Article on Mental health of women
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Women and men are different not only in their obvious physical attributes, but also in their psychological makeup. There are actual differences in the way women's and men's brains are structured and “wired” and in the way they process information and react to events and stimuli. Women and men differ in the way they communicate, deal in relationships, express their feelings, and react to stress. Thus, the gender differences are based in physical, physiological, and psychological attributes. There are psychological theories that present a gender sensitive viewpoint called as alpha bias, and there are others that are gender neutral representing beta bias. Alpha bias proposes that men and women are different and opposite, and in beta bias differences between men and women are ignored. Alpha bias is seen in psychodynamic theories and therapies where according to Freudian viewpoint, male anatomy and masculinity is the most desired and cherished goal and female anatomy and femininity are seen as a deviation. In contrast, the cognitive theories, behavioral theories, and humanistic-existential theories have beta bias.Alpha bias could be rooted more in the social conditioning and power structure in the societies.
Gender roles have been culturally prescribed through the prehistoric cultures to the more civilized societies. In hunter-gatherer societies, women were generally the gatherers of plant foods, small animal foods, fish, and learned to use dairy products while men hunted meat from large animals. In more recent history, the gender roles of women have changed greatly. Traditionally, middle-class women are typically involved in domestic tasks emphasizing child care. For poorer women, economic necessity compels them to seek employment outside the home. The occupations that are available to them are; however, lower in pay than those available to men leading to exploitation. Gradually, there has been a change in the availability of employment to more respectable office jobs where more education is demanded. Thus, although, larger sections of women from all socioeconomic classes are employed outside the home; this neither relieves them from their domestic duties nor does this change their social position significantly. For centuries, the differences between men and women have been socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism in which men assumed superiority over women and maintained it through domination. This has led to underestimating the role a woman plays in the dyad of human existence.
It is necessary to understand and accept that women and men differ in biological attributes, needs, and vulnerabilities.