🚀 go-pugleaf

Whether these alleged inborn male/female qualities or preferences are genetical
or not (and I do believe that even kindergarten kids have had enough time to
feel gender pressure, although subconscious, from families and other people in
their vicinity), I don't think the question is: "How was society organized in
the Paleolithic Era" but rather: "What are the premises now? How do we want our
society to function *now*?".

The question of genetic storage isn't the same today as it were 6000 years ago.
The reasons for men and women to specialise differently aren't the same. But
still, the existing social norms have a much bigger impact on us, I think, that
we realize. As a child, I sometimes toyed with the idea of becoming a comedian.
Then I started to think, that if I were to be funny, I wouldn't be pretty, and
then I wouldn't be feminine anymore. Not having any female rolemodels (either
in my vicinity or on TV) made me narrow my horizons. For a while, I tried to
adapt to the common view on what a woman could and couldn't do. But after a
couple of years, I thought again, and realized I wasn't going to let anyone or
anything define what I was allowed to want or not.

I'm afraid that these doubts often appear in young women - pubertt and
adolescence have always been times of insecurity of oneself and one's future
role in society. But I also think that the current ideals (who are at last
beginning to change, thank God!) of men being career-oriented and not really
taking time for their families, and of women as nurturing and not really
ambitious, and of the two sexes as living in different worlds and not really
connecting - I think that this sets limits also for men, even if these limits
aren't always as apparent.

I do think that both men and women would benefit from loosening the definitions
of gender-typical qualities. I see this happeing, slowly, in the people around
me here at Uppsala University: mothers and fathers taking turns in staying home
with a newborn for its first year, young couples who share household
responsibilities without questioning, me as a woman not being sexually
discriminated (or at least hardly ever...) in this male-dominated area of
engineering I've chosen.

I just hope that these changes will continue as we enter "the real life" - that
we won't freeze into stereotypes as we spend more time in not-so-evolved parts
of our society where old role-definitions are still prevalent.

Oh, and as for remote control handling: I think a remote is a toy that really
attracts a man's interest. Any woman present during a session of channel
surfing probably thinks to herself: "OK, let him switch around, I won't bother
since it seems so important to him." But I for one am sure good at zapping,
although I wouldn't start doing it with someone else present, out of
consideration for his/her TV-preferences! :)

Please let me stress again: I do not think that we will find suitable
definitions for our current society by looking at how we organized ourselves in
the stone age. I think that we all change with time, and that if we know what
we want to change _into_ this process might go even faster.

JB