This week on The Mid Week Tease, Adelle is looking at 10 of the worst pieces of advice women are given, in her opinion.
From being told to reduce your financial ambitions so you don’t intimidate a man, to submitting for the sake of peace, enduring because “marriage is hard,” putting your career second, maintaining your appearance so a man doesn’t cheat, and being told that ultimately, every woman needs a man. Some of this advice is so familiar that we rarely stop to ask where it came from or who it actually benefits.
In this episode, Adelle explores how much of the advice women inherit about love, marriage, motherhood, money and ambition can quietly ask us to shrink, serve, endure and perform in order to fit comfortably into patriarchal expectations. We get into:
Why women are still encouraged to make themselves smaller so men don’t feel intimidated.
The difference between respect and submission in relationships.
Why “keep your marriage private” can sometimes become dangerous advice.
How “men are just like that” shifts responsibility from men onto women.
The invisible labour hidden inside the idea that women are “the heart of the home.”
Why female endurance is so often romanticised as strength.
Why a man's fidelity is not a woman's responsibility to manage.
The expectation that a woman’s career should be the flexible one once family enters the picture.
Why motherhood should be a choice not an inevitable destination for every woman.
And the bigger question underneath all of it: what choices would women make if having a man wasn’t treated as one of the greatest validations of our lives?
Adelle also reflects on some of the advice she received while married and asks whether some of what previous generations passed down as wisdom may actually have been survival strategies for navigating systems women did not design. Because we can honour the women who survived using those strategies without deciding that we have to inherit them.
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