From the moment we come into this world wearing nothing but our birthday suits, we are involuntarily thrown into a fierce social competition. Every time we reach a certain stage of our lives, we will be invisibly graded by society according to various standards. In order to gain high scores against these different standards, we have to work hard and tirelessly. It can feel like we are forced to become contestants and are constantly being scored and evaluated. However, different competitions and different competing groups have their own scoring/evaluation standards. Let’s talk about what standards a woman will likely be measured against as she travels through the different stages of her life.
The initial stage of the competition is from infancy to childhood. As an infant, you may be evaluated by your appearance, rate of development, and even whether you were breastfed or not. To be “excellent”, you need to grow up as a healthy and cute baby, smiling sweetly. But at this stage, you are a passive participant in the competition and won’t really be all that aware of it. It’s actually more a “competition” among the parents!
The intensity of the competition increases significantly by the time of adolescence. Factors such as your academic performance, extracurricular activities, talents, etc., have a great impact on the assessment of whether you are an “excellent” student. At this stage, you are no longer a passive competitor. You have become an active participant and are probably being encouraged to have the desire to “become excellent”.
When you enter the workplace, the pressure of the competition can hit you all at once. Your professional skills and experience, and your ability to innovate, communicate and manage interpersonal relationships have all become the standards against which to evaluate an “excellent woman”. However, at this stage you cannot simply continue doing what you did as a student – studying and working hard – to achieve a comprehensive level of excellence. As a modern professional woman, you also need to take into account the appearance of your body, face, your fashion sense and choice of outfits, the way you speak, even your mastery of cooking and housework to prepare yourself to get married and have kids at the ‘appropriate age’.
And if you fail to achieve this “woman’s life task” of getting married and having kids within a certain period, you will not only lose the chance to achieve ‘excellence’ against this standard, but it could have a huge influence on other future evaluations. From this point of view, this standard plays an essential role in women’s lives. This is the moment that you join the competition the most actively with the strongest desire to win, and the competition is the most intense compared to other periods.
Regardless of your age, if you do manage to get married and have kids, you may think that you are out of the spot light of society’s judgmental gaze, but there is absolutely no mercy. From a single woman to a married one, you will be less evaluated by your personal achievements, but instead assessed against how you perform in the roles of “wife” and “mother”. Do you take good care of your family members, successfully manage family matters and arrange your children’s daily life and study? Do you support your partner and help them to succeed in their career?
Can you manage the family finances and are your kids performing outstandingly at school? All of these factors will determine if you are excellent enough. Obviously, your performance as “a wife” and “a mother” is more important at this stage, but your personal abilities, including career development, skills, financial situation and appearance, still have a certain impact on the overall evaluation, even if they are not as fundamental anymore. Excellence in these areas are a bonus, and you may not be judged so harshly. You are still actively participating in the competition at this stage, but new partners are joining to fight alongside with you. Meanwhile, your desire to be excellent has also shifted from individual success to a group victory.
As you get older, society seems to judge you less and the competition eases off. In fact, the standards of evaluation are still there, but when people check your “age” blank, they seem to have lost interest in assessing your value anymore. Therefore, a lot of women will get out of the competition at this stage, and stop trying to achieve excellent scores against all the standards.
These evaluation standards are not only imposed on women by society, but also by us as women ourselves. We have been educated to want to become excellent people, and have been instilled with a competitive spirit and a desire to ‘win’. Therefore, we not only aim to achieve excellent results in those factors imposed by society, but also in other areas that can bring us “extra sweetness” such as our appearance, physique and our partner’s financial situation etc.
However, in our precious lifetime, we should not work so hard to blindly meet these so-called “standards”. We should not be so focused on earning others’ recognition and approval. Life is not all about achieving “excellence” as defined by society. As women, as individuals, we should have the courage to define our own “excellence”. After all, everyone’s life is their own and we should create and achieve our own standards. True satisfaction come from fulfilling our own self-defined standards of excellence.
New Woman Development Association of Macao was established by nine independent and confident new women. We encourage women to discover their own values and accept new things. We also call on women to break through the inner and traditional restraints and be proactive, so as to develop self-talent, and balance family with career.
