Women and Others

I struggle to understand the world.

Not only the news, but also daily life. The more I look at society, the more I feel that many of the world’s problems come from one old structure: cultures built around men, around physical power, around the idea that strength gives legitimacy.

When people talk about war, they often say, “women and children are dying.” This is used to create emotional impact. But why? Are men not human? Is it less tragic when men die? Saying “women and children are dying” actually means: the powerless are being crushed in between. Men dying, killing, and being killed has been normalized. But when women and children die, we suddenly feel shocked. Of course we should feel shocked. But why are we not equally shocked by all human death?

Why have we not overcome this after thousands of years?

The rulers have mostly been men. The soldiers have mostly been men. Most of the names recorded in science, politics, philosophy, and history are men. This is not because women were less capable. It is because society was shaped in a way where men had access, visibility, education, property, freedom, and legitimacy. Women were not competing under equal conditions. Even under male dominance, many women achieved extraordinary things, but their stories were ignored, minimized, or forgotten because they did not fit the dominant narrative.

Culture still imagines men as providers and women as caretakers of the home. This is not only an old village mentality. It exists almost everywhere, even in modern societies. We like to tell ourselves that this is no longer true. But look around. Look at workplaces, politics, engineering, business, and daily assumptions.

When you hear “engineer,” who do you imagine?
When you hear “secretary,” who do you imagine?
When you hear “architect,” “taxi driver,” “boss,” “manager,” or “CEO,” who appears in your mind?

And why are we still surprised when these roles are occupied by women?

Why is a male bus driver normal, but a female bus driver still something people notice? Why is a male leader expected, but a female leader still questioned? These reactions reveal the hidden structure. The problem is not only law or policy. It is memory, language, habit, expectation, and childhood training.

From childhood, we learn hierarchy. Boys and girls are given different toys, different colors, different expectations, different emotional permissions. Boys are pushed toward action, tools, risk, competition, and control. Girls are pushed toward beauty, care, politeness, emotional labor, and appearance. Then, years later, we say: “Their interests are different.”

But why are their interests different?

Are they naturally different, or were they shaped from the beginning?

There is also a problem inside some versions of feminism. I believe there are real feminists, regardless of gender: people who question power, norms, objectification, inequality, and inherited roles. But there is also a kind of pop feminism that says, “My body, my choice,” without questioning why those choices often follow the same old rules designed by a male-centered world.

Of course, your body is your choice. Nobody should control it. But the deeper question is: why are so many choices still made according to the games of the same system?

Would a man wearing nail polish look normal to most people?
Would a man wearing a skirt?
High heels?
Deep cleavage?
Heavy makeup?

Most people cannot even imagine it without discomfort. So why are these things treated as normal, expected, or even empowering for women?

Why is beauty so often reduced to showing the body, makeup, nails, perfume, cosmetic surgery, breasts, hips, lips, and skin? Can we really call someone free if their confidence depends on products, procedures, and constant visual approval? Can we call it liberation when the standards themselves were built by markets, male desire, advertising, and social pressure?

This does not mean judging every individual woman. The problem is not one person’s makeup, dress, or body. The problem is the structure that teaches women from childhood that their value is connected to being desired, watched, approved, and visually consumed.

And when a woman rejects these codes, people say she is “like a man.” According to whom? Based on what? Who decided what is feminine, masculine, beautiful, elegant, strong, or acceptable?

I often feel sad when I see women pushed into a competition of showing more, polishing more, reshaping more, performing more. Even when they are intelligent, capable, and strong, the culture pulls their attention toward surface-level validation. It becomes difficult to respect a system that rewards appearance more than knowledge, depth, skill, and character.

I have also heard women say that women cannot be good managers. This internal acceptance is perhaps one of the strongest signs of how deeply the system has worked. The belief does not come from reality. It comes from expectations built around old norms.

But let us ask the opposite question: are men actually good managers?

If we look at history, politics, war, corporate cruelty, ego-driven leadership, corruption, and destruction, can we honestly say that men have managed the world well? Why is male leadership treated as the default, even when its results are often disastrous?

Why are women still seen as weak, emotional, secondary, or in need of protection? When will we free ourselves from thousands of years of inherited assumptions?

Cinema, media, and popular culture continue to repeat the same patterns. Women are often shown as characters who make mistakes because of love, emotion, jealousy, or manipulation. Men are shown as fighters, decision-makers, protectors, strategists, and heroes. Even when representation improves, the old templates remain underneath. We consume these stories, repeat them, normalize them, and then act surprised when society reflects them back to us.

We are trying to solve modern problems with ancient instincts. We talk about equality while still living inside hierarchies of power, beauty, money, gender, and dominance. We condemn discrimination, but our language, habits, jokes, desires, fears, and social expectations continue to reproduce it.

What a tragedy for humanity.

Gender equality does not mean claiming that men and women are biologically identical. That is not the point. The point is equal conditions, equal dignity, equal freedom, and equal access to life. The point is not forcing everyone to be the same, but stopping society from deciding people’s limits before they even begin.

This begins in language.
It begins in culture.
It begins in childhood.
It begins in the roles we imagine before we even meet a person.
It begins in the small moments where we say, “That is normal for a man,” or “That is strange for a woman.”

The issue is not only women’s rights. It is human development. As long as we build civilization around domination, physical power, appearance, and inherited roles, we will continue to call ourselves modern while living with primitive assumptions.

And maybe the most painful part is this: we are so used to the structure that we often mistake the cage for nature.