Dr. P starts this chapter off by comparing apparently different ways that women and men in general consider what it means to “make a difference.” I followed her logic and can see the value of her research into the idea that men and women, in general, see making a difference in the world as two different things, but I think she got sidetracked on the gender issue. Because in her little “band of sisters” none of them are single career women and I see a clear difference for that category that the “married” women don’t consider.
Dr. P states that men are more prone to seeing making a difference as of worldly or cosmic significance verses women who more often see it as a more personal relationship, like in how a person or friend made a difference in someone else’s life. She admits that this is just a general observation, but she also states that she believes that women are created differently by the creator because they have a different path (again, only in general terms) to making a difference than men.
However to add my 2cents, single women have a completely different path to walk than either married women or men. In general, we are not focused on raising families or running households, or taking care of our marriages. We work and think more in terms of the men around us. To us, making a difference is more on the scale of how men see the concept. I think it is because we do not have family needs directing our vision, however, because we are women we tend to think in terms of more personal relevance than the men around us and this is where a lot of disappointment and disillusion comes into our lives. Because we, as women, take things much more internally than men (in general) our “difference” becomes an aspect of our character and if we feel that we are not contributing to the “world” then we loose not only our vision for ourselves, but our sense of self-worth as well. We have no family to tie us to a vision of making a difference in the role of wife and mother, so we strive to “make a difference” in the world of men and all to often because we see it as such a personal quest, we struggle to feel that we make a difference at all, because based on the common belief of the world we work in, if we are not changing the world literally, then we are really not making a difference. Again, this is all VERY general and cannot hold up to specific examples of men and women, but it does make a very general sort of sense.
She then goes on to say that most of the disappointment that women feel about their lives is often because they feel they don’t “measure up” to the expectations of the men around them. Her example was one of her friends saying to her husband that during her day she got her son through 10 lesson plans, but compared to her husbands managing to move 20million dollars from one bank to another successfully, she did not feel as if she truly make any sort of real difference in the world. We are raised with this STANDARD of how to make a difference in the world and many times, our difference making does not fit in the parameters of that STANDARD, which was written by men. This is NOT to put either gender down, this was simply to express that the genders look at things differently and women have to be able to see themselves outside of the shadow of men to understand the difference THEY make on THEIR path less traveled. And although more often personal and perhaps even of small significance today, the differences that women make in their everyday lives are equally important to the world around them and perhaps even more important to the world tomorrow.
She ends the chapter with a note that often the difference that women make in the world is much more likely to be intangible and not something that is easily noted. Making a friend feel better about her situation, helping a child understand that 2+2=4, putting the shopping buggy up before leaving the grocery store, smiling at the bank cashier and blessing her day, taking the time to find the right gift, not necessarily the most expensive one for someone, etc…These are not always measurable or even viewable but they can make just as profound a difference in the world through the ripples of cause and effect as any world changing celebrity or “saint".
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