mirror
for studying human sexuality, because, as he contended, `human sexuality
is almost exactly like primate sexuality' (Maslow, 1942, p. 291). Maslow
carried out this work as the research assistant to, and first doctoral student
of, Harry Harlow, who is best known for his studies of the sexual and social
inadequacies of monkeys raised by surrogate mothers (e.g. Harlow, 1974).
Over time, Maslow became fascinated with what appeared to him as the
monkeys' continual sexual activity, activity in which biological sex differ-
ences appeared to have no meaning, activity that seemed to follow `no fixed
principles', had `no discernible order', and was `astonishing for its fre-
quency' (Maslow, 1936a, p. 310). Put more succinctly, `the screwing . . . went
on all the time' (Wilson, 1972, p. 154, ellipsis in original). Since the monkeys
also seemed to continually struggle to exert dominance over one another, his
research focused on the relationship between the two types of behaviour
(see Cullen, 1997 for a detailed critique of Maslow's monkey studies).
From this research he concluded that there was a continuum of sexual
behaviour, one end of which was behaviour motivated by `sexual drive',
and the other of which was that motivated by `dominance drive' (Maslow,
1936a, p. 319). The ability to exert dominance was not so much dependent
on factors such as the size, physical strength or sex, as it was on `social
attitudes, attitudes of aggressiveness, confidence or cockiness' (Maslow and
Flanzbaum, 1936, p. 305). Applying this concept to humans, if social atti-
tudes determined one monkey's ability to dominate another, social attitudes
should also determine one human's ability to dominate another. At first,
Maslow labelled this attitude `dominance-feeling', but later renamed it `self-
esteem', in order to avoid the power-seeking connotation of `dominance-
feeling' (1942, p. 269). Maslow's sexology studies were thus an attempt to
understand the relationship between sexual behaviour and self-esteem.
The data on this relationship were collected in intensive, unstructured
interviews totalling, on average, about 15 hours with each subject (Maslow,
1940, p. 257). These interviews took place between 1935 and 1937 (Hoffman,
1988, pp. 75, 80), a time when Maslow was also publishing his monkey
studies. The major paper on his human study is `Self-esteem (dominance-
feeling) and sexuality in women' (Maslow, 1942), in which he discusses the
relationship between self-esteem and sexuality and compares his human
and animal data. Since the needs hierarchy was published the following
year (Maslow, 1943), his interpretation of his sexuality data is clearly a
fundamental part of the conceptual framework for the hierarchy (see Cullen,
1994, 1997).

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542 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Initially, Maslow interviewed both men and women, but he found that
`the men were far more evasive and tended to lie, exaggerate, or distort their
sexual experiences', whereas women, once they had agreed to participate,
were more open (Hoffman, 1988, p. 77). In addition, Maslow found that
interviewing women `was more fun Ð illuminating for me, the nature of
women, who were certainly, to a shy boy, still mysterious' (Wilson, 1972,
p. 157), or, as his biographer describes it, the 28-year-old Maslow `got a thrill
of excitement interviewing the women' (Hoffman, 1988, p. 77). He recruited
his female subjects through word of mouth among the graduate students
at Columbia University, where he was then located (ibid, p. 76). In all, he
interviewed about 140 women. However, he observed that a woman's self-
esteem and/or sexual behaviour were influenced by other characteristics
such as her socio-economic status, religion, cultural background and marital
status, as well as the area of the country in which she grew up. In order to
minimize the effect of these other influences, he reduced his original group
to a `Criterion Group' of about 70 women and it is on the basis of this group
that Maslow makes generalizations about women's sexuality (Maslow, 1942,
p. 270). This subgroup was
(a) between the ages of 18 and 28; (b) of Protestant background; (c) college
students or of college intelligence; (d) mostly unmarried; (e) mostly of
urban, middle-class background; (f) all were relatively `normal' people,
some being maladjusted to a greater or lesser degree, but none being
obvious neurotics. (Maslow, 1940, p. 256)
In attempting to erase the influence of cultural distortions and to construct
the kind of `homogenous group' that is `necessary for the best results'
(Maslow, 1942, p. 270), Maslow thus constitutes the dominant social group
(white, middle-class, heterosexual and Protestant) as normative. Maslow
draws a sharp line between the normal and abnormal. The abnormal or
neurotic are `severely maladjusted' (ibid). Lesbians are constructed as
abnormal by definition, and `of course not included in our criterion group
of normal women' (ibid, p. 275).
Based on his interviews, Maslow assigned each woman a score on a scale
of self-esteem, and also rated her attitude toward sex. This rating, like the
rating of the woman's self-esteem, was an `objective' rating, discounting
what he believed to be other determinants of sexuality such as opportunity,
fatigue and whether or not the woman loved her partner (ibid, pp. 263±4).
His third rating was of the woman's sex drive, defined narrowly as the
desire for heterosexual coitus. This rating was based on the frequency and
intensity of local genital reactions, and of conscious sexual relations or
masturbation, actual or desired; the percentage of frequency, ease and
intensity of climax in heterosexual relations, and the kinds of stimulation
needed to achieve it; ease of excitability; number and extent of erotogenic
zones; and number of everyday stimuli regarded as sexual. He determined

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 543

the presence or absence of technical virginity, or, if the subject was married,
whether or not she was a virgin until marriage. He also asked about
promiscuity (the number of men with whom the subject had had sex
relations) and whether there existed a history of masturbation. Although he
calculated correlations among these scores, Maslow relied more on the
`generalized qualitative relationships as they impressed the experimenter'
(ibid, p. 272), to draw his conclusion that a woman's sexual attitudes and
behaviour were more closely related to her dominance level than to her
sex drive.
Maslow believed that, because of his focus on the relationship between
dominance and sexual behaviour, his research was superior to the other
studies of the era, writing that his findings `cast a definite shadow of doubt
on previous sexological studies' (ibid, p. 265). The basis for this argument
was his observation, about halfway through his study, that the women who
had volunteered to participate in his study were overwhelmingly high in
dominance. Only about 10% were low in dominance, and all of these were
virgins, non-masturbators, and had a negative attitude toward sex (ibid,
p. 266). He therefore had to seek out and `inveigle' (ibid), through the
`almost tearful pleadings of the by now distraught experimenter' (Maslow,
1937b, p. 418), low-dominance women to `submit to interview' (Maslow,
1942, p. 266).
Once a sufficient number of low-dominance women were recruited, his
sample, he argued, was more representative of the population as a whole.
Consequently, he believed, his estimates of the percentages of virgins,
masturbators, and homosexuality in the population as a whole were more
accurate than those in other studies. These other studies were unrepre-
sentative and `a product of bad sampling' (ibid, p. 266) because they relied
on volunteers and therefore contained a disproportionate number of high
dominance individuals. One study he singled out for this criticism was
Davis (1929), because this study relied on a mailed questionnaire.
The Davis study was sponsored by the Bureau of Social Hygiene, with
special funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. The social discourses that
legitimated the sex research conducted by the Bureau could be found in the
conservative operations of maternal feminism and moral reform (Francis,
1998, p. 79). While he had been drawn into sex research through his specific
agenda of eliminating prostitution, Rockefeller became increasingly
convinced that in order to eliminate `deviant' forms of sexuality, one had
to better understand its `normal' expressions (Bullough, 1994, pp. 113±15).
Davis, who had served as the warden of a women's reformatory and Com-
missioner of Corrections for New York City, came to Rockefeller's attention
through her campaigns for the social and moral `improvement' of female
inmates and eventually began a study of the sex life of women (ibid). Davis
initially examined the sexual behaviour of 1000 married women and, later,
single women. Because a greater percentage of college women had responded

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544 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

to the married women's questionnaire, the study of single women was

limited to college graduates. More specifically, potential subjects had to
have graduated at least five years prior to the study, on the assumption that,
by then, they `would be more likely to recognize the need of such a study . . .
and also would have sufficient maturity of experience to give some weight
to their opinions on various points connected with sex education' (Davis,
1929, p. xii). The decision to restrict the sample to white, middle-class,
college graduates, however, could also be seen as a strategy of legitimation.
In order to insulate the study from the charge of immorality, there was a
conscious decision to sample only those women who embodied the norms of
white, middle-class respectability. If the study challenged dominant sexual
discourses in recognizing the sexual lives of these women, it bolstered its
credibility through excluding black and working-class women who, through
raced and classed assumptions, were already viewed as sexual and immoral
(Francis, 1998, p. 79). As with Maslow, this narrow focus had the effect of
constructing white, middle-class women's sexuality as normative.
A letter describing the purpose of the study and the ways in which
anonymity would be ensured was sent to 10,000 women selected for both
age and geographical distribution from the alumnae lists of colleges and
universities. Those who were interested in participating were to send in a
card requesting a mailed copy of the questionnaire. Although the question-
naire itself is not reproduced in Davis' book, she reports that it was twelve
pages long, including two pages of definitions `we had found it advisable to
give' (1929, p. xii). Approximately one-third of those contacted requested
a copy and about one-third of those (some 1200 women) completed the
questionnaire.
The methodology of the Davis and the Maslow studies reflects a
transitional period within sexology, poised between the case study method
used by earlier sexologists and psychoanalysts and the large-scale survey
becoming dominant with Kinsey. The case study method deployed by such
researchers as Krafft-Ebing, Ellis and Freud relied on individual experience,
as narrated to an investigator, as evidence of sexual phenomenon. Case
studies were narratively framed and selectively chosen by the sexologist to
construct specific interpretations; yet even so, as Bland and Doan contend,
`sexological labels often emerged as a unique and active collaboration
between the sexologist and the . . . informant . . . rather than as an unwel-
come imposition on a passive community' (1998, p. 2). The survey/inter-
view method is, by contrast, directed toward the production of aggregate
data, with individual narratives silenced. The Davis survey, while focusing
on `modern statistical tables', included several open-ended questions whose
responses are faithfully reproduced in a detailed presentation of findings.
The 430-page report also includes `case study' narratives constructed by
interview subjects from blank pages where the women had attempted to
`give a fuller account of their own experiences' (Davis, 1929, p. xiii).

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 545

Our interest in this article is not the relative accuracy of these two studies.
Indeed, as we have emphasized, early twentieth-century sexological research,
while cloaked under the banner of scientific objectivity, represented a
discursive practice that shaped and constituted that which it claimed to
reveal. It is nonetheless important to compare some of the findings of these
studies, in order to interrogate their underlying assumptions and the
divergent stories that they told about women's sexuality during this period.
Maslow's (1942, pp. 270±1) raw figures for the percentage of women who
had ever masturbated are 55.3% and 46.9% for the total group and criterion
group respectively, while his `corrected' estimates are 46.3% for the total
group and 38.7% for the criterion group. Among the 20±29-year-old women
in Davis' study (the age group most similar to those in Maslow's study),
63.6% reported they had masturbated (1929, p. 101). This difference might
suggest that Maslow's contention was accurate, in that perhaps Davis's
sample did include a disproportionate number of high dominance women.
There is, however, another explanation relating to the context and way in
which the questions were asked and answered.
The instructions that preceded Davis' questions about masturbation
placed them in the context of developing sound principles of sex educa-
tion. The study was being done for `distinctly social ends' and `the data for
the determination of norms of sex behaviour can come only from the life
experiences of sane, intelligent men and women' (Davis, 1929, p. 95). The
instructions promised anonymity, and concluded:
There is considerable controversy with regard to auto-eroticism. . . .
[A]uto-eroticism, particularly that form of it known as masturbation, has
been vigorously condemned both on ethical grounds and as the cause of
grave physical and mental disorders. Accumulation of facts indicates that
the harmful physical and mental effects have been greatly exaggerated.
It is maintained by some eminent specialists today that auto-eroticism,
including masturbation, is a normal stage in the development of the sex
nature. (Davis, 1929, p. 96)
Davis' refusal to pathologize, and the almost liberal approach to sexual
practices that informs this study, provide scope for the articulation of her
subjects' experiences.
This relative openness stands in marked contrast to Maslow. Since
Maslow does not describe his interview protocol in any detail, it is not clear
how he asked his subjects about masturbation. Indeed, he comments on the
`extreme flexibility' of his interview procedure; the questioning in the initial
interviews was exploratory, while in later interviews a list of questions was
used only as cues (Maslow, 1942, p. 262). However, we can get a sense of his
almost `confessional' approach from the following description:
Before the interview proper was started, a short explanation was made of
the general purpose of the interview; the subject was warned that many of

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546 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

the questions would be very embarrassing and that the whole procedure
might be upsetting. They were at the same time assured that they would
be benefited if they would go through with it, both because sheer
confessing was desirable for its own sake and also because my reÂsume of
the results at the end of the interview would be enlightening and would
teach them much about themselves and others. (Maslow, 1940, pp. 257±8)

The lesbian challenge

In general terms, the high-dominance women in Maslow's study are more
masculine, independent, socially poised, extroverted, relaxed and uncon-
ventional than low-dominance women, who are feminine, timid, shy,
modest, neat and retiring (Maslow, 1942, p. 261). Low-dominance women
consider themselves comparable to others in their sympathy for others, and
enjoy other women's company, while high-dominance women prefer men
rather than women for company (they consider other women to be `catty
and petty'), and dominate both men and women of their own age (Maslow,
1940, pp. 267±70). Low-dominance women, however, were more honest
than high-dominance women (Maslow, 1942, p. 261). Maslow does not
seem to have fully realized the implications of this difference. He clearly
believed that, since he had established good rapport and stressed the
importance of telling the truth, his subjects were completely frank (Maslow,
1939, p. 5). Consequently, the possibility that his rating of dominance was
simply a measure of a woman's willingness to discuss sex with him, or that
high-dominance, male-identified women might have exaggerated and
distorted their sexual experiences (as did men) does not appear to have
seriously influenced his interpretations.
In this context, the lesbian takes on immense symbolic significance for
Maslow, who disarms the threat of the lesbian by silencing her. The erasure
of lesbian sexuality is achieved in a complex manner. Like Krafft-Ebing and
Ellis before him on inversion (see Bullough, 1994, pp. 40, 70±82), Maslow
draws a sharp distinction between congenital and `acquired' homosexuality.
Of his entire sample, only one subject is defined as `really' homosexual
(Maslow, 1942, p. 275). The true lesbian is presented as a masculine psyche
within a woman's body, characterized not by her sexual desires but instead
on the basis of gender inversion. As Maslow writes:

Our one homosexual by preference . . . did not look masculine but

behaved so in many ways, preferring men's clothes, occupations, sports,
etc. . . . Sexual relations with men were reported but with no pleasure . . .
Her history consists of the seduction of one girl after another. They are
always taller than she is, always beautiful and feminine, and she is
initially attracted because they dislike her . . . she systematically, over a

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 547

long period of time, gets them to tolerate holding hands, embracing,

kissing, etc. The climax comes at such a time when she first induces
orgasm in her partner. `At such times, I get a feeling of smug power, and
of great satisfaction.' (Maslow, 1942, p. 275)

There is an effort here to cordon off the category `female homosexual'

and to construct this category as innate. This move is emblematic of early
twentieth-century sexology in the sense that sexual dissidents become
defined as a particular type of person, identifiable not by what they do,
or who they desire, but instead on the basis of some inner identity
(Foucault, 1990, p. 43). Expressing this discursive shift away from the
stigmatization of certain acts and towards the invention of the pervert as
an identity, Maslow writes, `no single sexual act can be seen as abnormal
or perverted. It is only abnormal or perverted individuals who can commit
abnormal or perverted acts' (1942, p. 286). True lesbians are those women
with excessively high (read masculine) dominance levels and their sexual
desire is rooted in their need to exert power over other women. While
rejecting physiological explanations for female homosexuality (ibid, p. 276),
Maslow nonetheless paints this category as discrete and impenetrable,
neurotic and abnormal, but fortunately miniscule. There is little danger
that women will forego heterosexual pleasures en masse because the true
lesbian is a tiny minority, a freak of nature, not a real woman. While the
true lesbian may seduce other women, those women's natural desires
lead them to the penis.
The faute de mieux lesbian or, in Havelock Ellis' term, the acquired
lesbian, is a category that for Maslow exists because of a mismatch of
women and men at different levels of dominance. The four women in his
sample who have strayed from the heterosexual imperative are described
as high-dominance women who have been unable to find `a man suitably
high in dominance feeling as a mate' (ibid, p. 275). Their natural desire for
the penis has been `repressed' and their homosexuality is artificial. For the
artificial lesbians in his sample, when a `suitable man came along, the
homosexuality was dropped at once' (ibid), confirming in Maslow's mind
that they were sexually adventurous rather than real homosexuals.
A considerably more complex picture of women's same sex desire
emerges in Davis. Maslow had argued that, because Davis' subjects were
volunteers, they were high in dominance. However, unlike the high-
dominance women in his study, a significant proportion of Davis' subjects
reported having emotionally intense, non-sexual relationships with other
women. This, according to Maslow, was true only of low-dominance
women, who had reported that they enjoyed other women's company. The
Davis and Maslow samples are not directly comparable, since Maslow's
subjects were students and Davis' subjects had been out of college for at
least five years. Yet Davis' findings, reporting much higher levels of same

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548 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

sex desire and expression in both her married and unmarried samples,
suggests that Maslow's efforts to minimize and erase lesbian existence were
at some level deliberate.
In Davis' study, the nature and extent of same sex eroticism were deter-
mined through a series of questions about experiencing intense emotional
relations with a woman prior to, during or after college; whether this
experience had been with one or more than one woman; whether such
relationships had been continued to the present and what influence this had
had on the woman's remaining single; why such a relationship had been
discontinued; and the woman's mental attitude toward such relationships:
approval or shame, and whether it was helpful, stimulating or injurious to
her health (Davis, 1929, p. 246). The sexual aspect of these relationships was
determined through the following questions:

(a) Was the experience associated with sex in your own mind at the time?
(b) Later? (c) Was the experience without physical expressions other than
kissing or ordinary endearments of close friendship? (d) Did the
experience include such physical expression as bodily exposure, mutual
handling of organs, mutual masturbation, or other intimate contacts?
(Davis, 1929, p. 246)

Fifty per cent of Davis' (1929, p. 247) unmarried subjects (605 of 1200)
reported having intense emotional relationships with other women. Of
these, 38.6% (234 of 605) reported that these relationships were accompanied
by mutual masturbation or other forms of sexual expression and were
labelled as homosexual. However, Davis also decided to classify as
homosexual the 12.9% (78 of 605) of the women who reported that they
recognized their intense relationships as sexual, although the only physical
expressions were kissing and hugging. Using these definitions, 26% of
Davis' subjects, as she put it, `admit that the [intense emotional] relationship
was carried to the point of overt homosexual expression' (Davis, 1929,
p. 248). The Davis data seem to confirm the insistence of historians like
Smith-Rosenberg (1985), that female-centred support networks, familial
and sexual relationships were widespread among the first generations of
American college women.
Like Maslow, and consistent with the thrust of sexology in this period,
the Davis study does draw a distinction between those who were `naturally
homosexual' and those whose practices were the result of the situation
(1929, p. 293). Yet, even though she extensively reviews the conclusions of
earlier sexological studies that rest upon the congenital/acquired distinc-
tion, Davis does not pass judgement on the `etiology' of homosexuality in
women. The designation `naturally' homosexual depends upon her subjects'
self-definitions and seems to rest on the absence of attractions to men
(Davis, 1929, p. 279; Francis, 1998, p. 81).

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FROM ORGASMS TO ORGANIZATIONS 549

Maslow's pathologization of same sex desire is also notably absent from

the Davis study. Davis acknowledges that same sex desire and expression
among women have existed cross-culturally and throughout history (1929,
p. 239), and the point of her narrative is to emphasize the normality and
pervasiveness of same sex practices. In the selection of case studies from her
`naturally' homosexual subjects, only one is designated as `psychopathic'
with the qualifier `one of the very few in our group' (ibid, p. 295). Her
empirical findings emphasize the emotional and physical health and
happiness of those women reporting intense emotional relationships with
other women with physical expression (ibid, pp. 260±2.) While she does find
that a high percentage of these women (48.4%) view their same sex practices
as `unnatural; abnormal; perversion', she qualifies this finding by
suggesting that `this is probably a reflection of public opinion as to homo-
sexuality' and she insists that this be read against the finding that a similarly
high proportion (46.4%) report that the main effect of their homosexual
relationships has been `helpful, stimulating' (ibid, pp. 254±5). Only 18%
regarded their same sex practices as `a sex problem requiring solution'
(ibid, p. 271).
Finally, the case studies presented reflect narratives of resistance to the
pathologization of lesbianism. Indeed, as Francis comments of these case
studies, `despite the powerful discourses mobilized to deter women's same-
sex intimacy . . . [the Davis subjects] put pen to paper to document the power
of connections ``they would not have been without for the world''' (Francis,
1998, p. 83). The reflections documented in the case studies (Davis, 1929,
pp. 279±96), include the following:
. `I cannot believe that large numbers of women must forgo full devel-
opment because they are attracted to a woman, rather than a man.' (Case
number 1, p. 280)
. `I have a woman friend whom I love and admire above everyone in the
world and with whom my life is perfectly happy because of our mutual
love and congeniality in all things.' (Case number 3, p. 282)
. `I have always since childhood hoped for a woman partner and now
I have her and would rather have her than any man.' (Case number 4,
p. 283)
. `I am not ashamed of this one relationship because I love, admire and am
loyally attached to this woman, as much as I could be to a husband, had
I chosen one. This relationship has been helpful in every way.' (Case
number 5, p. 284)
These narratives stand in contrast to Maslow's presentation of the `true'
homosexual woman as neurotic, predatory and doomed to repetitive and
unsuccessful quests of seduction. Davis' construction of lesbian relation-
ships as happy and helpful and the notable absence of the mannish lesbian
from her discussions, as Francis (1998, p. 83) has argued, undermine the

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550 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

notion of sexual identity based upon an exclusive heterosexual/homosexual

binary. Extremely high levels of reported same sex behaviour among her
married cohort (15%) (Davis, 1929, p. 298) and the narration of passionately
felt emotional and sexual attractions existing prior to and alongside
relationships with men work both to destabilize the categories of homo-
sexual and heterosexual and reveal the precariousness of the heteronorm. In
Maslow, by contrast, the New Woman's same sex attractions become rooted
in dominance, which, within his discursive construction, works to confirm
the stability of the heteronorm. This is a project that for Maslow depends
most centrally on recognizing the inherent `natural' connections between
dominance and sexuality.

Dominance, submission and the heterosexual imperative

What is the source of Maslow's belief in the necessity of innate connections
between dominance and sexuality? We see inter-related reasons. Beginning
in his graduate school days and throughout his career, Maslow believed that
psychology was too scientific, and sought, through his humanistic project, to
expand its boundaries into other areas and disciplines. But this expansion
into areas such as love and religion, Nicholson (2001, p. 84) maintains,
challenged `the conjunction of masculinity and intellect that he revered',
because of his concurrent belief in the essentialist nature of maleness and
femaleness revealed in his studies of monkeys and apes.
Those studies were done in the context of the primatology research of the
1930s, research that was primarily concerned with the control of aggression
through a dominance hierarchy or `pecking order' among the members of
the group (Haraway, 1989). Dominance and sexuality were linked: males
competed to control access to sexually receptive females, and females
accepted a subordinate status because their submission to the more
powerful male gave them access to resources (such as food) that the more
powerful males could command. In other words, dominance was necessary
and male dominance was a natural consequence of this necessity. In his own
studies, Maslow's (1936b, p. 183) main indicators of dominance were
mounting (taking the male role in sexual behaviour) and bullying, and it
was on this basis that he argued that sexual behaviour was motivated by
both a sexual drive and a dominance drive. Consequently, not only is same
sex sexual activity in humans an attempt to control and dominate others,
`normal' heterosexual sex is also based on a power relationship.
This power relationship is biologically determined; for Maslow, male
domination and female submission are inevitable and essential to sexual
pleasure. Sexual pleasure, narrowly defined as orgasm in heterosexual
coitus, requires male initiation and control. High-dominance women with
high sex drives, reports Maslow, find themselves unable to orgasm with

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men who are `weak', who fail to dominate them sexually (1942, p. 281). But
under Maslow's tutelage, in `two of the subjects whose husbands were
instructed concerning suitable dominance behaviour, the orgasm was
eventually induced' (ibid, p. 281). This stands as a bold statement of the
eroticization of male dominance: women's pleasure is necessarily located in
their sexual submission.
Maslow reports that the high-dominance woman unconsciously wishes
to be raped. Not infrequently she has `rape dreams' in which she is `forced
to submit to a large number of brutal men' and she enjoys rough love
making, preferring men with `enormously large sex organs, large enough to
cause pain' (ibid, pp. 287, 289). He goes on to comment:

in these few women, they strive incessantly to dominate all with whom
they come in contact and tend to be sadistic in their dominance in so far as
they are allowed by cultural formulations. They do seem to get a certain
kind of sexual thrill from this behaviour. But when a man comes along
who cannot be dominated, these women tend to become definitely
masochistic and to glory in being dominated. Apparently the sexual
pleasure so derived is strongly preferred over the thrill derived from
dominating. (ibid, p. 289)

Middle-dominance women, by contrast, do not desire to be overpowered;

instead, they desire to be `seduced' and `wooed', and `sex as such must be
hidden, swathed about with veils of love words, gently and carefully led up
to' (ibid, p. 284). Even if shrouded in romanticism, the process of seduction
is one located as being properly under masculine control. Low-dominance
women, Maslow argues, often have very little desire for sex, viewing it only
in relation to reproduction (ibid, p. 284). And for men, women's orgasm
becomes a sign of their successful dominance: `For a man to induce the
orgasm in a woman supports his dominance-feeling and also, for the
moment at least, gives him dominance status' (ibid, pp. 281±2).
Despite Maslow's ostensibly liberal endorsement of a range of sexual
practices including `cunnilingus' and other forms of `sexual experimenta-
tion' (ibid, p. 285), women's sexual pleasure is here constrained within an
iron-clad heterosexual script, in which women's autonomy, consent and ini-
tiation are erased. The orchestration of women's sexual pleasure remains
inescapably under male control, and female pleasure is fused with male
dominance.
Countless early twentieth-century feminists had articulated explicit
critiques of the form of male sexual dominance that Maslow here con-
structs as natural and inevitable. Uncontrolled male sexuality, as feminists
such as Pankhurst (1913) had argued, was the fundamental cause of a
number of social ills, including prostitution, venereal disease and brutality
against women. In response, feminists had sought to articulate a radical

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552 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

conception of women's sexual autonomy resting upon such planks as the

right to refuse male conjugal rights, voluntary motherhood and an early
form of political lesbianism, spinsterhood (Jackson, 1994, pp. 80±105). If
Maslow's study sought to erase the challenge of lesbianism, so too did it
resist and silence early feminist calls for heterosexual sexual autonomy.
Davis, by contrast, is both more open and attentive to expressions of
women's erotic and reproductive rights. Davis finds that a central factor in
women's satisfaction with marital sex is education. Her conclusion, drawing
connections between adequate sex education and pleasure in heterosexual
sex, can be seen as a call for women's sexual empowerment through
knowledge (Davis, 1929, p. 76).
Maslow completely ignores the obvious relationship between women's
sexual satisfaction and control over fertility. This is at once surprising and at
the same time consistent with his developing views on the gendered and
biological basis of dominance which would root women's ultimate fulfil-
ment in motherhood. Davis, in her detailed analysis of married women's
attitudes towards birth control, finds that an overwhelming majority of her
subjects (73.4%) support `voluntary parenthood' and practise contraception
(73%) (Davis, 1929, p. 13). Clearly access to contraception, which at the time
was restricted under the Comstock Law, functioned as a significant barrier
to women's heterosexual pleasure. Maslow not only ignores how the fear of
unwanted pregnancy may have constrained women's sexual expression, his
endorsement of male sexual coercion is antithetical to any recognition of
women's sexual autonomy.
In his `qualitative finding' of the naturalness and desirability of male
sexual dominance, Maslow believed he had diagnosed the crisis of marriage:

The best marriages in our society . . . seem to be those in which the

husband and wife are at about the same level of dominance-feeling or in
which the husband is somewhat higher in dominance feeling than the
wife . . . In those marriages in which the wife is definitely dominant over
her husband, trouble is very likely to ensue of both social and sexual
maladjustment unless they are both very secure individuals. (Maslow,
1942, p. 278)

Inscribing the heterosexual imperative, Maslow boldly insists that `there is a

man for every woman', and the essential criterion for a good match is
complementarity of dominance levels. A mismatch of dominance levels,
particularly when the woman feels dominant to the man, is the essential and
fundamental cause of marriage breakdown. The New Woman, the inde-
pendent and dominant women, needs to be attached to a man who will
satisfy her natural desire for subordination. Divorce and lesbianism are
identified as the symptoms of a crisis that is rooted in the transgression of
natural gender roles.

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Conclusion
A belief in the `naturalness' of male dominance and female submission thus
underlies Maslow's needs hierarchy and his larger humanistic project.
Indeed, it must, since the hierarchy is innate, rooted in biology and thus
universal (see Cullen, 1997). That there must be a gender difference in self-
actualization, and the form that this difference should take, is clear from his
portrayal of women's sexuality. In the same way that biology ensures that
male monkeys must be dominant and female monkeys must be subordinate,
men must be dominant, and women must be subordinate. Not only is this
natural, but it is desirable: women want to be dominated.
As Nicholson (2001, p. 88) has pointed out, because Maslow found it
difficult to reconcile `biological constraint with psychological possibility', he
deliberately minimized his discussion of the gendered nature of self-
actualization. For Maslow, while both men and women could and should
strive for self-actualization, `true self-actualization for the female accepts . . .
the primacy of the family' (cited in Nicholson, 2001, p. 88), since, for
example, one of his illustrations of self-actualization is `the desire to be an
ideal mother' (Maslow, 1954, p. 92). Moreover, Maslow's statement that `the
pursuit and gratification of the higher needs lead to greater, stronger and
truer individualism' (ibid, p. 149) is an expression of the autonomous
self, the male self that denies relatedness and thinks in terms of hierarchy
rather than webs (Gilligan, 1982).
One basis for the enduring appeal of Maslow's hierarchy is now
apparent. The conflation of self-actualization with masculinity, dominance
and sexuality reinforces the sexuality of organizations (Hearn and Parkin,
1987), while at the same time justifying women's exclusion from positions of
power. If dominance or hierarchical position requires masculine behaviours,
women can supposedly achieve this dominance or hierarchical position by
becoming more like men. This is precisely the sort of advice that aspiring
women managers continue to be given (see Cullen, 1994). However, try as
she might, a woman can never reach the top of either the needs or
organizational hierarchy, unless, as with Maslow's depiction of the `true
lesbian', she becomes a gender invert. The `normal' woman's biology,
however, means that she can never be `male enough', and thus male
dominance in organizations is inescapable, even if unfortunate.
The phallocentricism of the needs hierarchy, as we argue, is clearly
revealed through an interrogation of Maslow's sexological work and
through his commentaries on gender roles. Self-actualization, the apex of
the needs hierarchy, is based upon the normative characteristics of
masculinity and a repudiation of those characteristics that Maslow
associated with femininity. The motivational theory that results from the
equation of masculinity with self-actualization supports a meritocratic ideal
that not only denies and denigrates femininity, but at least for Maslow,

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554 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

constructs women's ideal roles as help-mate and mother to the next

generation. Private patriarchy, scripted through the necessary links between
sexuality and dominance, provides the foundation of the meritocratic
society that Maslow prescribed.

Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Rethinking Gender,
Work and Organization conference at Keele University, June 2001.

Note
1. Our contributions to this article are equal; our names are in alphabetical order.

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