What do women like in men?

       

As a twenty something year old female, most of my adult life has been spent in hopelessly trying to pin down the elusive concept of love. From dealing with my fair share of misadventures with men who have the face of an angel and heart of the devil to facing blatant rejections, the spectrum of my love life is pretty wide. And along with that comes endless experience and knowledge. So when my current partner asked me one fine day in the middle of an argument, “What is it that you women want?”, I decided to try to come up with an answer to the largely elusive question of “What women want or like?” to the best of my abilities. There have been countless books and movies and TV series based on this one question but somehow, funnily enough, there is still no answer.  

The very first thing that I did was obviously run a quick search on Google and here is a list curated by “experts” of things that supposedly women look for in men:

what women want in relationship ichhori.com


Confidence 

While it is true that some women happen to be attracted to men who are sure of themselves and their actions, this can also quickly get quite out of hand. And this is me speaking not just from experience but also from the wisdom gained by being a silent observer around other people. There is a thin line between confidence and arrogance and when you are a man born in a man’s world there is no dearth of temptations. This in turn will bring in trust issues between both parties and overall let’s just say it is all a very risky business. Not to mention also discriminatory. Confidence and self-assurance have always historically been deemed to be definite criteria for one’s masculinity. In today’s world of breaking gender norms women all over the world hopefully know better than seeing men who do not fulfill the traditional idea of masculinity in any sort of different light.

Trustworthiness

Trust is something that comes with time. The more you spend time together and grow closer, the easier it will get for both parties to trust and depend on each other. You cannot just simply look for a guy who is trustworthy. Everybody is genuine and dependable on the surface. It is only when you take the time out to get to know somebody and put in the effort that you will be able to understand whether the person is trustworthy or not. Often it takes months for men to gain a woman’s trust and that is fine because trust is something that has to be earned not just sought after.

Sense of Humour

In a Men’s Health survey of more than 1,000 American women ages 21 to 54, 77 percent of women ranked a sense of humor as their number one must-have in a man. Yes. This is a popular one but hear me out: finding someone funny also depends a lot on how much you already find that person attractive. Imagine that your long time crush and your best friend’s younger brother tell you the exact same joke, which do you think you will find more hilarious and funny? While it is nice to have somebody around who knows how to make you show your teeth, it can also be quite annoying to have someone cover every avenue towards a difficult conversation with his puny jokes.  Funny or not, too much of it can be dangerously close to immaturity.

Good with babies

I almost burst out laughing at this one. In this modern world of the twenty first century, is it still believed that somehow or the other women are obsessed with babies and that their lives always revolve around them in some way or the other? Yes it is adorable to see a guy cluelessly interact with a baby but I am sure if there were to be a survey, most people would find it adorable to see other human beings interact with a baby regardless of whether it is a guy or girl. I mean, even dog videos with babies in them are hopelessly adorable.

Chivalry

This was the one that sounded the most hilarious to me because what is chivalry if not just a way to label us as weak? Why are we just letting people assume that we are less smart than them and less capable than them to make good money and that they have to pay for our food? Surely the days of expecting women to be the innocent “damsels in distress” is gone. We don’t need a knight in shining armor to save us, we need a partner to support and respect us. It is a historical fact that chivalry was actually devised as a covert way to suppress a woman’s sexuality in Medieval Europe. Can we get rid of that concept already?

After going through these endless qualities listed by “experts”, I realised that the actual answer was so simple and in plain view. The entire world seems obsessed with asking the question of “What women want?” but nobody seems to want to listen to the answer. In my opinion women have always been very vocal about what they want and what they don’t want. In fact, the entire feminist movement is basically about women being vocal and demanding what they like and what they don’t like. It seems like the largely misogynistic world is absolutely obsessed with the asking of the question but not bothered enough to lend ears to the crying answers. This has actually helped society to perfectly build up the image of the “hysterical woman”- the woman who is always confused, indecisive, does not know the ways of the world and therefore is in constant need of a man’s guidance.

If they really want to know what we want all they have to do is listen. Stop paying attention to what we want in our personal lives and give us equal opportunities along with the rightful respect that we deserve. In a world like the 21st century it is absurd that such a thing as the pay gap exists. While the gap is measurable in the organized sector like IT, Healthcare, etc., the unorganized sector routinely underpays women as compared to their male counterparts. Women workers are assumed to have low skill levels on entry, a lack of access to on-the-job training and responsibilities of family which leads to them gaining lesser opportunities of employment and being paid less on the job. A survey by Monster.com reported that almost 60% working women in India have to face discrimination at work and over one third women are of the opinion that they are not easily considered for top management roles. Out of the women who were surveyed, nearly 86% of women consider safety as a factor while selecting a job and nearly 50% of them find the night shift unsafe and consequently unpreferable. It is not just improbable but impossible that women all over the country and world have not protested against discrimination of this sort. Has there been change? Of course there hasn’t.

Amongst the thousands of articles that I browsed through on Google, not one talked about what a woman could possibly want from a man in her professional life. It is extremely important to shatter the image of a woman only as a wife and a homemaker. No working woman will care how tall or how funny you are if you do not treat her with the respect and dignity that she deserves because truth be told, we need allies in our struggle against gender-based inequality way more than we need husbands. So the next time when a guy wants to know what we really want from men tell them: We want everything that you already have. Nothing more and definitely nothing less.


References:

https://feminisminindia.com/2020/07/22/infographic-gender-wage-gap-in-india/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chivalry-isnt-what-you-think-it-is-woman-splaining_b_59036faae4b084f59b49f88a

https://www.menshealth.com/trending-news/a19542164/why-chicks-dig-funny-guys/

https://www.brides.com/what-women-want-in-a-man-4176695

Image Source: Google Photos


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