Male Images and Stereotypes

Abstract

Women have complained long and hard about the qualities they have traditionally been expected to display, such as demureness, compassion, care, receptivity, and so on. But not so much attention has been paid to the stereotypes that are attached to men, or there has been an unspoken assumption that these are preferable. Of course, as I have said before, one cannot blame the women’s movement for not looking at men’s position with sympathy — that is something they want to get away from. It is up to men to articulate their anger and frustration at being stuck again and again with the same attributes. Here is a cogent feminist argument:

As a result of their socialization, most women have over-developed certain attributes such as warmth, compassion, tenderness, intuitiveness, nurturance and flexibility at the expense of certain others equally important for effective human functioning, for example, assertiveness, endurance, initiative, industry, risk-taking, and self-reliance.¹