Gender equality, sexism,women’s rights, status and position had always been topics that I am most interested about. These are highly controversial issues that had been discussed and debated for a very long time. We could see today that these issues had some progressive developments, while some are just not developing at all.
Being the Asian that I am, my father had always wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer. I do believe those are promising careers. However, there are always voices that would discourage me to branch into the engineering field, the most male-dominated field in STEM. I had a classmate that asked what my major was and when he found out I was majoring in Chemical Engineering, his answer was, “But, you’re a girl…”. I was speechless and was a tiny bit offended by his response. The look on his face made me realize, he was not looking down on me or underestimating me. He was sincerely shocked. He was just stating the fact that I was a girl and engineering is a field that he believes is not suitable for a girl. It was at this moment that I realized sexism is REAL.
Growing up in South-East Asia, culture and religion are important parts of our lives. My mother was born in a small village in Indonesia, where all her friends were married by the age of 16 or 17. Girls were married off by their parents because they believe there is no point of sending them to school anymore at that age as they would eventually be bearing children and be housewives. These girls had no education and with children, when their husbands left them, all they could do was work in factories that pay them so little, all they could afford to eat and feed their children was plain white rice and soy sauce. My mother escaped that and migrated to Malaysia to find work.
I really want to say that women’s rights and status in Malaysia is better, but that would be untrue. Even with all the progressive developments regarding this issue, few men still have backward thinking where they believe women do not need education or be independent because the only thing a woman should know is how to be a good ‘wife’. We practice a culture where future husbands need to pay a ‘bride price’ to the bride’s family to compensate the family for ‘losing’ a daughter. The ‘bride price’ is usually set by the bride’s family depending on how much they think she’s worth. Some men of conservative beliefs think that the older you are, the less you’re worth and this discourages some women to pursue higher education as they would be married at a later age. This upset me that women are being treated as an object where your worth is decided by others.
Being in the states for almost four years now, I believe that women have more rights here. These issues are also far more progressive here than they are in some other parts of the world. I feel more empowered here than I do in my own country. I want women to not be afraid to be whatever they want to be, to work wherever they want to, to decide their own self-worth and to be proud that they are women. I want little girls to grow up and believe they can achieve anything without worrying what the society would think of them. I do not have the full understanding of these highly sensitive and controversial issues to come up with solutions, but I do hope that one day we will be able to resolve them.
You really connect moments of your experience together (from your experience in your engineering class to your mother’s life in Indonesia and Malaysia) in a way that points to some thoughtful reflection on sexism. Thanks for sharing this, Sbm30.
Moving toward what you might work on this semester: what is a tangible campaign that could help achieve the sort of objective you lay out here? To help little girls not be afraid to be whatever they want to be? What are the possibilities here? Or of possibilities for a different sort of objective in the same realm here? Lots of domains you can enter: education, public health, entrepreneurship work, job training, mental health. Excited to see where you go with it all.