On the Power and Roles of Men and Women

Common geneder role assignments can only take hold as they still do because women do not assert their own power enough. Often they lack self-esteem, they feel weak and powerless—and send corresponding signals of submission. Those who have their own power, on the other hand, signal authority, and this ensures equality. The question of power becomes an issue in every relationship at some point: between partners, between boss and employees, among colleagues, between parents and children, between friends, within women’s networks, and between mother and daughter.

Within couple relationships, there is a constant balancing and rebalancing of a power relationship that can repeatedly fall out of balance. Couples on an equal footing, who have the same values and goals, are less affected by this imbalance. In couple relationships in which the man is patriarchally influenced and has conservative ideas about his partner’s career, the pendulum in the power relationship will often swing in favor of the man: He will try to assert himself—either until he has her where he wants her, or the relationship breaks down, from both sides.

While men in relationships that follow traditional role assignments secure their power through income, status, and career, women in such relationships may exercise it through shared children, eroticism, and attractiveness. They adapt their behavior to the role assigned to them. But adaptation is often just a process of denial. This denial often leads to latent aggressions—toward the partner, the children, or even other women who refuse to accept a similar role assignment. Behind that denial are shame, guilt, and fear, presenting a huge emotional obstacle to personal development, needs, and desires.

So the question is essentially one of self-empowerment: How can one become more powerful in order to be recognized as an equal, on the job, but also in private life?

When you ask women if they aspire to powerful positions in corporate structures, some will wave it off, because they do not allow themselves power, are afraid of it, or fear overburdening—an overburdening that arises because they know that they have to fight for power in the existing structures and then defend it. Apart from the fact that they have rarely made it into outstanding power positions until the introduction of a quota, many women may not aspire to power.

These women may be interested in technical content, in democratic decisions in the team, in value orientation, but not in leading others powerfully and taking sole responsibility. Power, to them, seems to be something dirty that one should not aspire to as a woman. On the one hand, this is based on messages like “Power is not for you.” But on the other hand, the system-immanent over- and subordination in the hierarchical context of a company creates an environment that facilitates power abuse. The mostly male role models who exercise and often abuse power are not suitable for women as orientation. Women cannot identify with this because fights and conflicts usually diametrically oppose their value system. The idea that power also has a positive character (e.g., in the form of shaping power in leadership positions) is not anchored in them, nor is the idea of self-empowerment, namely allowing oneself to become more powerful and powerful—first of all, by getting on an equal footing.

These women are not used to seizing power. They have few role models, or only those who are far removed from their own reality. For young girls, stars on TikTok seems much more accessible, and perhaps desirable, than a female chancellor. Even their own mothers may not really be role models. Why should they be? The mothers’ generation of today’s 40-year-olds, who could now move up into management, were raised by mothers who themselves made little or no careers and were not on an equal footing with the men in their partnerships. This generation has already made it further than their mothers, often by completing a degree, but may not have a template from their own family for reconciling child and career.

So what might women who aspire to power against this background do? They look for a terrain that is easiest for them to conquer because there are blueprints for it: their own children and, often, their partners. There has always been a shift in women’s power interests in the family context.

The fact that some women give up on careers or withdraw from a certain level may also be based on the fact that they live out their lust for power on a different stage. This stage is much less dangerous for them: They do not expect to be fired, their career does not stop, but they also do not receive a bonus. They are satisfied with the power over their children and, often, their partner.

Hand on heart: Who decides who is invited to the Christmas celebration? Who controls and regulates the leisure behavior of the adolescent daughter? Who checks the homework and even the teachers? Who decides where to go on vacation? Many women support their husbands emotionally. The care work does not end with the children, but often with her own husband, who may be good at his job, but to be good in life, may need a woman to listen to him, coach him, and prepare him for meetings because she can better empathize with the sensitivities of bosses and colleagues. She does all this without pay.

The power that women exercise is intertwined. The aggression that women also have in connection with lust for power must not be openly lived out, so it is only secretly, or it is suppressed. Suppressed aggressions come back as poisoned arrows and they are called "the bitch” or “the fury” — or it results in depression.

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Such women live in self-denial and in fear of openly grasping for power. Therefore, they turn away from the company or do not strive for leadership positions, or become dependent on a partner, and thus harm themselves—and thus also do not contribute to a transformation of the system.

Copyright, Breaking Free from the Chains of Role Ascriptions.