Understanding girls

“We men” are not “women”. While girls spend hours to make up, days to dress up and centuries to wax, boys don´t need blush or lipstick, they wear whatever they have at hand, and they can go about unshaven for three days and nobody will mind.
It seems hard for us all to escape prejudice when we talk about the female gender. We have in mind cultural stereotypes shaped at school, the family or the media; and gender is a relative, dynamic and flexible concept.
Looking on history might be a good way to stop this prejudice. Prehistoric women were not only in charge of the food and the upbringing of children: they also accessed higher levels in social hierarchy. This is the case of matriarchies (women-dominated societies where power inherited from mother to daughter), which still exist today in remote places such as Western Sumatra, India and Northern Sri-Lanka. What´s more, with the advent of industrialization, demographic changes, the feminist movement and improvements in reproductive health and sexual education, job differentiation between sexes has become anything but rigid. Women have gradually gained respect and weight in many “male” fields such as sports, music, politics, business and academia.
Traditionally, girls have been defined as “closer to nature”, and boys as “closer to culture”. That´s why girls are more prepared for bringing up children, because they give birth to them and have a motherly instinct.
Nowadays, girls must work, look after their children, cook and clean… yet at the same time be perfect, beautiful, thin, sexy, and so on. They do everything boys do, and more! I completely agree with this perspective on women. Definitely, “women” are not “we men”.
(Taken from: Write On! Page 5.Buenos Aires Herald.September, 2003.)

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