male and female identities

[Stew_Matthews]

It is an interesting question Carrie, but difficult to know where you start

I think without having experienced life as the other sex, it is difficult to determine whether the expectations placed on oneself are because of your personality or sex. Is someone who is say, particularly driven/ambitious like that because of their make up or because of their sex? I don’t know. To what extent is personality determined by sex, again I don’t know.

I’ve seen enough of the world to recognise that much of it is dominated by the traditional definitions of men’s and women’s roles. There is a real absence of equality of opportunity and the West is little different, it’s just less explicit than in China for example.

In answer to the question ‘what does being a man mean’ for me – essentially it means choice. In most aspects of life, I have choices – where to live, what to do, who I spend my time with, how I spend my money. In large part, I think this is because I am a white, middle class male, to a lesser degree it is my educational efforts that opened up a good career in the oil industry. An industry that for women, is still pretty much closed off.

An interesting one to mull over…………..