Is the Female Self-Development Movement Letting Women Down?
I’d like to take you on a brief journey with me, but I first need to ask you a favor.
I’m writing this article without offering any clearly defined solution. My research pool consists of friends, coworkers, and Instagram polls. I have no professional experience in sociology, anthropology, or other fields that could provide more relevant insight.
But–this problem is important to me because I feel personally affected by it. I see it impacting other women in my life, and it’s made it even harder to navigate our post-modern, confusing, and highly politicized world.
So, that being said, your patience, open-mindedness, and willingness to bear with me is appreciated.
Instead of providing you with stacks of research, I’m offering a personal account. As someone who’s been taken captive by the self-development world for six-plus years, I’ve found the female self-improvement, self-love, and self-care narrative to be kind of…patronizing.
Here’s what I mean. In an arena like self-development, which is based on the idea that we should be expanding our capabilities, building our potential, and well…developing, there is an interesting redirection of responsibility happening.
I first stumbled upon this idea upon receiving a newsletter from Chris Williamson, and the excerpt he quotes pretty much sums it up:
“‘My current belief is that male self-improvement sees the person as mutable and the world as immutable. So you need to be the best person possible while accepting the rules & environment you are in.
This is in contrast with the female self-improvement, which sees the person as immutable and the world as mutable. So women are taught to accept yourself and try to change the support structures and society you are in.’” -KH
In other words, female self-development tends to focus on self-acceptance, rather than self-improvement. Any need for accountability shifts onto the societal structures, and in order to be the best version of ourselves, we’re told we need to love ourselves more.
Here are my concerns with this:
Deep down, we all have a very real awareness of our shortcomings. When other people tell us that we’re perfect, that our problems are the world’s fault and not our own—we don’t really believe them. In fact, it makes us feel worse.
No responsibility means no autonomy. If the blame we’re supposed to take is removed from the table, our agency is too.
It feels like, deep down, we’re being told to blame societal structures because the world doesn’t believe in our ability to solve our own problems.
Perhaps this is why I’ve clung so tightly to the Goggins and the Jockos and the macho-ist, muscly rendering of self-improvement. It’s the only version that offers a message that feels truly empowering.
Men are given clear blueprints: take personal responsibility, work hard, build valuable skills, and do the things that will give you higher status.
Women, on the other hand, are given a map with directions scratched out, and the words, “you don’t need a map, you’re beautiful : )!” in its place.
Where are our blueprints? Where is our guide?
Women are sophisticated, nurturing, creative, intuitive, intelligent beings. Yet we lack clear ideals to strive for. We don’t have a path that accounts for our strengths, our temperament, or our nature while still giving us the autonomy we deserve.
My first thought, when I came across this problem, was to find a female archetype that could be reverse-engineered. This way, we could uncover clear ideals to strive for. But this is proving to be more difficult than I thought.
So far, I’ve consulted with some friends, and they’ve helped me nail down some feminine ideals (qualities that are unique to us, and can be used to harness incredible potential): being compassionate, nurturing, the ability to tame nature, having a high emotional IQ and intuition, having a vision of the big-picture, proclivity toward abstract thought, and being perceptive.
Of course, this isn’t everything. I don’t believe in putting women in a box and I realize there’s a lot of nuance in terms of what the right “path” is. I guess I’m just looking for a place to start.
If you have any thoughts, feel free to let me know. All I know is I’m tired of the empty platitudes, and utterly unhelpful advice like, “just love yourself.” The way I see it, women are being under-served, and our potentials are being under-served too.
