Hello and welcome to show 283 of our podcast “Absolutely Intercultural”. Today, we are going to talk about the different cultures men and women live in – we are looking at different Gender Roles. No matter how progressive our parents think they are, all of us are confronted with gender roles from a very young age. As kids, in our still binary world we learn the concepts of “girls” and “boys” from our parents, grandparents, kindergarden and school teachers, etc. Later, these assumptions develop into a set of gender roles of “men” and “women” that we bring to our adulthood, our relationships, our workplace, and again pass on to our own kids. Our international guests, today, grew up in the United States, the Czech Republic and in Germany and share their own personal experiences and views regarding gender roles. What worries young men and women nowadays? What kind of new challenges do they face? How do they deal with it?
absolutely manly
In our first category, “absolutely manly”, we will listen to Jacob from the United States. Jacob tells us that the attitude “A real man does not cry” is still very present in everyday American male culture and even school boys will do anything not to be seen crying in front of other school children.
absolutely divided
In our second category “absolutely divided”, we will hear from Teresa. She believes that everyone, man or a woman, should be free to make their life choices independently of cultural gender expectations. However, Teresa also shares her worries, that more and more difficult choices between mother and career can put women under even more pressure.
absolutely unfair
Finally, in our last category “absolutely unfair”, we listen to Sebastian from Germany. Even though we have managed to achieve more gender equality in the 21 century, Sebastian noticed that some women still look for traditional men as a partner and some men, prefer to to be in a relationship with a traditional woman. And why shouldn’t they? However, Sebastian observes that, quite unfairly, it still seems acceptable for a woman to expect a man to pay for her dinner but it will be considered sexist of a man to expect a woman to cook for him.
What about you? What is your opinion about male and female cultures? Do you perhaps find this binary thinking hopelessly “old school” and 1980ies? Do you have examples where gender roles are determined by the culture of the family, the community or the country you grew up in? Have you personally ever been stereotyped because of your gender? How did you feel about that? Write a comment or mail us, we could do a follow-up interview with you in one of our next shows. On our web page, absolutely-intercultural.com, you can get more information about this show and previous episodes, and you can also leave comments. And if you enjoyed this show, please like us on Facebook too.
Please write a comment or mail us, we could do a follow-up interview with you in one of our next shows. On our web page, www.absolutely-intercultural.com, you can get more information about this show and previous episodes and you can leave comments. And if you enjoyed the show, please like us on Facebook too.
By the way, did you know we are also on iTunes or Apple Podcasts? You can subscribe to us there for free and give us a rating and a comment.
Our next show will be coming to you on 5th of May.
Until then – embrace gender equality by appreciating each other’s work – and Bleiben Sie absolut interkulturell!
The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Chief Editor: Natalia Obikhod
Assistant Editors: Sonam Tashi, Teona Tepnadze
