How do women face more societal pressure than men?
By: Annie Levine
“You have to put a smile on your face. You cannot groan, you cannot complain. You have to always be happy and content, or you will be labeled as annoying, always-whining, or ungrateful. If you are not grinning from ear to ear, people will ask ” Are you OK?” or ” What’s wrong? What if nothing is wrong? What if I am totally fine? Bottomline, to be happy is OK, to be sad is OK, or even not to show any feelings at all is also OK. Don’t let society push you. Be honest with your feelings. At a very young age, girls start to feel the need to stand out and accept the pressures of womanhood, just to please the society around them.” — Salma Waheeb
As an incoming college freshman, Romy Peretz, an 18-year-old female, hoped of rushing and becoming a member of one of the sororities at the University of Florida. Considering the worldwide pandemic that has taken place over the last two years, meeting the current members of the Greek communities has been more difficult than ever. It is hard to participate in in-person activities due to health and safety reasons which leaves the only form of communication left, technology.
Peretz describes that she had to select a picture to submit to the sorority, create a video message to answer a couple of questions, and had to make sure that her Instagram feed was looking its best. While scrolling through her camera roll, Peretz explained how she could feel the pressure in her head to choose the right picture. “What would they think of her based off of one picture?”, she thought.
Maybe she could have chosen this picture of her with her friends to show that she interacts socially, or maybe she could have chosen this picture of her at the beach in a bikini to show off her body, and lastly, she could have chosen this picture of her with her boyfriend. She believed that one of these pictures might have been the one but started to doubt herself and wondered if the picture she chose would be good enough. Would it meet the societal standards pressured on her from the sorority’s expectations?
Like Peretz, many other incoming freshman girls are facing the societal pressures of rushing a sorority. However, the incoming freshman boys looking to pledge a fraternity do not have to go through the same things. They do not need to make sure their Instagram feed is looking a certain way, they do not have to submit a picture of themselves, and just do not have to follow the same procedures that the girls do. This goes to show that there is still gender division in our world after thousands of years and women naturally face more societal pressure than men do.
According to www.lumenlearning.com, a gender role is how people are perceived based on society’s expectations about how they should look, act, etc. This is similar to the process of socialization because people are actually being influenced and pressured by society on how to act, what to look like, and so much more. Women go through the process of socialization at almost all points in time because society has created these social norms on what the definition of a woman is. On the other hand, men do not necessarily feel these substantial pressures that women face because they hold a prominent rank in society where no one really tells them what to do and how to act and how to feel.
Even when children are born, parents provide them with various toys to play with. However, society has pressured both genders to play with certain toys because that has been the social norm for many years. Girls are not usually given masculine toys, and are given dolls and dresses because society pressures them into being ‘softer’ and gentler than rambunctious boys. Some people judge and find it odd when a girl wants to play with a truck or a superhero, but girls should be allowed to play with whatever toys they want without feeling the pressures from society to do ‘girly’ things.
Politics
“There are more serving in Congress than ever before, and a record number are currently running for president in 2020. But even with these significant gains, women — both in the U.S. and around the world — can still find gender equality elusive.” — www.politico.com
The definition of patriarchy is “a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.” The United States political system is similar to this because it is a system in which men are seen as the dominant gender and women face a myriad of societal pressures that influence them to not be interested in this aspect of our world. Despite the experience, education, or abilities that a women may have, the idea of patriarchy has stimulated these perceptions about women that they are less than men in a qualified way. However, the existing cabinet members as of right now include a variety of culturally diverse men and women. This term, we also have a woman serving as Vice President to President Joe Biden. Her name is Kamala Harris and she is the first female, biracial, Vice President ever. Many shroud politicians even have traditional ideas like many years ago when men were seen as the breadwinner of the family and women would stay in the house to cook, clean, and take care of the children. This old tradition has paved the way for society as years have gone on and has fueled the many inequalities and pressures that women face in politics.
Often, during presidential campaigns, the media seems to focus more on the female candidates appearances when they should be focusing on what really matters. Whether one of them may change their hairstyle or decides to wear a certain something at a press conference, it is pointed out by the press rather than talking about their political agenda and views on a political situation. The female candidates then feel more pressure to look nice and proper and have relevant/qualified information ready if needed. Women should not be judged and pressured by how they look and because this does not happen to the men politicians, women do feel more pressure than they do.
Social Media
According to www.theguardian.com “- One in three young women feel under pressure to present themselves as having a “perfect” life on social media, a survey has found. In a poll by the charity Girlguiding, 35% of girls aged 11–21 said their biggest worry online was comparing themselves to others.”
Women all around the world use social media as a way to interact with their friends and peers. Even though this is one of the positive effects of social media on people, society has enabled social media to have an array of negative effects on so many women’s personal being. Having the ability to post pictures and chat with friends on Instagram, so many girls see these pictures and feel bad about themselves because they do not look the same way. Society has also created so many different apps that allow you to edit your photos and alter the way you look. This lowers so many innocent girls’ self-esteem and puts pressure on them to change the way they look. They may start to doubt how beautiful they are on the outside however we all know that what really matters is the beauty within you.
“Girls are on social media all the time and follow celebrities and friends. But everyone portrays their “best self” on social media and it’s not accurate. They can use Photoshop and can change their appearance, and that sets people up to fail as they think they should look like that, but it’s not a realistic image.” — Maddie McGowan, 15 year old from Southampton
People love to post their lives on social media. What they had for breakfast, what they are doing that day, who they are with, and almost anything else you can think of. The thing with this is that people only show what they want people to see and don’t post the parts of their lives that they are ashamed of. These perfect lives that people post all over social media make people think that their lives are bad, boring, and so many more negative things.
When Peretz was interviewed, one thing that she said that was targeted towards social media was, “It’s good to an extent, a good way to connect with people that you do not see every day and even family and friends that live far away from you. But I think that when it’s taken to extreme levels like social media influencers and social media based on the focus of likes and comments, that it has a really negative effect on people’s mental health including women.” Similar to research, people feel that social media has its ups and downs, but women face numerous societal pressures from it. Men on social media do not take as much effort into putting on the right outfit, making sure that their hair looks good, having great lighting, taking the picture with a nice background, etc. This puts more pressure on women to look their best which may just be too much for someone to handle.
The effects of the gender-based pressures that women face are immeasurable. These pressures do not end or get easier despite what age you are, but grow to be more present and influential in the day to day lives of thousands of women across the world. Peretz’s is influenced by society as she grows and goes off to college. She faces new struggles and pressures of rushing a sorority however this story is not a very unique one. These pressures follow all women throughout the Greek life in the American school system and all other women throughout the world every day.
