The Role of Women


Recently, I came across a short film called "Domestic Policy" due to procrastination at its finest, and if you aren't following me on Twitter when I tweeted about it - stop right here and go watch it, it's only 6 minutes and 40 seconds!

SUMMARY OF THE FILM
A satirical comedy which wryly suggests that today's obsession with female appearance was borne out of one official government meeting that took place just after WW1.

(side note - not sure if they meant WW2 in the summary of the film?)

This short film made me wonder when exactly was female appearance the sole focus for women? As mentioned in the film, women were building munition, airplanes, ships- also in WW2 many women were mechanics (To name one - Queen Elizabeth II trained in London as a mechanic and military truck driver) (If you just type in 'Queen Elizabeth mechanic during the war' in Google, and select images, you can see for yourself!)

I understand that the appearance of a woman was always somewhat there, but what enlarged it to essentially what it is today? I've searched and came up blank.

If we look back into history on what women were doing, they were mechanics during the war, building airplanes etc. yet now people are saying oh that's not a job for a woman

A woman is capable of anything if she keeps her mind to it. Being a woman does not mean she is less intelligent (looking at you Polish MEP), it does not mean she is incapable of handling large mathematical equations (have you seen Hidden Figures?)- all limitations of what a women can do is, in some ways, male constructed and in someways self imposed by women themselves because of what they hear they should do rather than contribute to society with what they want to do.

I'm not saying drop the beauty blender and pick up an engineering textbook - what I'm saying is, if you want, you can have the beauty blender in one hand and the engineering textbook in the other.  (Or whatever textbook you want to hold.) You don't have to choose one or the other, you can do both. Don't limit yourself to one thing, the word multitasking isn't there for modeling in the dictionary. If you want to do just one thing, that's cool too, just know that there's nothing stopping you from doing more than one.

If you choose to watch the short film- let me know your thoughts in the comments below! (or on Twitter, I basically live on Twitter.)




2 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you. Women won't go for so-called men job and will do what they should do instead of what they can do. They will limit themselves because of constructs that society created and imposed on them. Thing is, during WWII, women had an essential role to keep countries and industries running but as soon as men were back from war, they send women back to there kitchen. Leaving women at work would be too threatening to the current society model. Also since society is in the majority ruled and governed by men, by extention, they limit what women can do. xx COrinne

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    1. Yes! In terms of WWII since men were away in war, the women had to fill in the vacancy to keep everything running, but when the men came back it's like well women don't need to do the job anymore because now the men are here to do it. I think it shows that women are capable of doing a 'male's' job but if it is at the cost of the male not having that job that's when it becomes an issue. It's like only if there are no men then okay women have to do the job because they are the last option but if there are men able to do the job it's like well men are available to do the job so no need to even think of a woman doing the job.

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