W is for Women

M was for men and in V we read about Vilnius having a 20% higher female population than men, so it feels right that W is for Women. Lithuania is of course the land of beautiful ladies (which gives me an excuse to inbed this video again)

There are three main types of Lithuanian woman in common parlance, močiutė, lietuvaitė and everyone else.

A močiutė - or grandma - is what our Russian friends might call a babushka. She's traditonally short, rounded, a little weather-beaten but still has plenty of fight about her. She cares for her family and she can tell you some amazing stories of what it was like in her day.

She can also batter her way onto a trolley bus with no remorse and will doubtless find a bargain everywhere and anywhere.

A lietuvaitė on the other hand is currently living in "her day". Literally meaning a Lithuanian girl/ young woman the name sums up tradition, village life, purity, youth, beauty, singing, patriotism and everything that the illustration below represents.It's this that many people - not just men - have in mind when their first question to newly arrived foreign men is, "what do you think of Lithuanian girls?"

I would have to concede that there does seem to be a higher percentage of attractive women in Lithuania than in other countries I have visited, but it becomes both uncomfortable and almost obscene as people ask your opinion of their womenfolk in the same way a farmer might begin selling his prize livestock.

Behind this pride in breeding stock lies a sadder and much less innocent reality. The divorce rate in Lithuania is perhaps the highest per capita in the EU, yet it is culturally more acceptable for a woman to be divorced than to have never married at all.

Lithuania is in many ways a matriarchal society. Except for politics and big business - where men rule the roost (though I'd be interested to meet their wives) - women often seem to be the ones who lead families, who do the hard graft both at work and at home, who go to church, who get involved in social projects and who want to create better futures. Even amongst students I find it is the young women who get higher marks, who speak more foreign languages, who travel and have dreams and plans for their lives - whereas the young men often seem content with the status quo and even if they're not, who don't seem to want to put in the effort to make any changes, firstly with themselves or with their surroundings.

Many men do have low self-esteem in Lithuania which is partly why many become alcoholics, therefore becoming less useful at work, often unemployed and leaving a wife to look after the house, the family and become a model to her children. I've also been told that because so many men have gone to fight over the numerous wars over the last century and a half, men have become a precious commodity and as a result "mothered" by their wives and mothers - sons treasured and allowed to do what they want while daughters have been made to work on the land and earn their due. This leads to men living in an extended adolesence whereas women mature even quicker than relative to their brothers.