‘Women’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 2

First it was a problem supposedly only for gay men, drug users, and the promiscuous, then for Eastern Europeans and Africans, and now it is women who are said to bear the brunt of the virus and be the ones who should empower themselves and stop the virus in its tracks. Women taking responsibility for men’s behaviour. Sound familiar?

“Reclaim the night” is a women-only march in London, demanding justice for rape victims in a country in which, according to the British Crime Survey (2001) there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year, around 40,000 attempted rapes and over 300,000 sexual assaults — with a paltry conviction rate of 5.3%.

According to an overview of thousands of psychology studies, men and women are psychologically very similar. So why are so many of us convinced that women are from Venus and men are from Mars?

It doesn’t take much to make a man feel satisfied with his body: a look in the mirror and a sense of well-being seem sufficient. For women, however, changes in body image need to be supported by hard, physical evidence. The results follow up on an earlier study suggesting that mirrors can make women feel worse about working out.