“I thought that I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders, not their wives.”

Katherine Watson’s words in Mona Lisa Smile resonate deeply with us women as she enters an elite women’s school where students are being prepared for marriage rather than careers. This sentiment lingers beyond the screen, mirroring the reality women have long faced. Women are constantly told what they should be, whether at the dinner table, in classrooms, or in the workplace. These expectations often revolve around traditional roles, with a strong emphasis on marriage and motherhood.

And while there’s nothing wrong with choosing those paths, the problem lies in the expectation that women must be “just” that—just wives, just mothers.

Sadly, on the other hand, women are pushed to be successful but must work twice as hard for half the recognition.

In the end, womanhood is continuously confined and defined to fit society’s expectations. But is it really about choosing one role over another or is it about embracing the full spectrum of what it means to be a woman?

Not just mothers, not just workers

(Screenshot from Lady Bird (2017))

In today’s world, a stay-at-home mother can be seen as privileged but also wasting her potential, while a career-driven woman is criticized for neglecting her so-called woman duties at home. A woman juggling both roles is expected to do so without any hardship, too. Women are forced to navigate a false dichotomy: choosing between being a mother or a worker, as if those are the only two options.

But is that all a woman can be?

Whatever a woman chooses to be, they continue to face scrutiny. Society expects them to "have it all"—a successful career and a perfect and healthy family. It’s as if when asked the age-old question, “Who would you pick in a room full of girls?” the room would be split in two: wives and workers. But womanhood isn’t confined to these labels; they can build a healthy parent-child relationship, pursue a 9-to-5 job, do both, or have something entirely different. But the pressure to conform remains.

These pressures don’t just come from society at large, they often begin at home. Mothers who have lived under the same expectations sometimes pass them down to their daughters without realizing it. The daughters are also expected to follow a certain timeline: graduate in their early 20s, marry by 25, have at least two children by 30, and achieve success in between. While sons are given room to explore life at their own pace, daughters are held to strict expectations, a vicious cycle that continues for generations.

However, we realize that mothers were once, and are still, daughters. They grew up under the weight of expectations they never asked for, shaped by a system that, in many cases, gave them little room to choose otherwise. Along the way, some embraced these roles out of personal desire, not just societal expectation, and that choice should be respected just as much as those who take a different route.

The issue is not motherhood itself, but the lack of autonomy in shaping one’s own path. It lies in the pressures that push women toward, or away from, certain roles without allowing them the freedom to decide. The patriarchy doesn’t just limit women, it dictates which paths are deemed acceptable and convinces us that breaking free is impossible.

Is there a right way to be a woman?

(Screenshot from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005))

No matter where a woman falls on the vast spectrum of femininity, society finds a way to scrutinize her.

How she dresses, speaks, and carries herself—every choice is met with judgment, policing, and unsolicited commentary. It’s as if an invisible rulebook exists, dictating what makes a woman "acceptable." As America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue puts it, “We have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.” And no matter what she does or doesn’t do, it never seems to be enough.

What makes this even more painful is that, sometimes, women themselves become enforcers of these patriarchal standards. It’s not always through words, sometimes, it’s in the silence, the side-eyes, the subtle act of shaming. In many ways, internalized misogyny seeps into our daily lives, even in the smallest things. The “cool girl” phenomenon, for example, shows how women may suppress their own needs to conform to male-driven ideals, just as looking down on or resenting other women reinforces these harmful expectations. In the end, neither truly wins.

Beyond the modesty-versus-promiscuity discourse, women also navigate another expectation: hyper-independence. Women may feel pressured to be entirely self-reliant as gender roles and expectations evolve, sometimes leading to hyper-independence; the need to constantly prove their strength and distance themselves from traditional feminine roles.

The title of a "strong, independent woman" is glorified, yet still comes with the burden of having to balance everything. While rejecting traditional roles is often seen as empowerment, choosing to do so can also invite scrutiny in a different way, putting women in a pressure cooker to prove their capabilities in order to seemingly fit in.

But femininity, independence, and strength are not mutually exclusive; embracing one does not mean sacrificing the others. So, in defining strength, it should be by one’s own terms.

Beneath all these criticisms is an unspoken truth: much of what women do is still filtered through the male gaze and societal expectations. And until that changes, the spectrum of femininity will continue to be less about freedom and more about control.

Breaking free, without limits

(Screenshot from Mona Lisa Smile (2003))

We limit ourselves to fit societal expectations, often at the expense of our autonomy. In a deeply conservative and religious country, these expectations are reinforced not just by patriarchy but also by cultural values that tie a woman’s worth to nurture and uphold familial responsibilities. Rooted in our traditions, women are still expectedto take on most household duties and unpaid care work, all while balancing careers too–an expectation reinforced not just by social norms but by an economy that relies on undervalued domestic labor.

The pressure to seek external validation forces women into a cycle where their worth is measured by how well they conform to expectations rather than by their own decisions. But femininity should not be defined by that, it should be defined by the women who live it.

Navigating womanhood often feels like walking a tightrope—stray too far into femininity, and one risks being liked but not respected; lean too close into masculinity, and one may earn respect but lose likability. The world insists on placing women at either extreme, but the truth is there is an entire spectrum in between.

Womanhood is not a competition. It is not a choice between one role or another. It is expansive, fluid, and deeply personal. There is no single "right" way to be a woman because womanhood simply is.

Whether a housewife, a single mom, a corporate worker, an artist, or anything in between, every woman has the power to define her own identity without fear of judgment, without the burden of expectation, and without feeling the need to justify herself to men or anyone else.

Womanhood is, and always will be, limitless.