“Oh, how I love being a woman!”
Being a woman is beautiful and empowering. But it can also be extremely frustrating. I have grown up understanding that women have historically been viewed as inferior in our society, and I am aware of the prejudices we have faced and continue to face today. Almost everything our country was founded on and operates on was designed by men, for men. I mean, the “Declaration of Independence” even states that “all men are created equal.” And even then, the “men” they were referring to were really only white and wealthy. What about everyone else?
I am sure we are all aware of how gender inequality is the root of many issues that disproportionately affect women and girls, such as lower pay, lack of access to education, inadequate healthcare and domestic/sexual violence, amongst a multitude of other things. These are some of the more glaring issues that we learn about in school and in other educational settings. However, there are so many other aspects of being a woman that those who identify as women are probably not even aware of.
If you’re a woman, or anyone for that matter, you probably remember learning about puberty in grade school. I remember our teachers separated us into boys and girls and played a video for us where a teenage girl explained periods, acne, bras and mood swings. As a 10-year-old, I remember being confused and scared about these changes that were supposedly going to happen to my body very soon. Flash forward to high school health class. We briefly touched on sex, but not nearly enough. America’s lack of sex education is a whole other issue, but overall, my K-12 school career taught me very little about what it is physically like to be a woman. Now, I know that “being a woman” is not something that is really taught in school. However, as I have grown older, I have become enlightened about how our society functions according to men, for men.
Men have a 24-hour hormonal cycle, where their testosterone levels are highest in the morning and lowest at night. This essentially means that they are perfectly in sync with the standard 9-5 workday. The morning is a great time for men as their testosterone levels are at their peak. Women, on the other hand, operate on a 28-day hormonal cycle, meaning that their energy levels are not exactly synced with the traditional workday. Women’s bodies are not so perfectly compatible with the way society has been constructed, which is not shocking when the world is designed by men, for men.
Furthermore, I also recently learned that it wasn’t until 2003 that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began to sometimes use female crash test dummies when simulating crashes to determine the safety of vehicles. 2003. This is directly related to the fact that women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. Once again, this all has to do with the fact that cars were designed by men, for men. Women were also left out of clinical trials in medical research until 1993 and are still routinely left out of biomedical research today. When women are continuously overlooked as vital parts of our society, our world continues to be shaped for men.
In 2023, we still live in a world that is perfectly catered to men. Now I don’t know about you, but I was completely unaware of all of this information until I did my own research. This is not something I have ever been taught in school or ever been made aware of as a woman. As a society, we need to push for more education about women’s bodies, and all bodies for that matter, and equity when it comes to gender disparities. The fight for gender equality isn’t going away anytime soon, but we can always be advocating for and striving towards a better future for all.