It’s the strange days and I’ve been listening to philosophize this! podcast whilst out for my daily run…
I thought it might be boring, but no way! Stephen West takes you through some key ideas in a really accessible way. His focus was on Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas from the Second Self… Apparently one of her key ideas is that in life we either have transcendence, autonomy, understanding, self determination, or immanence where what we do is controlled. This thinking applies to men (who have the power) and women (who don’t). Obviously I’ve massively simplified, possibly to the point of missing the point… But the thinking struck a cord because we had seen something similar in the Year in the Life project with our participants.
(In 2017 Ambreen and I spent 1000s of hours studying the lives of nine mums who were just about managing with money…)
And in that study we came could see that some of the women seemed to really take charge of their lives – they were in control, they were moving forwards (despite many difficulties, the kind of difficulties that you associate with lack of money). Others, though, seemed really low on energy, they had circumstances or an approach to life that meant they were stuck, depressed and struggling.
We described this as ‘up energy’ or ‘down energy’… but perhaps a better way to understand our women’s lives it to apply de Beauvoir’s concept of transcendence vs immanence.
Related to that thought is how to help women get transcendence, and is it something that the world of brands, marketing and business can tackle. I’d say yes. You can empower, help and support women, particularly when you understand their struggles and their daily lives…