Gender equality - a lot has changed, but more needs to be done

I wanted to write about women in Iraq this weekend, so I decided to meet with some from different walks of life. That way I could have a better sense of what females are feeling and thinking about in life and how much freedom they feel like they have. Now I want to describe some of the highlights.

First, I met a friend who teaches at a primary school. She’s married and has a kid. She is quite pleased with the freedom women have in this century.

“This freedom is still not enough – though much better than what we had in past decades,” she said.

“I think it’s better for girls to get married to someone whose occupation is the same as hers or at least similar – that way they understand each other better. I have a child, though, so working can be a problem because I have to send him to a nursery, and I’m not sure whether he will be as well behaved as I want. But I have no choice,” my friend added.

Me, conducting interviews

Next I talked with an unemployed young woman who graduated from a media college three years ago. She got a government job at one point but is very upset with what happened.

“The work depended sometimes on whether they were in the mood to employ you. Other times it just depended on what they thought about your specialty and whether it was popular,” she said angrily.

The third one was an old woman who never got to go to school when she was young. She had tears in her eyes when she talked to me.

“Son,” she started to say very sweetly, “When I was young, I lived in a village with my family. We had no school in the village – we didn’t even know exactly what school was. It was just the mosques that would teach our men and boys how to learn to write and read. Sometimes they had to leave their villages to do so. Back then, very few women were allowed to study, and that was only in the big cities,” she said.

A brighter future for the next generation?

“I feel very sad that I can’t enjoy this life because I feel like a blind person: I can’t read or write or join in modern life. But, fortunately, I can see my kids and future generations living full lives now. I remember sometimes that a letter would come for someone in the village, and there was no one to read it. Instead, we had to wait until the men came back. In those days, that was very normal, but when I compare it with now, I feel like it was such a disaster,” she continued with a heavy heart.

I think these three examples showcase the status of women in general in my country. They also show that change has been made over time. I hope we can have a better life among these changes, but we still have to try to do more. As the young generation, we should work on changing how the people in government think.

My classmates Estafanía, Mariana and Clara

Last Saturday morning, during a break from German class, my classmates and I started discussing how some professions that used to be mostly male are now mostly pursued by women. That causes some tension, and it brings about the need for cultural change, as I described in my last entry.

This subtle antipathy can surface unexpectedly in day-to-day life. For instance, my classmate Mariana is studying biology. She told me that once, in a physics class, she and the other students had to make a circuit. The male teacher, after communicating the task, said: “Let’s see how women can manage this one,” clearly assuming electronics was totally a “guy thing.”

Men of all ages seem to share this conception of women. Estefanía, another classmate, is studying food engineering. She had the same experience working in a group to build a circuit during a class on electricity and magnetism. Her male classmates usually left her out, not believing that she was able to handle that.

“One of them even told me he didn’t know why women go after careers, if their husbands can support them,” she said.

These attitudes are part of women’s everyday lives. It is an individual problem as much as it is a structural one. The School for Pharmacy and Biochemistry, in the public University of Buenos Aires, for instance, has only one toilet for women in the entire building. Large queues form during the breaks because of this, and there is no interest building proper facilities for women.

Career choice is also affected by salary and opportunities. In Argentina, some three to four decades ago, doctors were well paid, but no longer.

“And that is why there are a lot of women and very few men in Medicine School,” my father said during lunch on Saturday.

My sister Pilar and her classmates in Neonatology class

“What is that supposed to mean?” I said.

“Well, obviously, men tend to chose a career that is well paid,” my sister replied.

What shocked me the most was to see how natural this is to others: men are supposed to bring home the money; it’s ok for women to study, but it’s not ok for them to be wealthier?

These are the struggles women face in education in my country. For one thing, I believe we need new laws that value contributions from both men and women in shaping families. Consider maternity leave: right now, pregnant women only get a very short period of time off. How different would it be if the partner could also be included? A change in legislation, the way I see it, does not only change things in a practical way, it also introduces a new set of values into communities. It’s a long path, but I believe some steps have been taken. For a start, women are going to college and fighting their place in the professional ground.

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.

Women can face particular hardship in getting an education in Kenya

Last week on one of the television stations there was a report about school children who have to travel 10 hours to attend one hour of school. Hard to believe in this day and age! It’s because there are no schools nearby, and the transport system in that remote part of the country is almost non-existent.

In reflecting on gender and education – I thought to myself: In some parts of this world access to education irrespective of gender is a distant dream. Also, if access irrespective of gender is already a problem, how much more hard is it for girls in societies where the expectations for girls and women do not include getting an education?

Having said that though, I must say that the situation has improved remarkably from what it used to be in my parents’ times. In my grandmother’s era, in the early 1900s, education was not as we know it now. My grandmother never saw the inside of a classroom.

Aunts and grandmothers were the teachers of that time. They taught the virtues and values of society, the roles of women and men in society and general knowledge on subjects like animal husbandry or planting and farming. In some communities, sex education was also incorporated into the “curriculum.” So if you asked whether my grandmother went to school: yes, she did!

When the colonial rulers of back then introduced formal education to Kenya, it was the boys who were given priority in attending school. Girls were being raised to take care of the home and bear children, and most parents didn’t see it as important to invest in their daughters’ education. As time went by and the socioeconomic dynamics changed, so did society. My parents had the chance to go to school. My father even went to school in the UK. Not to be left out, my mother graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2008 and enrolled for a master’s in 2009. She is currently writing her research thesis.

She is not alone. There are hundreds of older people who have gone back to get a bachelor’s degree many years after being out of school. Many of these students are women. This has a direct effect on their families and the societies they come from. It sets a precedent and a good example in every home or society to which these women belong. The girls stand a better chance of having quality education if their mothers have had a taste of the fruits of education.

Education can raise a woman's 'value' - sometimes to men's dismay

In my culture, where the tradition of bride prices – money paid by a groom family to his future wife’s family – still exists, and a girl who has been educated is highly ‘priced.’ I know that this sounds like women and girls are equated to commodities, but it is seen as a way of showing appreciation to the girls’ parents for not only taking care of their daughter but also for giving their precious daughter away. I do not entirely agree with the practice, but it still happens!

Young men looking for wives have to part with a hefty amount of money if the girl is well educated and even has a job. Many young men face this pressure. Additionally, most men will not easily accept a woman who has more education or earns more money than he does. This is usually seen as a recipe for disaster. But this is all from my perspective – as a woman. I asked some men in Kenya what they think:

Men in Kenya on women and education

Communities should be made to understand that girls getting an education is not only a human right but it will also benefit them and the generations to come.

What’s your personal view on the subject?

In my opinion, stereotypes related to the labor market should be eliminated

One of my friends has recently been offered a position as a professor in a foreign university. While discussing the offer with him, I thought about our job market and would like to share some ideas about it.

I’ll start with the step just after graduating from university. There are people who work in spheres that have nothing to do with their university degree, and that is mostly due to low wages in the professional spheres they would occupy. Teaching is a common example – only a few students with a diploma go in for teaching at state schools. Most prefer to find some other job even if their skills won’t be required there at all or to work in a university. However, the number of private language schools is increasing, and local authorities are considering possible grant programs, so the situation is slightly better than a decade ago.

But it still seems slightly irrational: why spend 4-5 years in a university and then do something totally different than what you studied? Such behavior can surely be found in other countries, but in Russia, its scale is a serious problem. Unfortunately, the problem is also underestimated.

Our society views a man without a job as a loser, and surely it’s difficult to build any future while facing unemployment. The promising thing is, though, that the market is developing and there are opportunities that were totally unknown a decade ago. Freelancing is one example, and this sphere is controlled rather feebly by labor legislation. Our parents’ generation finds it difficult to understand this way of working – as a result, many freelance workers are treated as if they do not have a regular job and are losers. In my opinion, that is a dangerous stereotype, and it should be eliminated.

Another stereotype involves salary. It’s been thought that a man ought to earn more than a woman since many think that all the latter has to do is look after children. Well, nowadays the job market is more flexible and absorbing Western trends. However, it does not always mean that you can earn as much as you want. The increased flexibility allows you (or even encourages you) to earn more because the inflation rate is rising more quickly than salaries are, so you have to find some part-time job. As a result, there are cases where a woman earns more than her husband.

I think families themselves should decide who the breadwinner is. The key thing for me is that the one who earns less shouldn’t be dependent on his or her partner’s salary.