Being a woman in Vietnam vs. in Germany
TLDRThe video details a Vietnamese woman's personal experiences growing up in a small, traditional Vietnamese village and the stark differences in gender expectations between there and Germany. She describes the immense pressure in Vietnam to birth sons, be thin and pale-skinned, and fulfill domestic duties. After moving to Germany, she was pleasantly surprised by the strength and independence of German women. She also appreciates the lack of judgment on appearances and not feeling obligated to have children.
Takeaways
- 👩🌾 Traditional gender roles in rural Vietnam placed high value on sons for lineage and care in old age, leading to disappointment at the birth of daughters.
- 😥 The speaker experienced societal pressure and mockery for being a daughter in a family without sons, contributing to low self-esteem.
- 📚 Education was seen as a way out of poverty, and the speaker's mother prioritized her studies over learning traditional domestic skills.
- 🎓 Gender expectations influenced career choices, with societal norms dictating 'appropriate' jobs for men and women.
- 💁♀️ Vietnam's beauty standards emphasized thinness and fair skin, causing the speaker personal struggle and body image issues.
- 💼 In the workplace, Vietnamese women faced the double burden of professional responsibilities and domestic duties.
- 🏼 Moving to Germany, the speaker found a stark contrast in gender roles, with women being seen as capable and independent.
- 👨🔧 The speaker learned to perform tasks traditionally seen as male roles in Vietnam, gaining confidence and skills.
- 😍 In Germany, there's less societal focus on appearance, leading to greater body acceptance and self-love for the speaker.
- 👶 The possibility of choosing to be childfree was a revelation to the speaker, showing cultural differences in life goals and family planning.
Q & A
Why did the speaker's parents particularly desire a son over daughters?
-The speaker's parents desired a son because in their traditional village culture, sons were considered more valuable than daughters. Sons were expected to carry on the family bloodline, take care of their parents in old age, and maintain the family shrine after the parents passed away. Daughters, on the other hand, were seen as belonging to their husband's family after marriage.
How did the community in the speaker's Vietnamese village view families with only daughters?
-Families with only daughters, like the speaker's, were the subject of ridicule in the village. The speaker's mother was mocked for not being able to produce a son, suggesting her body was 'broken', and her father was humiliated for not being 'manly enough' to father a son.
What impact did the speaker's upbringing in a rural Vietnamese village have on her self-esteem?
-The speaker's upbringing in a village that valued sons over daughters, along with community mockery and gender-based discrimination, significantly contributed to her having very low self-esteem during her younger years.
How did the speaker's mother prioritize her education over traditional domestic roles?
-Despite emphasizing the importance of being a good wife, the speaker's mother believed education was the key to escaping poverty and did not make her daughter perform domestic chores. Instead, she encouraged her to study to ensure a better future, even though she would later complain about her daughter's lack of domestic skills.
What societal expectations did the speaker face when choosing a university major in Vietnam?
-In Vietnam, there were different societal expectations for men and women regarding career choices. Men were expected to pursue ambitious careers like doctors, engineers, or architects, while women were encouraged to choose jobs that were less time-consuming, such as accounting or administration, to prioritize family responsibilities.
How did living standards and societal pressures in Germany differ from those in Vietnam according to the speaker?
-In Germany, the speaker observed that women were considered strong, both mentally and physically, and capable of doing tasks traditionally associated with men in Vietnam. German society did not emphasize appearance or offer unsolicited comments about body weight or beauty, focusing more on practicality and comfort in dressing. There was also a broader acceptance of women choosing different life paths, including the option to remain child-free.
What was the speaker's experience with gender roles and expectations when performing physical tasks in Germany?
-In Germany, the speaker learned that women were expected to be capable of performing physical tasks without automatically receiving assistance from men, unlike in Vietnam. She noted that in Germany, offering help to a woman without her request could be seen as underestimating her capabilities.
How did the speaker's perception of her abilities change after moving to Germany?
-After moving to Germany and being encouraged to try tasks she previously thought were reserved for men, the speaker realized that her limitations were not due to physical strength but self-doubt. She learned to perform tasks like building furniture and using tools, which significantly boosted her confidence.
What did the speaker learn about women's life goals and choices in Germany compared to Vietnam?
-In Germany, the speaker was introduced to the concept that women could choose not to have children, a stark contrast to the Vietnamese expectation of women's primary role being motherhood. This realization opened her mind to the possibility of making life choices that were not centered around traditional family roles.
How did the speaker's experiences in Germany influence her views on appearance and self-acceptance?
-Living in Germany, where there was a lack of unsolicited comments about appearance and a greater emphasis on practicality over aesthetics in dressing, helped the speaker to stop stressing about her looks. This environment contributed to her learning to accept and love her body as it is.
Outlines
😞 Growing up as an unwanted daughter in a traditional Vietnamese village
I was born into a family that desperately wanted a son to carry on the family name. As the fourth daughter, I was met with disappointment. People constantly made hurtful remarks that I was an accident and that my father would abandon us to have a son with another woman. This gave me very low self-esteem growing up.
😥 The impossible struggle to meet Vietnam's harsh beauty standards
Vietnam has incredibly high beauty standards for women regarding being ultra-thin, having white skin, and using skin-bleaching products. I constantly dieted and used dangerous whitening creams that made me look unnatural. My self-image suffered greatly trying to attain an impossible standard of beauty.
😒 The intense pressure for women to be fashionable in Vietnam
Vietnamese women face huge pressure to dress in the latest fashions and perfectly coordinate outfits. As someone not gifted in that area, I felt inadequate and judged. Your value as a woman depends heavily on meeting expectations for style and appearance.
🥰 Finding empowerment and self-acceptance after moving to Germany
In contrast to Vietnam, I've found German culture to be far less focused on appearances and more accepting of women making their own choices. I've learned practical skills that women aren't expected to have in Vietnam. Most liberating is the realization that my value isn't tied to having children.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡sexism
💡patriarchy
💡gender roles
💡arranged marriage
💡dowry
💡filial piety
💡skin bleaching
💡body image
💡gender equality
💡feminism
Highlights
The development of a new theoretical framework for understanding neural network training dynamics
A novel regularization method that improves generalization and reduces overfitting
Experimental results demonstrating state-of-the-art performance on benchmark datasets
Analysis of training trajectories that reveals new insights into loss landscape geometry
Introducing a new architecture that achieves better accuracy with fewer parameters
Demonstrating the limitations of existing methods and the need for a new approach
A novel technique for incorporating unlabeled data that improves semi-supervised learning
Theoretical analysis proving the convergence guarantees and complexity bounds of the proposed algorithm
Extensive ablation studies quantifying the contribution of each component of the proposed method
New state-of-the-art results on several competitive benchmark tasks
Demonstrating the method's effectiveness on a diverse range of real-world applications
Releasing code and models to facilitate reuse and comparison by other researchers
Limitations of the current approach and promising directions for future work
Discussion of societal impacts and recommendations for ethical use of the proposed method
Overall contributions advancing research and opening new avenues for exploration in this field
Transcripts
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