Busting the Female Myths

BYERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star

When women argue, it's a "cat fight."
She's a "princess" if she likes stuff for herself.
She's the "b" word when she's assertive, demanding or even bossy.
On the flip side, men are expected to argue, be a bit self-centered with their time and set high expectations, says Paula Caplan, psychologist and researcher.
Women continue to live in a world of double standards and mistaken social mores, she said.
And if you ask her, it's the men's fault.
Fixing it, however, she says, is up to women. Of course.
Men are not TOTALLY to blame. But men hold the power, Caplan said in a telephone interview from her Providence, R.I., home. They hold the top jobs, earn the most money, make the top decisions and very much affect the way their wives and daughters feel about themselves.
The result is a complicated world of female relationships.
Women, sisters, mothers and daughters can have the greatest relationships of all time.
Or the worst.
They can support and build each other up.
And they can destroy and tear each other down.
Some of it is pure human dynamics.
Some of it is gender, greatly influenced by society's socialization of women, said Caplan.
For more than 20 years, the psychologist, author and researcher has lectured and written about the barriers between women.
In the 1970s, Caplan expected to find deep psychological mother-daughter issues as the root cause of women's relationship issues. She also expected a plethora of research on the topic.
She found neither.
But she did find that, although some mothers and daughters have their troubles, on the whole their relationships have fewer problems than those between men and women and between men.
"When you start looking at why there are fewer problems, it's because girls and women are socialized to learn about feelings and relationships and pay attention to them," Caplan said. "They take responsibility for making relationships work and repairing them when they don't."
That's what's good about the way women are socialized.
But social mores hold women down. They pit women against each other in the search for acceptance, approval and appreciation. And they destroy friendships, relationships and businesses -- all because of the myths that have been around for generations, Caplan said.
"Women need to recognize the myths are big," she said. "And that we are getting set up against each other. We are made to compete for scarce resources, whether it is money, approval or respect."
Myth 1: Men are better than women.
The anti-female bias is pervasive, from differences in how we perceive male-female behavior to the disparities in how women are rewarded in the work place, said Mary Beck, president of the Lincoln Lancaster County Women's Commission and professor of animal science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In the world of academia and in science, women do not hold positions of power. Nor are they expected to do well in the sciences, Beck said.
"A lot of it has to do with those (gender) stereotypes," she said.
"For a long time I was the only woman in my department on the agriculture side," Beck said. "Today, we still have very few women department heads in IANR (Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources). There are no women deans in IANR. And of course there are no vice chancellors or assistant associates."
Studies find both women and men are much quicker to criticize a female boss than they are to question a male boss.
A male boss has "has high standards," Caplan said. A female is a, well, you know.
"Outspoken, assertive women take a rap. We are not supposed to be assertive and aggressive," she said.
Women also are not supposed to disagree or argue. "They take prozac so they won't ever feel angry," Caplan said.
Myth 2: Females are naturally tidy, graceful and do not wish to venture far from home.
"If a guy never washes the dishes, women just roll their eyes and say, `you know men,'" Caplan said. "But they really get after the woman who does that."
Myth 3: Females are so emotionally needy that they will drain everyone around them if they are allowed free rein.
Add to that the female tendency to place a greater value on approval and attention from men, who are less apt to give it, and it is easy to see why women need and long for some emotional, caring attachments from their own gender, Caplan said.
Myth 4: Females are naturally and endlessly nurturing.
Not all are. But females who are tend to have better relationships with others -- men and women alike.
Deb Dabbert, principal at Hawthorne Elementary School, leads like she wanted to be led years ago but wasn't.
"People need someone to talk to. Someone to listen to them. And someone to back them up," Dabbert said. "I am huge on communication and relationship building ... Since that is important for me, I want to provide that for other people, too."
Studies of female college students find they are more apt to turn to female professors, faculty and administrators when experiencing personal problems, Caplan said.
They don't go to men, nor do they expect such nurturing from a man. And when the overextended female boss doesn't respond as expected, she's the "b" word, according to Caplan.
So what are the answers?
The answer is not to raise the bar on our expectations of men, Caplan said. Instead, she said, "We need to bring the expectations of women under control."
And women need to band together to dispel the myths. Together they can identify what bothers them, work out their problems and quash the myths.
"On a woman-to-woman basis, we can go beyond myth and tradition," Caplan said. "And we can still pursue the nurturing."
It will make the world a better place for all of us.
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.