Culture and the Woman

Very simply, a culture is a generally acceptable mode of behavior; perhaps owing to a consensus on morality, or practical living, and sometimes, even totally devoid of both, a culture becomes generally acceptable, not on the basis of its individual merit, but merely because ‘it is already thus’, so you can have a people reject a perfectly logical line of reasoning, in favour of a pre-existing pattern, even when the results are far from satisfactory.

Truth is, culture isn’t all bad, and there’s wisdom to be drawn from the combined experiences of a people through the ages, yet, just like the thought of humans getting into a contraption that launches itself into the air and travels thousands of miles an hour, would have shocked our ancestors to their very marrows, and we today have not just air travel, but people shooting up right out of the planet, it becomes apparent that the only culture worth hanging on to, is the culture of incessant progress.

Other than the (maybe mythical) Amazonian culture, pretty much every culture in existence casts the woman in a subservient role (ancient Egyptian culture at best, had women on equal footing with men before the court), and perhaps because of biological disparities and the expediency of having men handle tasks requiring physical labour, certain roles were perceived to be solely masculine. Today, certain aspects of these cultures have filtered into our existence.

The woman’s grudging acceptance into such prestigious fields as medicine, law, engineering, and the likes, is relatively recent, and even then, the workplace environment isn’t exactly ideal; with paternalism, reverse discrimination, unfair promotion policies, etcetera.

When asked why the representation of women in the corporate environment is so terribly low in comparison to their male counterparts, one gets responses like; ‘we hired the best person for the job’, ‘there weren’t any female applicants’, ‘the person must fit in with the rest of the group’, and so on. These responses indicate that, while there may not be any conscious barriers in place for female employment, the system is nevertheless structured to deny women the option of employment, and this, more than anything, is indicative of the prevalent culture.

While it is not an entirely healthy perspective to take to employment, the truth is, in today’s corporate world, women have a lot to prove, and this fact alone makes them a whole lot more committed to getting the job done, than the average privileged man, and amongst the many benefits to be derived from a mixed workplace, this is certainly not one to be overlooked.