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Women fear different things and fear them differently from men. The difference may be the result of a dissimilar history between the two sexes. Women have always been portrayed in literature and even in mythology as submissive and passive – and femininity had been considered a gender next only to being male. This history (take note that this review of views on women is still based on history, that is, “his story” – and not “her” version) shrouds the female personality and pushes deep within women a collective unconscious, which is exclusively theirs.
However, even though their place in history have so many effects on their generalized fears, personal experiences must also be taken into consideration. A woman who suffers wife battery may eventually develop fear of marriage (or even just on things associated with wedding ceremonies like wedding rings, gowns etc.). A woman who was raped may start to fear dark places or dead-end alleys. Other terrifying experiences, each unique to every individual, may have varied impacts on different women.
Also one thing to be considered here is the difference between fears and phobia. According to Reader’s Digest’s ABC’s of the Human Mind, fear is more of a reaction to a real threat – a specific threat. It is also noted that, “fears may [even] function as protective devices.” When a woman tries to observe her surroundings or the things that are happening around her, she can work on the information she gets for her advantage. For an instance, she learns from the news that most female victims of rape were assaulted in narrow alleys; she can then avoid narrow alleys as a protective adjustment in her behavior.
Phobia, on the other hand, is “like a fear gone wild, robbing a person of reason.”(1) When the woman cannot function normally anymore because of the fear, it has definitely turned into an irrational phobia. For example, she will not go to work anymore because she is afraid of being raped and she needs to pass by narrow corridors when going to her office. The worst part in having phobias is that a woman knows that her fears are somewhat irrational, and even at some times, foolish – and yet, she continues to fear about them.
Most Common Fears of Women
As mentioned earlier, these more common and more generalized fears are somewhat part of the women’s collective unconscious, as how Jung would call it. In most cases, they are not clearly manifested because women have changed a lot over the years. On extreme cases, however, these fears dominate the women’s emotions and even control their lives.
Fear of Success
Since women have a traditional view of success as only a man’s struggle – because it was thought that we were supposed to be living in a “man’s world”, some women even develop fear of being successful one day. In most patriarchal societies that exist until now, girls are taught that knowledge is important but then they are not encouraged to study beyond high school, since they’ll get married anyway and it is their husbands’ responsibility to work for them. A Woman’s achievement is used to be measured not in the work field (in having positions in organizations, getting a profession, etc.) but in the social arena – on how well she performs her duties on the different facets of her womanhood – as a child, a sister, a wife, and a mother.
In the long run, as those young girls begin to see their roles in a culture that is dominantly male, they also start being afraid of possible high grades in school. If they get high grades, they’ll eventually regret it in the end because their male classmates will resort to copying everything from them (from home works to actual tests) by using their society-given “power”. When deciding for a college course, not only the personal choice is considered but the courses to be taken as well. Some women will likely avoid Mathematics and Science courses because they are not considered feminine.
In effect, this fear of success hinders the woman’s opportunity to work on the best of her abilities. It blocks her freedom to be herself and to do the things that she really wants to.
Fear of Rape
According to the book The Female Fear(2), “women’s fear of rape is a sense that one must always be on guard, vigilant and alert, a feeling that causes a woman to tighten with anxiety if someone is walking too closely behind her, especially at night.” Also a product of patriarchal systems, fear of rape most often than not brings out paranoia. Since being female is seen as a weaker sex, a woman can always be subjected to what a man wants out of her.
But this fear of rape is not all about “rape” in the physical and sexual sense that we know it. It includes all other circumstances where men dominate women, and use his gender as an advantage over her. An other example of this fear is the fear of losing one’s job because a “male” counterpart who is just as equally qualified as she is, may be chosen to replace her in the position – all because she’s a woman and a man is expected to do a lot better on the work. Another fear inclusive to this is the fear of getting a divorce. Since wives were molded to be dependent to their husbands, the thought of losing a provider haunts them just the same.
Fear of Death
Even though fear of death is considered a universal human emotion, women see this as a correlative of their fear of rape. Still according to The Female Fear, “women say that the worst aspects of rape are the possibility of being killed and the possibility, or perhaps, the likelihood, that if they survive, they nonetheless will be humiliated and stigmatized.” Dying is feared probably because it will prove that they are really weak and unable to cope with their sickness (if they died of sickness) or situations (if they died of unexpected events).
Death is also feared because it interrupts goals. When women are giving birth, there’s always a risk that they’ll die – or the child dies, and the women fear both deaths because it would fail to realize her eventual motherhood or whatever plans she has for herself or for her child in the future.
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1 Also from Reader’s Digest’s ABC’s of the Human Mind, edited by Alma E. Guinness
2 The Female Fear is written by Margaret T. Godon, and Stephanie Riger
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