The idea of an end to an era of male dominance, discussed in Hanna Rossin’s article for The Atlantic, is not a new concept, but it certainly is worth investigating and watching as this shift occurs.  One particular matter that I would like to explore further that Rossin addresses is the idea of women as a threat.  Inherent in all of these changes occurring in social structure are both positive and negative reactions.  There are the extremes where men’s rights groups have become even more anti-woman, and, on the opposite end, where some radical feminists think they should and will take over the world.  However, when has an extremist perception of any concept ever had a positive impact on the world? I can’t seem to think of any examples. These two extremes in particular portray some men choosing to view women as a threat and some women choosing to take on the role of a threat.  What these two groups fail to see is the benefits of women becoming active contributors to the economy, politics, and world in a way that is symbiotic to male contributions.  A business or government has a greater potential for success if it takes advantage of the differences in skills and strengths between men and women.

The first time I had the opportunity to speak with Patricia Varga, the founder of A Woman With Wings, I was delighted to find that we had more than a few beliefs in common.  One in particular was regarding the idea that people are right-brain or left-brain dominant, which, much to the chagrin of our present-day Renaissance Men and Women, seems to have become colloquially integrated into our population’s approach to living.  Despite being two different people with two different stories, Patricia and I have both come to value the mentality that the Creative and Emotional need not be separated from the Analytical and Systematic; in fact, they should not be separated.

I personally arrived at this conclusion in college, after a decade of oscillating between labeling myself as a right-brained or left-brained person. Since a young age, I always had scores of interests and did various activities to pursue each of them in my daily life, whether it was piano lessons, art classes, joining a soccer team, or reading a book.  Of course as I grew older, interests changed, new passions developed, and meanwhile, there was always that constant common question, either lingering in the back of my mind or being posed to me, of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Over the course of about ten years, I went from wanting to be a lawyer, to thinking that fashion design was my calling, to aspiring to be a savvy businesswoman in the fashion industry, to dreaming to become a respected photographer, to finally, by my senior year in high school, having every intention of going to college to major in psychology and then go to law school.  It was always so difficult for me to attach myself to just one career path because I could not figure out if I belonged in the creative world or the more logical world; was I an artist or an analyst?  I had interests in both realms! After going to college though, and discovering even more passions, I finally realized that I don’t want to choose between these two worlds, nor was I obligated to. I eventually declared my major to be International Relations with a minor in Music Industry, and while I still am not completely sure of what career I want to pursue, I am definitely sure that I have the potential to fuse all of my interests together from both the Creative and the Analytical world and apply this amalgam to any job, activity, or challenge I undertake.