Women Who Feign Their Strength Are Weaker, Science Says

It is infuriating when women are referred to as the weaker sex.  However, the concepts of femininity, strength and weakness often come into conflict with each other.  If a woman is feminine in the traditional sense, is she playing a delicate role that allows her to be submissive to men?  According to new research, some women who overcompensate for their strength to the point of feigning, faking or misrepresenting it are actually weaker than other women.

Femininity and strength. Are the two mutually exclusive? Can a woman wear dresses and girly things and still be recognized as strong?

Overcompensation. Some researchers believe that women feign their strength to overcompensate for certain insecurities. As such, women who come across as overly aggressive or "alpha" are often less secure than other women.

One or the other. So, do women have to choose? Soft and feminine or masculine and abrasive?

A woman's place. It is still difficult to navigate a woman's place in the world. If a woman loves cooking, is nurturing and maternal, is she reinforcing negative stereotypes and submissive roles for women?

Defining masculinity. If you want to see just one example of the subtle ways our culture devalues femininity, all you have to do is Google a few things. First, search for “define masculinity,” and look at how it’s used in the example sentence. It says, “Handsome, muscled, and driven, he's a prime example of masculinity." Now Google “define femininity.” (Mia Mercado, Bustle.)

Defining femininity. That sentence reads, “She celebrates her femininity by wearing makeup and high heels.” I was going to try to make some point about how “Wooow, look at the stark difference between how men and women are viewed wooow,” and maybe there’s something there about women being valued for how they look and men being valued for what they do. But my gut reaction to high heels and makeup being "bad?" That's exactly what I'm talking about. Our culture devalues femininity in all kinds of ways, and so much of the time, we don't even notice it's happening. (Mia Mercado, Bustle.)

What do men believe? Reportedly, over 50% of men believe that in general, sexism is over. A survey conducted by mic.com put the figure at 56%.

Sexism in the workplace: harassment. In 2015, Cosmopolitan surveyed 2,235 women between the ages of 18 and 34 and found one in three had suffered sexual harassment on the job. That same year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed 52% of sexual harassment claims. That might help explain why, in a 2013 YouGov/Huffington Post poll, 70% of participants who said they had been sexually harassed at work also said they never reported the behavior. Source: mic.com.

Not just a US problem. A study from August found that 52% of U.K. women had been sexually harassed at work. The European Union estimates that between 40% and 50% of women "experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace." Source: mic.com.

Harassment online. Unsurprisingly, women face a very particular brand of online harassment at a higher rate than men do: A 2014 Pew Research study on online harassment indicated that women were more likely to be sexually harassed and stalked online.Twenty-five percent of women between the ages of 18 and 24 reported having been sexually harassed, against 13% of men in the same age bracket; 26% reported having been stalked, to just 7% of men. Source: mic.com.

Blatant sexism. "Blatant sexism is getting easier to call out and acknowledge. This isn’t to say that blatant sexism doesn’t still exist, as evidenced by these facts on sexism from Mic. However, people arguably have an easier time understanding why violence and harassment against women is bad than, say, why calling something “girly” shouldn’t be an insult. This in no way is meant to compare those two examples as equally harmful; they aren’t. But the subtle way we talk about women, the nuanced ways we view attributes associated with women, become ingrained in us individually and as a culture. The less we value characteristics attached to women, the easier it is to justify devaluing women as a whole." (Bustle.)

Viewing kindness as a weakness. Many qualities that are associated with femininity are considered weak, and therefore have a negative connotation. For example, being kind and giving. "Being kind and gentle are traditionally associated with femininity. (Something something "sugar and spice.") But according to what our culture teaches us, being too nice or too kind is connotative of being a pushover or a someone people can walk over. That paired with the idea that "masculine = strong; masculine = opposite of feminine; therefore, feminine = opposite of strong" gives people the notion that kindness = weakness." (Bustle.)

Girly. We continue to use "girly" as an insult. What does it mean if you call a man girly? It's not good; it's essentially calling him weak or a wimp.

Man up. On the other hand, it means something entirely different when we tell someone to man up. Be a man. Take it like a man. Grow a pair.

Wrapping it all up. So, is it fair to say that women who go out of their way to act and appear strong are actually faking it? The question itself is rather unfair. Do men feign strength?