John Berger. The art of seeing (№ 397464)

To be born a woman meant to be born in the established and enclosed space, under the guardianship of men. The nature of female presence in society was formed by the skill of the women to live under such guardianship and in such a confined space. But the woman had to pay a split personality. A woman must continually watch herself. She almost always carries an image of herself. Whether it is across the room or crying about the death of her father, she can not imagine herself walking or weeping. From early childhood she had been taught and persuaded all the time to take care of yourself.
And so she accustomed to consider the observer and the observed in himself the two essential, but always the individual components of his personality.
She needs all the time to keep track of who she is and what she does because of how its seen by others, and ultimately how her see men, is of crucial importance for what is generally considered success in women's lives. Experiencing itself, is displaced by the experience of how it is evaluated by others.