9. We live in a man’s world. How can the development process improve women’s rights?

Both men and women receive an individual supplementary income, which they can dispose of according to their own insights. In a world in which men have a say about how a woman leads her life, many women are likely to be subject to domination when the Plan is first implemented. If men wish to exclude their wives from the supplementary system, they themselves also stand to lose.

In today’s world, more and more women are taking their lives into their own hands and helping other women who wish to do this. Men are increasingly supporting women in thisprocess. The Marshall Plan will promote women’s financial independence.

There is a deeper reason for discrimination against women: people are afraid of aspects of themselves they have suppressed. The stereotype (particularlyin the industrial society) was the “irrational” woman and the “goal-oriented”, “rational” man. Where men feared their emotional sides, they kept all reminders of this side of themselves under control, including by “looking down” on women, since they were said to embody the “irrational”.

As we are encouraged to think caringly about our individual development, we become more and more conscious of all the aspects of ourselves we overlooked in the past. We nurture these and give them the attention they thusfar lacked, and notice that, whether male or female, we ALL share an ability to feel and express emotion and intuition. We can all act in a goal-oriented fashion, which used to be the realm identified with the male. As weare more comfortable expressing all sides of ourselves, our uneasiness with other people decreases and we enjoy seeing others coming into their own.