Manners And The Opposite Sex Across Cultures

Is gender equality practiced in other cultures?

I have a wonderful example of differences in treatment of gender. There is a well known writer. Her name is Sharon Bruch-McGrain., and she wrote about Nobel Prize winners in science. It is just a fascinating book going back to the Curies and all the obstacles that they faced. Well she sold the rights to Japan and she was going to be receiving the Japanese edition, and so the box came and she was all excited and she opened it up and she said oh they have made a mistake. Because it showed a woman by the stove, with a spoon, in an apron, and a little kid, teapots and little, just very domestic items on the covering. I think pink and blue. And she said, oh this must be a mistake. No it was not a mistake. It was called Mothers Who Have Won Nobel Prizes. And that is a really important illustration because it was okay to win a Nobel Prize, but first you had to be a mother. The mother came first. That was the primary role of the woman and then the Nobel Prize was just a secondary thing. But, because we are American does not mean that we do not do the same thing too. There was a headline in the San Diego paper about one of the Nobel Prize winners down there that was written about in the book. And they say LaHoya housewife wins Nobel Prize. So we do it too. As women we keep fighting it but, we have to scratch all the way up because we do not have equality. Let us face it. But it just seems more dramatic over there, and certainly the cover of that book is a wonderful illustration of attitudes.

How do dating boudaries differ among cultures?

I'd say that dating rules among regular Americans, whatever that means, are probably more lax and free and liberated. I don't know if that means in the good sense or not, but there are fewer restrictions. The girls in Latin American societies are technically more restricted, but you can see the couples outside the high school with very heavy duty petting going on right out in public because they can't do it anywhere else. The Middle Eastern young people, both Persians and Armenians ... I keep referring to them because of the local ones I see ... they're all supposed to be virgins when they get married, but they're not. I've even had a gynaecologist confide to me ... of course, now I'm telling the whole world ... that in some cultures where virginity is very much a requirement and the girls are not virgins, they plead to have some sort of little gynaecological procedure done to show that they're still virgins or be indicators of virginity.

How does the perception of wives and children differ among cultures?

In middle eastern cultures the wife and the children and considered property of the fathers. And so the fathers are not happy with American laws pertaining to child custody if there's a divorce. And so they expect that they will have custody of their children, which of course is fought in the courts here in the US.