Hacker News Reader

Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

That explanation doesn't work for me. Women in Germany at my age never had a shortage of anything. Yet most of them present themselves as strong and fiercely competitive. It's rare to see a German woman embrace her softer side or act playfully in public.

View on HN

We live in a society where everyone is almost fending for themselves. When we lived in tribes, a woman would rarely have to provide for herself, be competitive or fierce. She could if she wanted, but only by choice. She could just as well embrace her softness, take care of children and so on. She would always be cared for by the tribe, and would never be alone, having to earn her own means of subsistence.

Not anymore. Now women can't depend on their family or partners for subsistence. If they do embrace their femininity, become softer, or forego job time to be more time with children, they earn less, they provide less for their kids. And worse, what if the relationship ends? What then? Now she has to be full the provider. A typical man role.

So it's too big of a risk to be soft and feminine.

> It's rare to see a German woman embrace her softer side or act playfully in public.

I don’t know what your age is but this is far from my experience.

In a professional context, no more or less playful / joking than men (this varies a lot by context, of course). But outside work, yes, in public, sure.

If it doesn’t, then think about foot binding in China. It was supposedly beautiful, but it also advertised something about your social status if you could afford to deliberately render your daughters useless for field work. Consider also the traditional Western reverence for fair skin being replaced with an appreciation for tans (first indicating that you could avoid field work, then later that you could afford vacations).

The context is quite different. In a “shortage” context, women must survive both against poverty and a patriarchal society, at the same time. In Germany they are free of both.

Not sure this holds up. I'm extremely familiar with subsaharan Africa. Whether a tribe is patriarchal, egalitarian, or matriarchal in nature, you tend to observe the females "embracing softness".

I don't have an answer as to why that is, but the "scarcity" theory is consistent with my observations. The "social organization" theory is not. That's not to say that "scarcity" theory is correct, only that it isn't contradicted by observation in the same way that "social organization" theory is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com