Societal Expectations Of Women Quotes

Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.

Once established, the young girl's dependency is systematically supported as she proceeds through childhood. For being "nice" - nonchallenging, nonconfronting, noncomplaining - she's rewarded with good grades, the approval of her parents and teachers, and the affection of her peers. What reason is there for her to turn deviant or nonconformist? The going is good, so she conforms. Increasingly, she patterns herself after what's expected of her.

Liberating ourselves from the traditional strictures of marriage altogether, and/or transforming those strictures to include all of us -- gay, feminist, career-focused, baby crazy, monogamous, non-monogamous, skeptical, romantic, and everyone in between -- is the challenge facing this generation. As we consciously opt out or creatively reimagine marriage one loving couple at a time, we'll be able to shift societal expectations wholesale, freeing younger generations from some of the antiquated assumptions we've faced (that women always want to get married and men always shy away from commitment, that gender parity somehow disempowers men, that turning 30 makes an unmarried woman into an old maid).

We hated the gym. We loved it. We escaped to it. We avoided it. We had complicated relationships with our bodies, while at the same time insisting that we loved them unconditionally. We were sure we had better, more important things to do than worry about them, but the slender yoga bodies of moms in Lululemon at school pickup taunted us. Their figures hinted at wheatgrass shots, tennis clubs, and vagina steaming treatments. We found them aspirational. So we sweated on the elliptical and lifted ten-pound weights, inching closer to the bodies we told ourselves we were too evolved to want.

She grew tired of shielding her body, For societal expectation and propriety, Double standards and sobriety, Ideologies of prudent cries, And boys who made her tell them lies. She wanted a man who’d destroy her reputation, One strong enough to feed her unruly temptation, Not leave her alone in risk of damnation. Someone strong enough to make her feel, Like a free woman who needn’t yield, Run with her naked through a field. Live on the fringe free of restriction, Treat her as a woman, undo the affliction. A man who’d take her breath with desire, Someone with whom her passions could conspire, A man strong enough to keep up with her fire.

That poor girl's been brainwashed into thinking her beauty is all she's worth, because from the time she was a little child she's been getting compliments about her beauty. And it becomes something you think you owe other people.

Women retain their dependence needs long past the developmental point at which those needs are normal and healthy. Unbeknownst to others - and worse, unbeknownst to ourselves - we carry dependency within us like some autoimmune disease. We carry it with us from kindergarten through college and graduate school, into our careers, and into the convenient "arrangement" of our marriages. (...) Much of the time - for many of us, all of the time - our unwillingness to stand on our own two feet goes unnoticed because it's expected. Women are relational creatures. They nurture and need. This, we have been told for many, many years, is nature. And although it cripples us, we have to let it go unquestioned.

I have a lot of friends who are positive life isn't worth living without True Love Forever. They're always on the prowl and sulk against the gods when they go to a party and don't fall in love. Women, especially, engage themselves in ghastly self-inflicted tortures for which they've been primed since childhood. After all, historically it's always been dreadful for women, and the logic given them was "It's going to be dreadful so you may as well learn to enjoy it.

ASK FOR HELP. The anger that women feel at being treated unfairly, at recognizing societal hostility to their identities, is made significantly worse by low expectations. Wanting more and demanding more probably doesn’t come easily because low expectations are feminine. Low expectations, feelings of inadequacy, and low self-esteem are the driving engine of the self-help industry. Do you know when you need self-help? When no one else is helping you. An ideology of personal satisfaction and improvement is no substitute for systemic restructuring for liberation. It is no accident that the explosion of the self-help industry, one that to a great extent feeds off of women’s sense of inadequacy, coincided with the rise of choice feminism and neoliberal economics. Like choice feminism, self-help also reduced the need for social and state commitments to change by placing the blame for reduced circumstances on people who don’t have the time, money, or resources to “help themselves.

If one (inescapable) group threatens another group with violence but also—as a group—shows the victimized group some kindness, an attachment between the groups will develop. This is what we refer to as Societal (or Cultural) Stockholm Syndrome) and it is expected to develop under Situation 3 Generalized Stockholm Syndrome conditions. That is, it is expected to develop in a culture in which it is socially mandated and socially predictable that members of the oppressor group will both victimize and be kind to members of the oppressed group. However, the identity of the particular member of the oppressor group who metes out the violence or shows kindness to any particular member of the oppressed group is random and may be determined by variables such as physical proximity. Because the transactions between oppressor and oppressed group members are pervasive and the traumatizers are omnipresent, members of the victim group perceive that they cannot escape the abuse and therefore look to their traumatizers for nurturance and protection. A Stockholm Syndrome psychology is expected to generalize to any and all interactions with members of the violent group, even members of that group who are not themselves violent, or who are less violent, toward members of the victimized group.

This web of traditions and rules means that women are not free but neither are men. Both sexes are trapped by societal expectations.

the girl with a moustache" they called me every now and then "It's about time you wax your arms" those who "cared" said I faced the fears of the dreaded thread on my face To succumb every other week to the world's ways

Patriarchal oppression and misogynistic societal expectations play the biggest roles in a culture's drinking habits. The double standard that drinking women face is deeply rooted in male anxieties about control and their fear of women acting like people, not property. If you want to know how a society treats its women, all you have to do is look into the bottom of a glass.

Societal expectations of women’s roles were quite different back then.

How did you come to live in Amsterdam?” I ask her. “Did you study there?” She twists a strand of hair around her fingers, staring out over the rail and across the water. “No, I studied medicine in Algiers, then earned my doctoral degree in Italy. Then spent several years as a ship’s surgeon because I couldn’t find professional work on the continent.” She squints, counting the years backward in her head. “Then I was hired to assist at the Hortus Medicus—the botanical garden in Amsterdam that cultivates medicinal plants from around the world. They’re funded by the university, and most of the physicians do at least some of their training there. I started teaching as a substitute when the male professors were traveling or unwell, and eventually they gave me my own classes and let me do my own research.” “Do you speak Dutch?” I ask. She nods. “And Italian. And Arabic, and some of the Berber dialects, though not fluently.” “And you’re a doctor,” I say, trying to make it a statement rather than a question though the concept still seems outlandish, not because women don’t have the capacity for medical professions, but because I’ve simply never heard of any reaching such a recognized level of achievement. “A real doctor.” She gives me a half smile. “Improbable as it may seem, I am.” “Felicity Primrose Montague!” I exclaim. Monty throws back his head and laughs. Felicity rolls her eyes. “Oh good, now there are two of you.” “You’re incredible,” I say to her. She looks down at her hands, color rising in her cheeks. “That’s very kind, thank you.” “You are!” I say. “You’re a doctor! And a professor! At a university!” “It really is bloody impressive, Fel,” Monty adds. “And a pirate!” I say. “You’re like an adventure-novel heroine! I wish I could introduce you to my fiancée. She’d go mad over you.” “Is she interested in medicine or piracy?” Felicity asks. “Neither in particular,” I say. “But she’s very interested in women who cast off societal expectations and work for change despite the men who endeavor to stand in their way.

The ultimate form of freedom is when a person can fully accept and embrace who they are without fear of judgment or rejection. This involves living an honest life, devoid of lies, cheating, or deception, while also being mindful of not causing harm to others. It is important to detach oneself from societal expectations and limitations, and instead focus on living authentically and with integrity.

How individuals view what they can and should accomplish is in large part formed by our societal expectations.

We achieve freedom when we let go of the weight of societal expectations, and when we find our people – those who love us, care for us, and hold us up when we start slipping.

Woven of wise women’s insight and young men’s dreams, of societal expectations and half-moon’s beams, Maurlocke’s robe habitually changed its form to match the expectations of the merchant’s customers.

There is a misperception about black women in society. When a black woman presents expectations to a man, she is seen as needy, bossy and a gold digger. When a woman who is not of African American descent expresses the same thing from a man, she is seen as a trophy wife. When a woman of European descent presents the same thing, she is viewed as a classy woman with standards. When a woman of European descent presents the same standards as a black woman, the Caucasian woman is credited for implementing rules of dating when she expects a man to pay for dinner or when she tells a man what she desires out of a relationship. The value of African American women is reduced not only by dominant culture and society, but by men, particularly African American men. The media, radio, music, television, newspapers and movies have devalued African American women when in reality African American women are honorable, respectable, classy, elegant, beautiful, educated and hardworking women. Dark skin women are viewed as angry, unattractive and uneducated within modern society. African American women are seen as loud, irate, insensitive and angry women as a result of labels from some African American men, media, movies and music. Television, magazines, social media, internet, videos and some music present Hispanic, Latino, White and Armenian women as trophy wives, idols and models while presenting African American women as mistresses, one night stands, casual sex, gold diggers and “baby mamas.” Latino and Dominican women are viewed as physically beautiful while Caucasian women are viewed as ideal and classy within media, music, music videos and movies. Media presents black women as bitter, scorned, ghetto, ratchet and promiscuous as if women of other races do not exhibit those characteristics. Women of other races are on television and the internet using profanity, fighting, engaging in sexual acts and cheating, however, there is an emphasis on African American women who exhibit those behaviors” (McEachern 85).

Because of a profound, deep-seated doubt in their own competence, which begins in early childhood, girls become convinced that they must have protection if they are going to survive. This belief is bred into women by misguided social expectations (...) Girls are trained very differently than boys. The training leads to their becoming adults who stay stuck in jobs beneath their capabilities. It leads them to feel intimidated by the men they marry, and to defer to them in the hope of being protected. It even leads (...) to the crippling of women's intellectual abilities. Long praised by teachers for being diligent and dutiful in school, we who rely on dutifulness to get us by in the professional world son find ourselves being treated as if we were not quite grown up. (...) Not to be taken seriously. And (...) easily exploitable. (...) The way girls are socialized continues to predetermine an agonizing conflict over the psychological independence that's necessary if women are ever to spring free and take their place in the sun.

In late 2008, one of my business partners, Clayton Christensen offered his opinion that the recession would have an “unmitigated positive impact on innovation” because “when the tension is greatest and resources are most limited, people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.” This theory is supported by the Kaufmann Foundation statistic that “51 percent of the Fortune 500 companies began during a recession or bear market or both.” Whether launching a business or pursuing a dream, there are many high-profile instances in which a lack of resources ultimately proved to be a boon, rather than a bane. If we dig a bit, each of us can uncover examples among friends and family, and ourselves. Would most children have as many opportunities as they do in sports, music, or other extracurricular activities without parents, mothers in particular, who are accomplished at bartering as a way to stretch limited family budgets? Would kids have as many chances to explore their interests if their parents weren’t so adept at arranging for carpooling, chaperoning, and borrowing, thus enabling their kids to participate? Without the constraints of time, money, and health, would the online retailer Shabby Apple exist? (For a reminder of how that business came to be, see chapter 5.) If my parents could have paid for college, would I have caught an early glimpse of corporate life during the Silicon Valley heyday? Would I have ever set foot on Wall Street had I not needed to work to put my husband through school? All of us have had the opportunity to bootstrap if we look hard enough. Men seem to know how to do this in the business world: 88 percent of the founders of Entrepreneur magazine’s Hot 500 were men. But I wonder if women aren’t better at bootstrapping than we think we are. Chronically under resourced (whether due to the gender pay gap or ceding our resources to conform to societal expectations), women continually feel the tension of having too little budget and too little time. Because of this tension, we are expert at rethinking how to get things done. Many of us know how to turn scarcity into opportunity.

Are there characteristics inherent in sex differences that make women more nurturing and men more assertive? Quite possibly. Still, in today's world, where we no longer have to hunt in the wild for our food, our desire for leadership is largely a culturally created and reinforced trait. How individuals view what they can and should accomplish is in large part formed by our societal expectations. (p.19)

Liberal feminists generally believe society already provides almost all the opportunities required for women to succeed in life. They simply want the same access to those opportunities as men and advocate measures that allow and protect that access—educational opportunities, affordable childcare, flexible working hours, and so on. Liberal feminism does not automatically assume that differences in outcomes imply discrimination, however, and thus it eschews the equity-based approaches of intersectional feminism. The liberal focus on removing the social significance of identity categories—that is, the legal and social requirements to comply with gender, class, or race expectations—seeks to refine the legacies of the Enlightenment project and the civil rights movements, rather than overthrow them for socialist or postmodern ends. Consequently, many liberal feminists believed their work would be largely done once women gained legal equality with men and had control over their own reproductive choices and when societal expectations had changed so much that it was no longer surprising to see women in all fields of work.

many liberal feminists believed their work would be largely done once women gained legal equality with men and had control over their own reproductive choices and when societal expectations had changed so much that it was no longer surprising to see women in all fields of work. This liberal approach to feminism is angrily refuted and problematized by applied postmodernists, who desperately want to return social significance to certain identity categories, so they can apply identity politics and provide a meaning-making structure for (especially racial) minorities.

Lack is a human perception NOT a universal reality.

Moments like these remind me why it’s so hard for men like my husband to helm the ship of emotional labor in a family. It’s not the norm. It’s not the expectation. The societal pressures he grew up with were the polar opposite of mine in terms of emotional labor. Caring was not an expectation for him; in fact, it was tacitly frowned upon as not masculine. The men in his life did not take the time to write letters to their grandmothers, or prepare meals for the family, or take charge as equal parents and partners. Men’s main societal pressure is to be breadwinners. They are expected to put this priority above family, above caring, above emotional labor—always. There is no open space for him to learn, no support system that will help him achieve the full equality he may desire at home. As Tiffany Dufu writes in Drop the Ball, “Until the contributions that women make at work are seen as just as valuable as the contributions women make at home, the contributions that men make at home will never be considered as valuable as the contributions men make at work. Just as women need affirmation on both fronts, so do men.” 5 Yet so often, that affirmation never comes. Their efforts, though praised, are undercut by the overplayed manner in which we give that praise. The pat on the back men get for parenting is akin to the exaltation we give children for messily making their bed or dressing themselves with two different socks and sparkly sandals. We praise the effort and turn a blind eye to the incompetence.

Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try to have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone. It never ends. It strikes me that while all this judgment goes on, the options available to women become fewer and fewer. I’m not even (just) talking about the right to choose—across the U.S., women have less access to birth control, health care, reproductive education, and post-partum support. So we give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy—and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing. This seems not only unfair to me but a recipe for societal disaster. I don’t have answers here, but I wanted to raise questions about what we expect of mothers and who we think “deserves” to be a mother and who doesn’t—and why we think that question is ours to decide.

I’m simply trying to do the math,” Gail explained. “This is a societal double standard I have never been able to understand. Men have been kissing since they were quite young, and have kissed many times, and this is considered normal. Yet, women are expected to keep their lips to themselves until they are ready to be married. But if this is always so, who are all these men kissing? Either the world is blindingly unrealistic in its expectations of women, or young boys are practicing on each other.

There was a second dinner scheduled for the following night, and I was dreading the disapproving glances by these women who had never worked a day in their lives. I was still a woman, and I still cared what I looked like; no matter what I accomplished with my career, nothing eliminates those stinging insecurities you develop as a child or teen.

Still, in today’s world, where we no longer have to hunt in the wild for our food, our desire for leadership is largely a culturally created and reinforced trait. How individuals view what they can and should accomplish is in large part formed by our societal expectations

Multiple factors play into the narrative of what it now means to be a man like, the shift in societal expectations of the role of men and women, our culture’s relentless drumbeat that tells us our biggest ambition should be the pursuit of a safe and comfortable and convenient lifestyle, the rise of soul-sucking habits like video games and porn, the devaluing of marriage and sex, a general, gradual, steady, relentless lowering of the bar of what it really means to be a man.

I was thirty-one at this point. I was deep in the grips of Hollywood conditioning. The thing is, I was always playing roles that were younger, at least five years younger, which amplified my twisted perception of aging. You have done something wrong! You have lived! You start feeling crazier with each birthday that passes.

In addition to inflated beauty standards, women are now also expected to be career-driven, achievement-orientated, financially independent, and a competent badass in the boardroom, bedroom, kitchen and nursery. On the flip side, the plights of men are often dismissed and unseen, since men are regarded as the ones wielding all the privilege and power. But what happens when the same societal structures that grant men superiority also deny them the full range of human emotions and threaten their status as men if they experience even the slightest form of sensitivity, vulnerability or indication of their needs for love, emotional safety and tenderness (basically, if men admit to having any attachment needs at all)? What happens when men are paralyzed by shame and made to feel unworthy of love and partnership unless they meet certain masculine expectations around financial or professional success? And what happens to a person’s ability to feel safe and connected when they are transgender or do not fit in the gender binary at all? Many of the personal problems and relationship struggles that we face are actually societal issues impairing our ability to bond, connect and love in secure ways.