Why is the word “male” associated with strength and power? Why is the word “female” associated with sensitivity and submission? It is time for us to reconstruct our social norms and make a change.
Chimamanda’s Ted talk portrays a powerful message related to raising young boys and girls in the future. She explains that we should not raise them to assume that the boy always has to pay, but whoever has more financial stability should pay. By raising them like this, boys will no longer have the pressure of having to prove their masculinity. We make men feel like they have to be hard, leaving them with fragile egos. The harder the man feels he has to be, the weaker his ego. Chimamanda explains that we raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach women to shrink their selves so that they are never presumed to be more powerful than men. We teach women to be successful but not too successful. To have ambition, but not too much ambition. If the female is the breadwinner, they have to pretend that they’re not. Why should a woman’s success be a threat to men?
Why are men associated with making money and women are associated with caring for the household? Chimamanda and her friend Louie went to dinner one evening and she was the one who tipped the man who parked their car. The man gladly accepted the money from Chimamanda and reached over and thanked Louie, assuming the money came from him. This is a great example of the stereotype that men provide the women with financial stability. This story shared by Chimamanda reminded me of the Dower. When Shehada (2016) describes the Dower she explains the financial obligation of the groom towards his bride. The man provides financial support and the woman is expected to obey him.This brings me back to my first point: Why are females associated with submission and males are associated with power? The husband’s responsibility to maintain his wife financially requires him to provide clothing, food and dwelling. The man taking the money from Chimamanda assumed that she had not earned it herself. In our society today women are still looked at as weak and vulnerable to men. Women have been socialized to see cooking, cleaning, and child responsibility as their role.
Lastly, I want to talk about men once again taking over power from the hard earned work of women. Both Goldstein and Guy-Blache were determined to bring societal change through visual media but lost total control of power and it had become “a mans job”. I was able to closely relate this to a story told by Chimamanda. When she was 9 years old her teacher told the class that whoever made the highest score on the test would be rewarded the opportunity to be the noise monitor. Chimamanda ended up getting the highest score on the test, but was not rewarded with the role of being the monitor because her teacher proclaimed that only a male student could be the monitor. The boy who had scored lower than her was being rewarded. Women who deserved the power and praise were overlooked and their role had been handed off to a man who did not deserve credit.
All of these have been examples of men being associated with power. When the woman tipped, the man was given the ‘thank you’. When the woman earned the highest score on the test, the man was given the final praise and reward. When the woman discovered and succeeded in film and media, the man took over and claimed the final product. This pattern has got to stop.