The Feminism That I Belive

"The Feminism That I Believe"

In the memoirs of International Women Week, I decided to write about feminism and how I understand this term. This is what I wrote based on my own perception and people can have different opinion about this.

Well, we can see so many women and men claimed themselves as feminists and it can be following the trend or it can be their true belief. Before two years ago, I used to believe that feminism is about proving that women can do everything and making the people to accept it. But now, this is the belief about equal right between men and women or regardless of gender.

Nowadays, women are working outside and though we don’t have the exact number to show the ratio between men and women working in the corporate world in Myanmar , I believe that the number of working women are increasing more than a decade ago. But it’s still challenging to see those working women continue their career after they got married or had children. Though we still don’t have the figures, I believed that more than 70% of working women gave up their career to pursue the full time housewives. 

For the society, they can accept the young single lady worked outside and pursue her career but once she’s married and had children, she would have several pressure from her husband, her parents and her in laws to force her to accept that taking care of family is her responsibility and that rule has been written before she was born. Even she decided to continue to pursue her career, I bet she wouldn’t decide to take risk for bigger challenge and bigger opportunity but she would choose more stable work where she could take leave whenever she had to give time for her family. Then we couldn’t see many women at the management role.

Isn’t sad to see such kind of things which is happening to all of us, all of the women? I’ve seen some women denied to attend the meeting at 7 PM because she had to go back to her home to cook for her children. I wonder what her husband would be at that time.  And women career is shorter than the men and that is the truth. Men can work until he’s 60 and nothing has changed after he got married or had a dozens of children he had. But we women are different.

If a woman focuses on her career and can reach to the management role at young age, it’s 100% true that she will be liked by less people. If you are a man, it is ok and people will like you more. But if you are a woman, they will not like you and they will think you are the emotionless bitch or you'll be labeled as bossy because you had to make the tough decision because of your role sometimes. One common thing that woman will face is people will talk like if she dates with her boss or with someone in management role. 

Not even in the corporate world, we always faced the inequality of salary and compensation between women and men everywhere. Even in Hollywood, the highest paid actress only earned the half of highest paid actor. This is true and we don’t know how to encounter. Men can have more opportunity for promotion at least nearly double than the women. When I was 24, working as marketing manager at one of the corporate companies and one of my senior colleagues gave me advice to recruit more men in my team because when the women are on maternal leave for nearly 3 months and sometimes it was difficult to handle and it will be more work load on other team members. Even she came back to work, we couldn’t ask her to take more responsibilities than she did before.

Starting from that time I was afraid to get pregnant. I am still afraid of it. The bigger role I am holding, the bigger fear that I have. Of cos sometimes I worry what if they replace me while I am on maternal leave. When I started my career, I had the insecurities that management will think to promote my male counterparts than me. Even we worked equally, I used to be afraid that they would favor men because they assumed men can travel alone, could build the network and worked late. So, I worked hard and couldn’t even take leave sometimes. But I was lucky because the management allowed the salary, compensation and role based on performance regardless of gender.

The society is really suck sometimes. Why all the people believe that women should follow the men and they didn’t have to get high degree or high paid job because at the end of the day, she would be the mother and housewife? To be honest, it is the traditional custom which make our girls to think belittle themselves. In textbooks at school, religious books or we were told that the standard of women are lower than the standard of men and we all should focus on getting a good husband and how to take care of the family where the husband only support financially. Well, throughout my life, I always believe that building the family and taking care of it is the equal responsibility for both men and women. 

When I joined MBA, I asked my friends why they wanted to attend it. Then they answered why they thought this degree needed to step forward in their career and before they ended their answers, some of my friends added one thing as “Wouldn’t be nice to write and see your master degree behind your name in your wedding invitation card and your wedding announcement in the newspaper?” I was shocked. I was totally shocked. Why they answered like this? It’s because they thought girls didn’t have to work but stayed at home, made babies, did all the house chore or managed the maids, and followed their husbands’ lead after holding the master degree?

In 1906, women fought to have a right to give vote and in 2017 we all are fighting to get the equal right. I am not sure if we can change the perception of our generation but we should all educate the next generation that men and women are the same. It was so funny because when I read the religious book when I was young, I found that we were born as women in this life because we raped the other person or did the bad thing in our past life. This is why we became the women to repay our sins. I also believed that and used to wish to be a man in next life. Well, if I have a daughter, I will never let her to read this kind of thing and I will never allow her to feel she is a woman because of the sin that she did in past life.

I am always proud to say that I am feminist and always believe in equal right. As I believe, I fight in both workplace and society. Good thing is even in this society I see there are some men who always respect the equal right and claimed themselves as feminist and I do respect to all of them too.  I do hope we all women never belittle ourselves and give up on the things that we truly love. And I do hope there are more men who believed in equal right and supported the women to pursue their dreams.