Welcome to Gaia! ::

I go to a very competitive all-girls private school, and recently they encouraged us to read a New York Times article titled "For Girls, It's Be Yourself And Be Perfect, Too." If you have read this article, or if you just simply look at the title, you can see why this article might speak to a private, all-girls school.

My english teacher actually had us read it in class and discuss it, and someone questioned if it is only girls who have all the pressures that are outlined in the article, which are basically:
1. Be intelligent (as in, get straight A's along with actually being smart)
2. Get into a good college
3. Do extra curriculars (sports and/or some kind of art (usually performance))
4. Have a job and/or volunteer
5. Look pretty
6. Make all of the above look effortless

Being at an all-girls school, most of us are pretty isolated from the outside world and, of course, a co-ed environment. So we could only really speculate from our limited experience about whether or not these expectations are the same or as intense for boys.

Forty or Fifty years ago, we would be asking the opposite quesiton: are these expectations held for girls, too? The answer would be no, in most cases they are not. Most girls were not expected to do all of these things. But jump another decade or two foward, we begin to see a change. My mother, who was just beginning her working life in early 1970s told me about a commercial that she would see where a woman, dressed in a buisness suit and holding a frying pan sang a song that essentially said "I bring home the bacon and cook it up, too!" I believe this quote represents very much what has become of expectations of women in recent years. Anyone can see that there is pressure for women to maintain the house hold ideal (cook, clean, raise the children) while persuing a career. And this ideal is driven by the idea of "girl power;" we can do anything. However, I believe this is starting to die down, too. I believe feminism is going through a very confused time right now where people are confused between "we can do anything and be great at it, too!" and "maybe we have to choose between a family and a career, and we can't always persue both to the fullest."

Obviously, there has also been a change in the view of men and there has been a greater expectation on them to do more for the family than to just be the breadwinner. However, at least from what I can see, it would seem that the main responsibility of the family still tends to fall on the mother. And let's not forget that single parenting is on the rise, particularly in women. Whether it's through divorce, abandonment, death, or volition, there are more and more women raising children alone.

So, with that being said, can and do we expect the same level of performance from boys? In school and in life? Do you believe boys feel the same pressure as girls to fulfill these roles? Why or why not?

Your last sentence made me wonder if there is a correlation between women joining the workforce and inflation going up. There probably is, it would make sense.

Anyway, well I can't tell you how to run your relationship, but I think it would be totally fair if you said "can you cook dinner tonight?"

Hm, the correlation with inflation hadn't occurred to me, really... I wonder. Heh... I wonder how one would be able to prove causation, one way or the other... xd

^_~ Thanks, he does tend to randomly make meals... but honestly, I'm quite happy to do the housework. But keeping his place the way both of us like it (spotless, natch) and being criticized for not contributing kind of stuck in my craw there.

And that's the crux of it, I think -- women tend to be expected to bring home a salary comparable to the men and carry the weight of the home, as well. It's a rare woman who can be both supermom and superexecutive all in one.

Well in grade school apparently what happens is the girls get overshadowed by the boys in math and science, for whatever reason. Whether it's because boys tend to be more problem-solving or if it's because girls don't think they can do it or whatever. So a lot of teachers will tend to push the girls to perform so they can establish self esteem in those subjects early. Of course, then the boys can easily fall by the wayside if they are not given equal attention.

Or at least, that's what teachers have told me. I've actually been in this school for k-12 (graduating this year, finally.) But it makes sense sort of. Not that it's an excuse.

That's very true. We condition our boys to be fighters and our girls to be princesses, and then are confounded when it happens. When our sons grow up and get into fights because someone's phallic symbol is bigger than the other's, and when the girls don't excel in school because we conditioned them to not want to think...and we are surprised when we realize that we did it.

I realize I sound like I'm losing my cool, but this is something I've thought about. A lot. I've dealt with man-hating Feminazis, who think that equality is tipping the scales. This is just another facet of this, at least to me. In my opinion, if women want to be equal, that's perfectly fine by me. I expect that you receive your Selective Service mail in the months before you turn 18. I ask that you not be given preferential treatment in college applications. I ask that you accept that equality is equality. Don't expect reparations for my forefather's oppression of women, since I'm not willing to pay for crimes I did not commit.

And I'm rambling again. If I've made any enemies over this, I'm sorry. It wasn't intentional.

It's probably because the fields of mathematics and science are still heavily dominated by men and in many places women are still discouraged from going into them.

Growing up, I have personally heard, time and again, "boys will be boys", many times from my own parents. My little brother hit me with a racket? He's a seven-year-old boy. He keeps procrastinating his homework? He's an eight-year-old boy. He's rude and crass at school and around other people? He's a nine-year-old boy. My mother and grandmother taught me how to knit, sew, cook basic things and do other "women's work" by the time I was eight, and now my brother is nine years old and neither of them have tried to teach him those things. They expect of me to know those things at that age, why not him?

As for expectations, I've noticed that childfree women get much more flak for it than childfree men. I mean, how dare a woman not want to reproduce? Doesn't she want kids?



What exactly are these "feminazi beliefs"? I'm curious, since I've never met any actual misandrists that weren't trolls.

Oh, okay. I live in an area filled with feminist-haters, so misandrists are hard to come by. I've witnessed the "well, women are smarter than men" thing on Gaia, and it irks me that people think that that's helping the feminist cause. :/ You're not going to accomplish anything running around acting like you're better than everyone else. It's almost as annoying as female misogynists.

(Sorry I've been inactive....)

Took the words straight from my mouth. Just more intelligently typed up than what I would've put.