How Many Women Are You? It's Bound to be More than One!

Aug 19, 2011
Vivien Young

Identity Crisis? - Vivien Young

Daughter, wife, mother, friend, employee, carer, mentor, cook, nurse - this is a short list of what being a woman may mean - so who are you anyway?

It could be argued that all human beings are a complex mixture of needs,aspirations, skills and motivations, so why are women different from men? More to the point, why do women seem to need to agonise over identity and self awareness more than men do?

Biology, Culture and Role Playing

These questions ignore the inescapable biological differences between men and women which have (historically) cast all women in a subservient role until very recently and which are a vital component of the inequalities which blight women's lives globally even in the twenty first century.

Women's rights (or lack of them) are an "elephant in the room" issue which still resonate even in the most so- called civilised societies today. After all, men have had control over global power, strategies and systems since time began, so why should they want to share?

Biology and culture have worked hand in hand until very recently to create roles and scripts for women which efficient contraception has enabled them to question. But having freedom of choice has raised a whole raft of other issues. No wonder women are confused about their roles in life (and angry and sad and stressed as well as a whole lot of other better stuff, at least in the civilised world).

Who Are You Today Mum?

This is a time of year when women hand their young children over to new carers, whether that involves the start of nursery education or the beginning of primary school. They say goodbye to their nearly-teenagers as they set off to secondary school. They prepare for a major life change as their nearly-adult children set off for college. All of these changes can be emotionally difficult and stressful.

Meanwhile, the mums in question will also be dealing with the needs of partners, probably jobs, possibly elderly parents or other caring responsibilities. At the bottom of the list of caring responsibilities will be care for the woman herself. Unlike Marmite, human resources are not better when spread very thinly and that applies to the resources of mothers too.

No wonder women suffer from identity crises, lack of confidence and low self esteeem. In organising and enabling the lives of others, from everyday details to major life transitions, they can easily feel as if they have become merely a conduit, facilitating the activities of those around them.

Try an experiment. Keep a diary for a week and review it. How much of your time is spent making sure other people's lives run smoothly and how much is spent on your own life? How many roles related to the well-being of others are you expecting yourself to excel in during the week? Is it any surprise that you feel a little bit low and unappreciated?

Striking a Balance and Reclaiming Your Sense of Self

Many books and learned papers have been published about the famous "work/life balance"in relation to paid employment. Women's issues which focus around unpaid work are frequently politicised, trivialised or ignored. As a member of a group which makes up (approximately) fifty per cent of the human race, women owe it to themselves (and also to the other fifty per cent) to take stock, assert themselves as significant individuals and work towards achieving a better work life balance for themselves in the multiple roles society has gifted them.

There are no easy answers to how this may be achieved, but recognising the problem is the first step to solving it. It's easier said than done to take time out, decide what can be done to make your own life better and work towards achieving it and in these difficult financial times it may not seem like a priority.

But if you don't deserve any more from life than your husband/partner/children, you don't deserve any less either. Nurture your support network, revisit your comfort zones and carve out some time and space for yourself on a regular basis. If you do it already, well done, keep on doing it. If you don't do it, start today.

This testosterone driven world needs more rather than less input from women just like you!

Sources

Gavron,Hannah, The Captive Wife, Penguin, London 1968

Sharpe,Sue, Just Like a Girl, Penguin 1976

Willis,Liz and Daisley,Jenny, Springboard, Hawthorn Press 1991

Vivien Young - Makes the most of every day and then writes about it .........

Comments

Apr 1, 2012 10:13 PM

Guest :

I do not know why any woman should have a low self esteem other then that she has fallen for the greatest con game in all time, that is that women are inferior to males. I am a male but I do not think women are even equal to males because women are vastly superior to males. In fact, all throughout nature, anything female is vastly superior to anything male. You article shows that the best man for almost any job is a woman. I say almost any job because I think women and girls should be kept from any harm in the event of wars. I do not like our modern and civilized wars that kill a lot of women and girls because if we have to have wars, and if people do have to be killed in them 100% of those killed should be MALE. That is the way it was in all the wars before WW2 and in fact in the Americal civil war, although 660 thousand males were killed, only 60 women were. I think it would have been better if it were 700 thousand males if NO women were killed. Russia lost half of it's male population in WW2 and they did just fine without the males and in fact, they did better because it showed women were superior to their male counterpart.

I think we should teach that women and girls are superior to males and we should start in in 1st grade. Every male should know that women are superior to them and every girl should learn to accept that she is superior to anyone around her that happens to have testicles. (Odd that so many males brag about having big balls when it is our balls that help make us inferior) Even funnier is people saying someone should grow a pair of balls when testicles are so weak that even small girls could bring a big male to his knees with a well placed kick or knee to his nuts.