Social Construction of Femininity

This topic has been dealt with, a number of times and is always one of the most talked about issues, but still it has not got ingrained in the people’s minds and is not making landmark effects which it should be making. Till date, most of us seem to be conforming to the cultural edicts which we should be challenging, rather vehemently.
Many a times the staunchest of feminists happen to be conforming and adhering to the stereotypes and cultural traits associated with “females”, quite possibly unconsciously! This made me inquisitive about the female psychology and the elements that go into the making of it. It also rang the bell in my mind regarding the female stereotypes, most of the times, which are even endorsed by the psychoanalysts. I wondered that for the stereotypes to have made such a strong hold there has to be some authentication. Sometimes I found myself also saying and believing certain stereotypes like ‘females are bad drivers’ or ‘girls are gossip mongers’ or ‘girls do not have a philosophical bent of mind’ or ‘politics and news does not interest them’ or that ‘shopping is synonymous to females’. I looked around and realised that today also in the wake of modernity, these traits are very much existent even among the most educated breed of the gender that is referred to as “female”. Then I mulled over it and read some books and realised that why would not be there such traits with specificity to females? Why would not be women lagging behind? The point to be noted here is that they are not lagging behind in anything else but in a very basic thing – lagging behind in the race of becoming a human being!
I realised that females, if, are lagging behind in certain things, then this can be the only reason that females happen to be the late entrants in everything created and invented in man’s world by the men, for the men and of the men!
The concluding line could be the statement made by Simone De Beauvoir regarding females, “As long as she still has to struggle to become a human being, she cannot become a creator.”