When you were a child , what did you think it meant to be a woman?

[BVP246]

everyone has their own view point on this

mine was to be loyal

[BraveBraveMouse]

My 2 year old would probably saying that women are women as they have boobs to make milk for their babies...she loves it when we see female animals (sheep, horses) feeding their babies like she gets milk from mummy. She knows that daddy can't make milk because men can't make milk for their babies.

As a breastfeeding mother I often ponder the effect of mass formula feeding on our societal ideas of what it is to be female.

[LibertyMole]

I knew the differences between the sexes because we had dogs and I had been on a farm.

I knew that women did all sorts of different things. Some had jobs, some didn’t, some had kids, some didn’t.

I also loved Cagney and Lacey because it showed that when you were grown up you could still have a best friend.

I knew it was important not to grow up to be like Penelope Pitstop.

I found women with long painted nails scary.

I remember adult men flirting with girls from about ten upwards and being really disturbed by it, but it was quite normal in the eighties and now we pretend it wasn’t. Little girls were encouraged to be coquettish.

[Beowulfa]

I honestly can't recall much profound thought as a child about the difference between men and women. I remember being puzzled as to why grown ups had such boring jobs. I planned to own a sweet shop (and eat sweets for free all day) and couldn't understand why everyone didn't just open up a sweet shop...

I was a pony-mad (but pony-less) older child/teen and read a lot of the old fashioned pony books that featured strong girls and single, childless women running riding schools and competing. In the Jill series (written by a dry-witted Yorkshire woman) an adult says to Jill "oh 14 is such a lovely age, isn't it dear!", and Jill thinks "what an idiot, all I want is to be about 30 and to own a hunter". One of Jill's mates declares her only ambition in life is to be a famous MFH and order Annoying Posh Girl off the field for unsporting behaviour. So I associated being a woman with being able to afford a horse. Hoping to achieve that before I'm 50...

[ZenNudist]

I never thought about being "a woman". I genuinely thought my life and a male life would be indistinguishable. My dad cooked and my mum cleaned, they both worked, she had babies so I obviously knew there was a difference there but I never wanted children of my own. I only thought of my future in terms of my ambitions in life unlimited by my sex.

2 powerful female role models Thatcher and the Queen misled me that we lived in an equal society. I was quite sheltered and not observant of adults so I didn't see women exploited and mistreated by men.

Even when I started puberty and menstruating and there was some guff bandied about about "becoming a woman" I thought it was bollocks. I was still the same. I just had a hygiene issue to deal with every month.

[deydododatdodontdeydo]

A woman was what girls grow up to be. Nothing other than that.

This, pretty much. I certainly didn't see women as unpaid home-making mums, as my mum wasn't, she always worked and I had my own door key from 7yo.

[MouseyTheVampireSlayer]

As a breastfeeding mother I often ponder the effect of mass formula feeding on our societal ideas of what it is to be female.

I desperately wanted to breastfeed, but like many women, my baby couldn't. My baby got equal attention from dad when he was fed though so I don't think that's a negative message to send.

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

To be battered.
To mess up life for men who did the real work.
To be bone-idle (housework didn't count nor did endless poor condition jobs for legally less pay than men).
To be powerless.
To batter children as a displacement for how lousy their lives were.
To gamble money they did't have and risk homelessness for their children.
To lead men into temptation and persuade them to commit mortal sin.


To administer first aid.

Yes - internalised misogyny was strong with me but those were the messages that surrounded me.

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

I'll be less euphemistic - in amidst the 'tempting men to commit mortal sin' - a lot of the women in my neighbourhood were sex workers either in brothels or hanging about on streets. Definitely original sin at work in women - nothing to do with socio-economic circumstances, women's education, women's pay.

And always having babies to trap men and make the home so unpleasant that it was unreasonable to expect fathers to return home when they might expect childcare etc. to be in progress.

[Time40]

I thought it meant that you could do anything and be anything. To me, it looked as though women had more options and more freedom than men, in many ways.

[OldTurtleNewShell]

@Inthetropics

A woman was what girls grow up to be. Nothing other than that.

This pretty much nails it.

It wasn't anything I really thought much about, but it's interesting now that I do think about it. To me, they were just female adults.

[OldTurtleNewShell]

FWIW, I was a child in the eighties and a teen in the nineties. It's weird and sad to look back and realise that despite some serious problems in those eras, they were actually less sexist times and not more. We have gone so far backwards.
I blame a lot of this on pinkification.

[Grellbunt]

Sorry to hear about the scary experiences people have had, like @EmbarrassingAdmissions

[334bu]

I thought it meant that you could do anything and be anything. To me, it looked as though women had more options and more freedom than men, in many ways.

Really? I was always aware of the things you couldn't do. What made you think that way and what changed your mind?

[coronafiona]

To have a handbag and high heeled shoes that went click clack on the floor.

[midgemagneto]

To be something I was not

To care about things I didn't care about, like fashion
To hate things I loved , like maths
To be worth less than a man, shut out of conversations, ideas belittled that were then lauded when a boy spoke them
To be seen and not heard. To be pretty. To be put upon. To work hard , selflessly, for everyone else. To be stuck picking up the stuff no one else wanted

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

@Grellbunt

Sorry to hear about the scary experiences people have had, like *@EmbarrassingAdmissions*

Most annoying of all was the erasure of strong, amazing women from our family history.

I have deeply admirable women as my ancestors, survivors of appalling periods in history, businesswomen and professionals. I was an adult before I heard about them. If they were mentioned at all, it was with contempt, except wrt their religiosity.

[VettiyaIruken]

I don't recall thinking anything at all. There were women. There were men. I knew which was which but I can't recall having any feeling or emotion or thought applicable to one sex or the other.

They just were. Iyswim

[EyesOpening]

The only thing I really thought, was that I was lucky, as a girl, to be born in the western world and at this time or my life would have been awful.
My mum (estranged from my dad when I was too young to remember him) was quite a feminist (she got it from her mum, who was born before her time), even though she worked full time as a teacher, so had the school holidays off etc I didn’t really notice any juggling she had to do. We kids all had to do jobs so I didn’t notice any difference between the sexes there and I went to an all girls school where we weren’t told we couldn’t be things. I thought I could be what ever I wanted to be, as long as I had the talent and put in the work and had a bit of good fortune on my side.

[HalfBrick]

Having boobs and mopping floors. I didn't get much in the way of boobs and I rarely mop floors.

[Greenmarmalade]

Doing all the housework and working. Being the main parent. Being tough.

For me, nothing to do with dresses/make up as my mum didn’t do any of that.

[DinosaurOfFire]

As a small child, to be a "woman" was to wear high heeled shoes that made the clump/ clip clop sound as I walked. That was my dream. Every grown up woman seemed to have them. Apart from that everything was more about being a grown-up than a woman specifically- as a grownup I would go to university, be either a train driver or a writer, get married, have kids, live in my own house and drive a car.

[WTFisNext]

I only thought in terms of being an adult, not being a woman.

Both my parents raised me to try my best in everything before putting my passion into what I wanted my career to be. There was never a conversation about limiting my options because I was female or any kind of expectation that I'd give them grandchildren.

Even in school with my peers I don't remember anyone having a conversation specific to being a woman and what that meant outside of the Sex Ed classes.

As a fully fledged adult of a number of decades I still don't think about what being a woman is meant to mean. I just am one by virtue of genetics. Reasonably certain that aside from the carrying babies bit that I eventually did my path would have been the same if I'd been born male and I'd probably have ended up in the same career as I have.

I think my generation (80s and possibly 90s kids) were the last to have this unbiased approach to growing up. There wasn't an emphasis on your biology...just on you as an individual. I feel sad that the stereotypes that were long fought against by the trailblazers in the 70s are now being used against us again.

[ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]

no fun, because boys had all the fun.

it changed when I was a teenager. I did everything I wanted, including extreme sports. it was so much fun

[Ihaveoflate]

'As a breastfeeding mother I often ponder the effect of mass formula feeding on our societal ideas of what it is to be female.'

What an odd thing to say - I'm not sure I understand it. We bottle fed our baby, so maybe the idea of being female she'll have is that women can share nurturing and childcare duties with men, and that men and women are equal, mums and dads can have the same role in the family etc.

I didn't really think about womanhood in any cultural terms as a child. It was just something inevitable on account of being a girl. I suppose it meant periods and wearing a bra.

[gospelsinger]

I thought being a woman meant wearing tights and a bra.