A Dissertation

continue to take the role of a mother and forgo their career, then girls growing up all over the world will not have female role models to look up to, apart from their own mothers and grandmothers. Therefore, if women do not see that they are capable of more than staying at home, then it is much more unlikely that girls growing up will aspire to that path in their life. For example, WAGS are a western cultural phenomenon that have total disregard for personal success through education or moral life decisions. Success through marriage, by the means of the western media is something unique to women within our society. De Beauvoir implies here, that women may find it harder to have the ambition of a career because of social differences: 'The advantage man enjoys, which makes itself felt from his childhood, is that his vocation as a human being in no way runs counter to his destiny as a male... he is not divided. Whereas, it is required of a woman that in order to realise her femininity she must make herself object and prey, which is to say that she must renounce her claims as sovereign subject.' (1993, p.716) This implies that women must choose, and that choice is not always simple. This is something I touched upon within two cultures being brought together in a person: there can be an identity split. motherhood or career is the same mental split.

For women to be truly equal their needs to be a way to enable their biology to mother and their ambitions in a world of a career to be able to be realised at the same time. To bring about change, we must try to identify the problems with the current climate of culture. A strong social structure of support for mothers and their families, including a paternal leave for fathers would be the first step. For instance, if maternity leave was 31