Traditionally, women expected inequality in marriage, looking for husbands who were older, taller, richer, and more intelligent than themselves. Not surprisingly, these same husbands continue to earn more and expect their careers to take precedence. We used to be taught to avoid even the appearance of equality lest it threaten the marriage and lead to competition and conflict. Today, women seek equality, but the male game of “Anything you can do, I can do better” makes for a dull world.
lk 109
American men a firmly encouraged to move away from closeness to their mothers, with really strong ties considered slightly pathological, not quite manly.
lk 104
Women have traditionally been regarded as conservative and inclined to stay at home. Going forth to seek adventure as been regarded as male speciality—running away to sea, joining the circus, seeking new worlds to conqure. But conquest is not the best route to learning.
lk 66
Building and sustaining the settings in which individuals can grow and unfold, not “kept in their place” but empowered to become all they can be, is not only the task of parents and teachers, but the basis of managament and political leadership—and simple friendship.
lk 56
…she was largely unaware that being female can be just as much of disadvantage as being black. “You’ve got to get out of the household at least for a moment to meet up with the race question, but you wake up every day meeting the gender queation, so you donät even notice it. It’s pretty intimate.”
lk 44
The fine old idea of a path and a commitment turns out to be illusory for many people, not only for geographical and political refugees but for cultural refugees displaced by the discontinuities of custom and economy. Even those who continue to wear the same professional label survive only because they have altered what they do. Being effective as a banker or a restaurateur or a general means that one has relearned one’s craft more than once.
lk 9
If change were less frightening, if the risks did not seem so great, far more could be lived.
lk 8
Today, the materials and skills which a life is composed are no longer clear. It is no longer possible to follow the paths of previous generations. This is true for both men and women, but it is especially true fo woman, whose whole lives no longer need be dominated by the rhythms of procreation and the dependencies that these created, but who still must live wiht the discontinuities of female biology and still must balance confliciting demands. Our lives not only take new directions; they are subject to repeated redirection, partly because of the extensions of our years of health and productivity. Just as the design of a building or of a vase must be rethought when the scale is changed, so must the design of lives. Many of the most basic consepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed their meanings: Work. Home. Love. Commitment.
lk 2
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