The 16 Faces of Women: The Definitive Guide to Modern Woman

book.

Part One: Women’s World

Understanding Women

What do we really know about women? Are they as unfathomable, unpredictable and mysterious as they are often claimed to be? Why is it some women are driven to build business empires or sail solo around the world, while others are content to be stay-at-home housewives? Why do some women always need a man in their life, and a kitchen to manage, while others are happiest on their own, backpacking, and living in a tent? Which women are the relationship stayers, and which are the relationship travellers? Whether you are a woman or a man, these questions concern you, for women today are changing as never before. Look around you. Modern woman is a very different species from women of just a few generations ago. They have more power, they have more choices, but also they have more expectations, both from themselves and society. Modern women live complex, demanding lives made up of multiple, often contrasting, roles. To understand 21st century woman we have to go beyond out-dated stereotypes of femininity.

The aim of this book is not just to unravel women, but also extol them. In revealing the variety that now makes up the modern female species we are celebrating 21st century woman. At the same time we do not pull back from recognizing the challenges she faces, or from identifying her weaknesses as well as her strengths. Men still have power over individual women, and with this power they often seek to influence if not control women’s behaviour, simply because they can physically do so. We all know this. Unfortunately, this extremely unpleasant and often dangerous aspect of gender relations has not disappeared with the emergence of modern woman. This is why we have written this book from a feminist perspective. Not because women are powerless in the face of men, but because increasing numbers of women have power - the power to be their own woman.

But just how many types of women are there? Actually, there are probably too many female types for any single book to reveal, not least because each woman is unique, each female an individual in her own right. No two women are the exactly the same, even twins. Each woman has her own particular traits, quirks, and personality. But there are dominant patterns of feminine identity and it is these that we have discovered through our research and which we detail in this book. As you read this book, so you will surely recognize these female types, because one of them is you, or because one or more you know intimately already.

We can reveal which women are looking for long-term permanent relationships with the good guys, and which are likely to frolic with the not-so-good ones. We expose the women who are most vulnerable in love and those who are sexually adventurous. We predict the female types eager to climb the career ladder and maybe sacrifice having children in the process, and those who are more traditional, dedicated only to caring for their children. We identify the types who yearn to ‘have it all’ and those who are simply happy to ‘be’. We explain how each of these dominant female identities relates to men, family, love and career. But we also explain how a woman can be one type of female in her youth, and change to a very different type in her later years. For our research shows that women are more likely than men to shift personalities during their lifetime. The different types of femininity now available to women are clearly increasing, not decreasing. We can see this happening, for example, as more and more women engage with performances of masculinity in their leisure, careers and relationships. These women are mixing aspects of femininity and masculinity to produce their own unique feminine identity.

In understanding these complexities of modern femininity, we explain the social and psychological influences on the female psyche and how these, in turn, inform the sixteen primary female types discovered through our research. Informed by interviews with women around the world, this book reveals some of the key triggers that bring about change in women, and how such transformations inform their life choices and consequently come to alter their outlook, identity, and destiny.

Although we are detailing dominant patterns of femininity, we are also highlighting the differences and diversities amongst women today. This book is not just written for Western women, but women worldwide. For the change that we see happening to the female species is a global phenomenon, not a specific racial, ethnic, or cultural one. Women, of all classes, cultures and creeds are responding to a rapidly changing world and adapting their femininity as a consequence. Women are evolving. Which is why, for increasing numbers of women, men no longer ‘measure up’ - they are finding them too immature and limited as long-term partners. As we explain, this is because men are slower to evolve as a species – they are less reflexive and adaptable than women. This makes them, overall, less emotionally intelligent than women. It is no surprise to us that so many men just don’t understand the woman in their life, the woman they confess to love. They think they understand her, then apparently, she does something totally ‘out of character’, or so the man thinks. Actually, it is not out of character at all. It is just that, for the woman, the circumstances have changed and so, then, must she. This is why, for example, serial monogamy and sexual adventuring are simply now lifestyle choices for millions of women of all ages, and not moral issues.

You might ask should we be categorising female faces? Yes we should! Should we box females in and seek a pre-destined path for them? No! The aim of this book is not to stereotype or label women in a negative manner. Rather, it is a celebration of each female’s journey into womanhood, of femininity itself. Our intention is to offer an original and fresh perspective on women. We do not seek to package women in a simplistic or stereotypical form; rather we intend to provide women with insights into how their own background and experiences have come to inform their character and personality. In so doing, we reveal the intricacies of female identity, the complexities of womanhood. At the same time, we are recognising the continuing barriers to women’s advancement as a gender group and as individuals. But in acknowledging the obstacles that women overcome on their road to and throughout their womanhood, we are also acknowledging women’s increasing power in society.

What this book does not do is pander to male notions of femininity and womanhood. We feel it is important to get away from those infamous female ‘types’ that regularly circulate in the media. These labels imposed on women by some elements of society have invariably attempted to define women from a male perspective. This book looks at women in a new and original light. It draws on ancient philosophical understandings and modern sociological and psychological theories to identify and centre women from an equal perspective: questioning monolithic concepts of ‘woman’ and concentrating instead on the diversity that reflects modern femininity.

The writing of this book has created in each of us a renewed appreciation of women; not only a recognition of their complexity but an awe as to their in their strength and capacity to adapt and change when confronted with life’s many obstacles and trials. Admittedly, some of the female types we have identified are easier to endear to than others but all have their strengths and their weaknesses. Instead of judging, which we might have once done, as researchers into femininity we are now more sympathetic, compassionate towards those feminine personalities that previously troubled us. Indeed, as we discuss below, it has proved impossible for us to research and write this book without confronting, and accepting who we are as woman and man. To interpret the reality of others we have had to reflect on ourselves and move out of our individual gendered comfort zones. Our hope is that you not only enjoy this book as much as we did writing it but perhaps too come to reflect on, if not question, your own secure comfortableness.

Finally, it is hoped that this book will prompt modern women to stand back and ruminate where their life is heading, witness how they have progressed, forgive what has gone before and make fresh assertions for the future. And know for sure that the female face is ever changing, ever powerful, and ever resourceful. If a man, then this book will hopefully help you better understand the women in your life, and, perhaps, yourself.

Reflections from the Authors

(At particular points in the book we offer our individual reflections on the topic under discussion. We are a man and a woman; we have our individuality, our unique histories, our particular present. We want the reader to know who we are, where this book comes from, and what we personally feel about many of the important points raised in it.)

Rachael’s Perspective

As a woman setting out on such an adventure, this book was by no means an easy feat. It made me rethink some of my earlier misconceptions and categorisations of girls and women. I had to re-evaluate and question what I had absorbed from my culture and background and investigate what I saw in reality; not what I thought I knew but rather what I actually saw.

This questioning of the status quo (what I perceive as my own personal awakening) took me three years to bring to the forefront of my own mind, and although I realise that I still have a long way to go in understanding my world from a free, female perspective, the hard ground work in my own personal life has been established.

As a mature student my world opened up when I started studying the wonderful complexities of sociological philosophy, and through sociology I stepped away from what had been comfortable (in my mind) to a world that was made initially very unclear by it. I had for so long tried to fit in, to be accommodating in a family environment whose deep religious beliefs and strong personalities took precedent over every area of my childhood and future aspirations. As impossible as trying to put a round peg in a square hole, neither did my personality fit with my constraining surroundings nor its inhabitants. For too many years, this placed my personality in a state of flux and stunted my personal growth as: a person, a mother, and a partner, because my temperament could not and would never rest peacefully until I had resolved the issue.

I have since learnt that questioning any authority; whether it be over me; with or without my permission isn’t an abominable sin (no religious pun intended) and won’t make me internally combust. For sure, many mistakes have been made on the way, but at least these have been my mistakes. These few years of finding the ‘real’ me while at university were filled with intensive reflection and many a time I shed tears after and during lectures as my life was laid bare before me; like truths suddenly envisaged. I realised that a work had to be done in me and it would be painful at times; much bravery was needed. An active decision was made by myself to no longer let my life rest on foundations laid out by male patriarchs and their superstitious rituals and traditions but find my own path of life. This would require of me to keep an open mind which at times felt like walking near a cliff edge blindfolded, something described by the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) in his concept of ‘genealogy’, as an analysis of personal descent into new understanding and knowledge. And it changes you.

Foucault offers his solution to that which was already there (origins of organised thought) by leaving behind what we think to be considered immobile [and] unified and then choose to descend into a place which may be dark and unknowing but through the act of descent we remove everything which we have come to see as ‘normal’. It is only through this action we are able to emerge a new creature; devoid of the imprints of society, questioning social norms and values. Although Foucault’s theories were never meant to empower feminist thought he did succeed in succinctly summing up the awakening scenarios that many of us feminists have experienced. History has told us that for feminists and women all over the world, the last one hundred years has been about seizing these rules and "rendering their meanings inert and direct[ing] them against those who had initially [enforced] them. That is, not seeing men as the enemy, but neither allowing men to control women for their own selfish ends.

You too, will hopefully find yourself reaching back to memories, which force you to reassess your grandmas, mothers, sisters and girlfriends behaviour over the years, as much as I, myself, did. And rather than leaving you with more unanswered questions I hope it leads you to closure and dare I say it, peace.

Stephen’s Perspective

For me, this book began way, way back in my history. It began in my childhood, progressed through my time as a callow youth and young man, and travelled through that age before I even imagined myself capable of writing anything. Through the 1950s as a boy, the 1960s as a teenager, and onwards through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and into the 21st century, these decades witnessed me as a family man, father, careerist, and in numerous reinventions, experimentations, of self. Probably the most important of these reinventions was to the writer and reflexive male, for this gave me the impetus to explore my gender. That was not, however, my doing. This reflexivity of myself as a man came about only through my exposure to sociological theory, feminism in particular, and feminists.

I left school at 15, with no qualifications, another 11+ ‘failure’ of the 1960s. I found the desire to learn only when in my mid-30s. Like Rachael, I was a mature university student, eager to learn, hungry for knowledge, and totally unaware of how such knowledge would come to change me. What feminism did was challenge my masculinity, my concept and presentation of myself as a man. Feminism woke me up. For until my early 40s, when I began my sociological studying, researching and writing, I had been mostly sleepwalking through life. Sleepwalking can be comfortable, but only because we have no idea who we are or where we are going. Reality passes us by in our dreamlike state. Ignorance is indeed bliss, though its still ignorance. Eventually, my awakening generated a deep need to express myself, and to find out about other men. In delving into them, so I was delving into my own masculinity. It was not a particularly pleasant exploration at times: a messy, emotional, dirty business. But the books followed as a consequence. And in the doing of the writing and reflection, so I became more content, mindful, and calmer. Then I got into Buddhism, but that is another chapter of my life, indeed another book entirely.

‘The Many Faces of Women’ has been five years in the doing, and without doubt the hardest to write of any book I have done. Partly this is because it has been too easy for me, as a male, to slip into the very stereotyping and maleist assumptions of women that I reject and wish to critique. Even naming this book has brought its complications. It has been a journey that has challenged my own thoughts on women as well as being a joy to see completed. It certainly could not have been accomplished without Rachael’s collaboration. Her insights have brought clarity via her illuminating and direct honesty. As a woman, she brings a feminine gaze and subjectivity that is always going to be beyond me, a man. As with any collaboration, disagreements have been aired on a regular basis, though I believe it has made for a more robust and well-rounded book. One beneficial point however, that was not lost on me when inviting a fresh feminist such as Rachael McNicol to join this venture, would be in countering any claims that it’s yet again a book about women from a male’s perspective. Moreover, as the old adage says ‘two heads are better than one!’

Finally, my thoughts and reflections on modern women. I have been researching, writing and lecturing on gender for over 20 years and still I am often unsure as to what I am seeing when I look at modern relationships. Are women still oppressed by men, or have they moved on to some new empowering place of gender equality? Is feminism still relevant for modern women, or is it passé? Can women have it all, indeed should they expect to?

What I have learnt is that many women have moved on from the tired, bad old days of male patriarchy. There is a new freedom of expression around modern femininity that certainly wasn’t there only a few decades ago. The opportunities now available to women are vast and exciting. Yet women still have to be on their guard. Many men will oppress, they will be violent, they will try to get an advantage if they can. Gender stereotypes persist across society as do gender inequalities. And men won’t give up whatever power they have that easily. So can women trust men? Not fully. Some men, certainly, but not the whole male species. It’s a hard lesson of life. So if women have changed, can men do so too? Yes, they can. I have seen it for myself. One can be optimistic about that, at least as a possibility. But for men to change they need to understand themselves as men, in the way that women understand themselves as women. To make that move, men first need to have the balls to get out of their restricting masculine comfort zones. Hopefully, they can do this because if they don’t they will remain incomplete, stunted humans. In Darwinian terms, men will have become largely irrelevant if not detrimental to human progress, especially when compared with an increasingly influential if not dominant female species.

Female Identity

When we embarked on the research for this book we weren’t sure what we would find. Close friends told us that it would be an impossible task - sheer lunacy. Surely, there would be hundreds of female personalities? How would one go about identifying the key characteristics of modern women? Can women be