Power Woman

Nowadays, I ask all my female acquaintances, who — in my opinion — have become successful individuals, to write about their journeys on #Domokhozi. It was very surprising to find out that none of these women wish to indicate themselves as women of power.

And this is considering the fact that some of them don’t even have a man. Furthermore, some of them have two or more children; furthermore, they all work full-time, and each of them has a hobby that they plan to turn into a career which could bring them financial benefits in the future! So who would be the power woman if not you? Or, in order for us to feel mighty, do all men have to die first? And why, by the way, a strong female is viewed as something not good at all? Probably because there was, is, and will be a stereotype (especially in Russia) that every woman is meant to be weak. Weak and thus feminine. Weak and thus fragile, and fragile thus beautiful. Weak and thus available. To be weak means to be sexy in a male’s point of view. And what does it mean to be sexy for a female herself? Probably also to feel weak. A powerful woman is only attainable to a truly powerful man, who is confident in himself and his powers. That’s where the male chauvinism derives from: solely from the realization of their incompetence, from the lack of faith in one’s self and the fear that either their male part would not get hard, or it would but merely last 8 seconds… In this situation, there needs to be a weak, or even better, an insecure woman, who during the instance of his weakness, a man can diminish, insult or even hit while saying: “What a fool!”

When I begin talking about equality in the presence of men, they immediately start laughing in my face. A man’s main argument against equality is physical inequality. They claim that a woman cannot be equal with a man, because she wouldn’t be able to work in the mine like all men do. Yes, most likely, the woman is clearly losing in such position. But does equality lie in a tug of war?

Personally, to me equality is the ability for a man to essentially not judge a woman, her actions, mental abilities, and skills. To me, equality is the ability to fairly distribute responsibilities in the family. It is also a respect of a man to a woman, and vice versa. Respect, but definitely not domination.
Yes, I love to repeat that Russia is a complicated country, that our relationships with men are doomed with a lot of misunderstanding. And it all derives from traditions, culture, and history, the absence of a soulful conversation between a male and a female. In most of the cases, our relationships come down to just using each other. Every person is using another, you’d say, because it is a part of human nature? But this is not how it should be in a relationship between a man and a woman. Why can’t there be partnerships, where no one uses anyone? After all, this should be a common practice in the modern progressive world.

© Masha Lopatova