Culturally Influence Women's Identity

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Culture and history strongly influence female identity. For example, a lot of people default to the idea that taking care of family is the only duty women should have. In the past, women were expected to be uneducated; they were dispossessed of economic independence. Because of this, historically many women were expected to rely on men because marriage guaranteed safety and financial security for their future. Also, people assumed that women did not have the ability to work due to biological characteristics, such as the idea that men are physically stronger than women. Even today, many employers believe that men have higher work efficiency, and thus prefer to offer job opportunities to men even though most jobs can be performed by both …show more content…
Women are perceived as unwilling and unable to negotiate profitable deals like men, nor are they are not perceived to take risks as well as men. Many people assume that women are not as remarkable as men in leadership. Judith Warner emphasizes that women make up 54 percent of the labor force, but are only 19 percent of board directors and 2 percent of CEOs (Warner). Women lag substantially behind men when it comes to their representation in leadership positions. Because of that, most people believe that women are not better than men in business. However, what is more important to note is that men and women are equal in capability but have different leadership skills. Because culture identifies gender, men and women are educated to have different masculine and feminine identifying characteristics. As Margaret Mead put it, “Men and Women are different in temperament. They allow them different economic and religious roles, different skills, different vulnerabilities to evil magic and supernatural influences” (713). In this way, men and women both have their unique ways to lead their businesses. For example, males have a strongly competitive mindset and are dissatisfied with low profits. They would like to make high profits with high risk. In contrast, women are less willing to take risks the same way men are, and they prefer to make a stable income by building up a small