Out for a ride with time to think

The morning sun shines into my room, and birds are chirping. The two-month holiday at the language school where I’m working has just started. It’s a bit difficult to believe that the time for the last entry for this blog has already come. I still have lots of thoughts to share with our readers!

Lately I’ve been riding my bike in the countryside in the evenings – it’s a good chance to relax after a very full year and to improve my skills in photography. Along the way, I think a lot about the enormous difference between rural and urban areas in my country, and between their inhabitants’ mentalities. What’s difficult to explain is that many Russians would like to move outside the city and buy nice houses there, but most villagers prefer the idea of finding a job in the city (or at least sending their children to get educated there). Of course that’s due to the financial divide between these areas, but we need to make this division less extreme.

Apart from modernizing infrastructure and offering programs aimed at stimulating young teachers to work in village schools (or small towns) by offering them additional money for several month stays and providing them with accommodation, we also need to promote studying abroad. But at least when it comes to my own pupils, I have been really glad to talk to them and discover that practically all of them think globally.

A toast to the first year of my friends' start-up

What are my expectations for the future? As I said in the very beginning, I’m the kind of person who embraces change. I’d like to try something new – not as a hobby, but as a job. Now a couple of my friends and I are working on an Internet-based project which will try to encourage people to waste less time online. Like Kathrin mentioned, the Internet can be great for learning, but it also presents plenty of distractions. I guess that as technology develops, we’re bound to see more edutainment (a combination of education and entertainment) in this sphere.

When we started the blog, I never would have thought how interesting it would turn out to be. I got impressions of educational systems in other countries, got to know my fellow bloggers more and got somehow inspired by what they discussed. It’s a pity there are regions that prevent citizens’ voices from being heard (as in Hellgurd’s case). However, youth can be an enormous force for change. I do hope there will be chances to work together with Hellgurd, Maria, Emmy and Kathrin on other projects – why not on our own?

Carolina learned a trade in order to secure some freedom

I had dinner with my boyfriend’s parents last Sunday. It’s always just the four of us. I have to admit that sometimes I lead the conversation into his mother, Carolina, telling me the story of how she started dating Horacio, Diego’s father. It’s not because of the love and romance involved, though. The story of how she met her husband touches on issues of how she secured some independence and got her first job.

Carolina is a 65-year-old Italian immigrant. She came to Argentina when she was seven, together with her six siblings, mother, father and extended family – all in an effort to escape poverty. She didn’t speak Spanish, and her parents couldn’t help her with homework since they didn’t know the language themselves. So she started first grade three years later than she was supposed to. Carolina also has an older sister, Filomena, who had to stay at home and help with the housekeeping. When Caro finished sixth grade, she was fifteen years old. She was supposed to stay at home “and do all the silly things there were for us women to do,” she told me, “Like ironing overalls and other stuff.”

Filo begged her to stay home since there were a lot of men to take care of, and she needed help. Instead, Carolina learned a skill. She went to beauty school for a year and then found a job at a salon in the neighborhood. Her family wouldn’t have allowed her to work, so nobody but her mother knew about the job – after all, jobs were something only men were supposed to have back then. Carolina gave the money she earned to her mother and helped with family expenses. Even though they worked a lot, they were still very poor.

When she thinks back on herself and Filo in those days, Carolina says, “I was able to choose, and I married a good man. My sister, on the other hand, didn’t. She got out of that family house with whomever she could manage.”

Child or career? The question is still a turning point for many women

These days, things are much different. Access to higher education is determined by economic power, not gender. Middle class women not only study in universities, they also have careers. But even though over fifty years have passed since Carolina started working, change is slow. There is still a big difference in wages: A woman makes 35 percent less than a man carrying the same responsibilities. And in some circles, there are no women in positions of power (as Kathrin describes is the case for Germany).

Today, you have educated women who have careers and high ambitions, but many men and women still expect females to have kids and stay at home to take care of them. It’s the professional path and social contracts that bring the issues of inequality between boys and girls. As a woman wishing to become a mother eventually, I ask myself whether having a baby will stop me from doing what I love. Obstacles come partly from labor law in Argentina. The way I see it, it also has a lot to do with breaking mental barriers and endowing highly educated women with responsibility. Giving educated women the place they deserve takes a combination of effort from family, society and co-workers.

Universities are open to men and women, but the job market is a much different story

In my experience in Iraq, the opportunities open to the genders differ according to social setting, age, geographical area and religious believes. We have equality more or less during early childhood, but you still see some differences in how boys and girls are treated.

I think that the opportunities open to males are not limited. They have choices from childhood onward, and they are even allowed to bend the rules. But females are always limited in the chances they have, specifically starting around age 14. Women have to struggle to get their own rights and freedoms, and many of them have sacrificed themselves to provide the freedoms others have today.

Personally, I had no chance to go to kindergarten because of the war between Iraq and Iran. Instead, I had to flee my country with my family. But now I am a kindergarten teacher, and I believe in equality between the children. In general, the kids seem very happy, and I believe their freedom is very different from what we experienced in the past. In kindergarten, both of the genders are allowed to be placed together in the classrooms or during activities. They can play, sit next to each other, eat and sing together.

This may seem strange for you because this is a very basic right, but what do you do if you don’t have it? Sometimes you do still have to ask permission from their parents for certain things – even if you just want to let them take part in a very small activity or program.

Today's generation enjoys more freedom than mine did

When I was in primary school, I felt that both genders could be friends easily, but that it got harder to be friends once we got older. Starting in secondary school, I felt that lots of girls wanted to form friendships with the boys – but that was hard because being friends with males was viewed as an impossible right for them to have.

We have mixed primary schools, a lot of mixed secondary schools but very few mixed high schools. All of our colleges, institutes and universities are for both of the genders. I know so many women who graduated from school but are now unemployed because they haven’t had a chance to work. Some of them are able to freelance, but they may not get permission from their parents to do so.

In terms of jobs, men have completely different opportunities. Males can do whatever they want, but as I mentioned above, females always have to think about not breaking the rules they get from their parents or from the men in their lives. Women can apply for some specific government jobs in this country, but the situation they face explains why women can almost never earn more money than their husbands. In cases where that happens, they may have to share the money with men or they may be allowed to spend it only on necessities.