There have been a lot of things in the news about women and their professional and personal lives. Women like Sheryl Sandberg are telling us to Lean In and then everyone else tells us why that’s a good idea - or not. She has started a discussion (controversy?) over the way women run their lives in relation to work and family. She wants women to stop holding themselves back. She wants women to have the confidence to pursue their own ambitions, not conform to the expectations of the external environment.
I’ve been seeing a lot of other things floating around my social networks about empowering women and girls. Things like Girl Rising, an initiative, centered on a documentary film, to promote education of girls worldwide. A friend pointed me to the Brave Girls Club, a community of women who support each other to “live the best, happiest, most productive and fabulously brave life they can possibly live”. There are plenty of organizations in my city that are run by women for women to empower them to live their dreams and achieve their professional and personal goals.
So, let me ask you: Why, in 2013, do we need to have all of these places for women to go to be empowered? Why is does it (still) take this movement with books and conferences and films and meetings for women to feel like they can be themselves in their own world - because we all have different worlds in which we want to succeed? Why do we still have have to discuss and express our amazement when women assume positions of high authority?
It’s not amazing. Success should be expected of women. And not because there is anything special about women. I’m not one of those feminists who think that women are better than men. I’m one of those equal rights people who think that we should all get a fair shot at our own ambitions, whatever they may be. I don’t want any special treatment at work or in my general life because I happen to have been born with two X chromosomes. Big deal! I also don’t want to be treated differently at work because I’m young, or because of the color of my skin. Can’t we all just get along??
There was such a movement around making it acceptable for women to forego or delay breaking the glass ceiling and achieving professional success that the pendulum has swung too far the other way that women who chose to focus on children and a family instead of achieving personal success.
It has taken me some time to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life (at least until I change my mind again), and I know that some people take a much longer time to figure that out. So, now I’m going to do things that will hopefully lead me in the direction of those goals. And, I would appreciate it if no one judged me or lectured me or told me what is ‘the right way’ to be a female. It shouldn’t take books and meetings and conferences (and all the money that those things cost) to just do you! So, just do you and watch the great things that happen without worrying about meeting those expectations that society or your neighbors or your friends or your mothers have set for you. Who asked them anyway?!