Let us start by addressing what is at best a limited solution to female oppression. The problem with women becoming “tough” or opting for masculine values as “better” is that you are still caught up in the system of Western dualities. Up to a point, it is natural to struggle to restore those qualities that have been denied one. If one has not been permitted to express anger, because that mode of expression is considered “masculine”, then one may have to work hard to get to the point where the expression of anger is as natural and unimpeded by gender considerations as the expression of any other emotion. So, there is a first level of feminist action, which is to restore those putative “masculine” qualities that have been lost.

Beyond this point of practical restoration, though, there is no value in adopting masculine values or styles of behaviour just because these have been valued as “better” than feminine ones. That is to treat metaphysical values, which have been learned socially, as if they had a meaning that was more than arbitrarily defined and historically created.

Real liberation is to be able to escape the limitations of these binaries altogether so that they no longer have any hold over your life or your mind.

I can't help reflecting on the following statement by Stephen Toulmin regarding the formation of the bourgeois character structure:

The early 17th century [...] saw a narrowing of scope for freedom of discussion and imagination that operated on a social plane, with the onset of a new insistence on "respectability" in thought or behaviour, and also on a personal plane. There, it took the form of an alienation quite familiar to the late 20th century, which expressed itself as SOLIPSISM in intellectual matters, and as NARCISSISM in emotional life. (emphasis mine) [p42, Stephen Toulmin, COSMOPOLIS.]

Intellectual solipsism and emotional narcissism. Looks familiar?

The religious notion of moral probation is the idea on which even the structure of the contemporary workplace system is based.

Women are put on moral probation much more decisively than their male counterparts would be. Similarly, employees are considered to be much less trustworthy than those who have gained power and are managers or owners of a business. The idea behind all of this is a fundamentally religious one. Those who are made to be subservient are in that position of servitude for their own good. They can thus learn how to develop proper moral characteristics and thereby perfect their souls. Even if they were to stay in a subservient position their whole lives, their souls would have undergone some improvement by the time they reached heaven.

Women's souls are particularly wild and woolly according to the original story of Genesis -- thus demanding extra policing by everybody. By contrast male souls are more likely to be in a state of innate rectitude to begin with, so the policing doesn't have to be so extreme.

These are my personal experiences and analyses, having come from Zimbabwe and lived in Western Australia.