Going back in time...

As I was going through some of my old nic nacs from home, I suddenly came across a couple of poems I had written when I was in my early teens. Reading them, made me realise how much I have changed across the years from the painfully shy kid with a strong inferiority complex to today, where I'm quite happy with life and who I am (though I'm always learning everyday)...

These poems made me think of how far I've come in the journey of life... I wander what I'd think reading my blog in 10 or 20 years time...

In my my early teens I considered guys to be of an alien species as I never had brothers and I studied at a single sex convent where the nuns made guys sound like evil octopuses waiting to get their tentacles around us! At the same time I was attracted to them too! So this poem was written with a friend when we were both in our early teens about how we felt... Of course this was an exaggeration, but you get the idea!

Why
I've always wondered why,
I act so weird around a guy.
I go bump into chairs everywhere,
and make them all stare.
So I try to act pretty cool,
In the end making myself look a fool.
The thing is that I wanna have a boy friend,
But I can't with them even a second spend.
And sometimes I wonder why,
I seem to be so shy(Especially in front of guys).
Which I really don't think is wise.
When ever I am self conscious,
To others I seem very anxious.
It really breaks my heart
Oh why oh why is life so hard?

Now after studying and working in a man's world (engineering), and with all my experiences in UK and Switzerland, I think that in the end we're all the same, with fears and hopes and dreams... the way we show them or what we like maybe different, but then they are also different from person to person even of the same sex... One thing that I wonder a lot about is whether what is considered as 'social norms' for men and for women are really inborn or are they due to the way we grew up... the famous nature or nurture debate...

While of course respecting the many biological differences, and knowing that we both have certain things that we tend to be better in, I wander if some of the differences are more to do with how we grew up rather than 'brain programming', even though book after book on men and women seem to claim the opposite... I think as I was the only child, I was both the girl and the boy in the family! So I became very independent and ambitious and liked numbers and technical things (which are considered to be male traits) and at the same time I loved music and dancing and had a strong interest in psychology and people and literature and am not very good at sports (which are considered to be female traits)...

So the more I think of it, the more I feel that people should be allowed to be themselves, rather than putting them into boxes and trying to find labels. To me this is true gender equality, where both men and women are allowed to be themselves as long as they are good people and don't harm others without society dictating terms on how they should behave...

Well I totally went off topic, but will add another old poem before ending this post, this was when I was chubby and tried my best to lose weight, funnily enough now, without trying I've lost all that puppy fat.

Trying to get thin
Some people want to be thin(for example me)
A great figure win
But that'll never be
For I've tried almost everything
Exercising, dieting, aerobics and all, but nothings working
And I won't even grow tall
My problem is that I don't eat much rice
And I try to cut down on other starchy things too
But cookies cakes and fries
I each a lot, Oh yes I do
When it comes to exercise and aerobics
I do them for a few days
And then I quit
And to loose weight I find other ways
So don't ever hope to be fat my dear friend
And with that
I will come to an end

I am who I am

As I was going through our Judge Business School news I came across this article ‘these bodies are beautiful at every size’ regarding glamour magazine starting to work with all types of models in all shapes, sizes and colors. This link was in our JBS news as an alum who is studying for his phd on ‘how women in the US, Canada and the UK respond to advertising images’ was also quoted in the article. He also runs a modeling agency for women of all shapes and sizes. http://www.benbarry.com/ I really like the tag line ‘every woman is a real woman’.

I’m very glad to hear about all these initiatives, as I think one of the biggest issues almost all of us have is this body image issue… and only seeing perfect airbrushed women on magazines and TV doesn’t help in self confidence… so I think seeing more and more campaigns with real women would help boost the self image of everyone…

After all we all age, and beauty is a temporary thing, so I think its important not to base our whole self worth on it... This also reminded me of the famous book Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wild about the hansom youth who gets a portrait of himself painted and sells his soul in order to look like the picture forever, young and hansom, while the painting withered and aged… so as time went by and he lived a sinful life his picture got more and more disfigured, but his face remained perfect… In the end, Dorian decides to kill his sins and his past by destroying the portrait, but in doing so he kills himself instead.

Ofcourse I think we should all try to look our best, men and women both, and make the most of what we have and be healthy, but there are certain attributes that cannot be changed such as height, body shape, colour and so on… so we just have to learn to be happy with what we have and who we are… that’s true self confidence…. To be able to go out into the world saying ‘I am who I am’ with your head held high…

Ticking boxes…

Recently our organization introduced this new Key Performance Indicator on Gender (Target to increase the recruitment of females) and it got me thinking… I’ve noticed that now in organizations there are these diversity boxes which if you fit into you can get in easily such as Female, or minority and so on, and that started me wondering will it encourage equality or just end up with less qualified people being hired as they tick the right boxes, in both work as well as for educational programmes?

For me personally its good cos I do tick the right ‘female’ box, but I wouldn’t want to be hired because of that, I would want to be hired cos of my achievements, because I actually am good at what I do… in a way does this devalue our worth? Would people assume that we’re hired cos of the ‘diversity’ factor and resent us, which might have the opposite effect such as deserved promotions being blocked, simply cos they resent the 'female' who they think got special treatment... It’s a difficult thing to figure, I;m currently working in an International Organization, but I hope that is because I am good at what I do and not cos I tick the right box...I have to admit, that here i have not felt any kind of discremenation at all, and work has been rewarding.

Don't get me wrong...I am completely against discrimination against women or minorities or against anyone for that matter (which is often the case especially in engineering, where I was not even considered for a position as I was a female and got to know about it from an internal contact) but at the same time, it sometimes feels like it’s going the other way… I guess maybe you need to give incentives initially to start ‘the ball rolling’ as they say to start receiving enough female/ minority candidates and at the same time to get rid of that whole ‘members only’ mentality where only people who fit in the a certain profile can do the job, but then it should be that women and minorities are hired not because they are a KPI but because they are capable and qualified and will do the job well. And also because diversity adds value by bringing in a different perspective and skill set...

I guess the other factor which would encourage more women in the work force specially in senior positions, is flexible working hours, or working from home, or having child care at the work place, as very often otherwise most women who are senior professionals end up doing that at the cost of their family and what’s the point of even having all the money or recognition in the world if that means that the family life has to suffer…

I think it should be in the interst of all concerned that both men and women have a successful family life as well as a career life. I know, I've completely gone out of topic, but I feel strongly about this, even though i am single now, it;s something, I've often wondered about, looking at friends. Why should career have to come at the expense of family? Won't we all be better off, including the organisations, if the employees had a better work life balance, and were happy, and so gave their 100% to work, rather than worry about what was going on at home, as they spend so little time there.

One good practice I see here is that people take their vacations very seriously. They take a couple of weeks off to spend with family on holidays, sometimes just take the time off to spend at home doing stuff together. Before I came here in all my jobs I had just accumulated my leave, never really taken it, cos it was not the practice, now ofcourse I take it all and go home to sunny Sri Lanka during winter. Plan to get used to this practice of taking time off, now and then. After all the organisation is not going to collapse cos you were not there!

Water

I went to see the movie “Water” yesterday. It’s a Hindi movie filmed in Sri Lanka, set in the 1930s during the rise of the independence struggles against British colonial rule. The film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. We see this world of widows in the ashram through the eyes of Chuihya (Sarala), a eight-year-old widow sent to live there after her husband dies. (I just checked on the net and was appalled to find that even today people still give girls as young as 7 or 8 in marriage to much older men in many parts of the world… Often due to poverty the parents of the girls agree)

I had a few nice pics from the movie but had trouble attaching them today, I'll try that later. You can click here for a few photographs.

Eight-year-old Chuyia (Sarala) first appears at the moment her father tells her she's been widowed. Though she hardly even remembers being married, she is suddenly cast into an awful lifelong limbo, sent to live in an ashram with 14 other widows, all dispised by "respectable" citizens. Sarala’s acting was Brilliant. She´s cute, energetic and the perfect choice for the role. In real life, Sarala is a Sri Lankan and cannot speak a word of Hindi. Her work in Water is the complete memorization of lines from their sounds. Water was so very moving and at one point I had tears in my eyes. Despite the depressing theme of the movie, there are moments of comedy and great love.

It really did make me think of how far we women have come… I know that still there are many women suffering in silence due to the many injustices of society, but I was thanking God that I was born in this century and place where we are given almost equal status. I say almost cos still especially in the field of engineering, I feel that there are many who think that we cannot measure up.

There is one quote which really struck a cord. As Chuiya enters the Ashram, one of the widows tell her "A wife is part of her husband while he is alive, and when husbands die, god help them." What I noticed was that these women themselves had just given up and accepted their fate. It took the arrival of little girl to ask questions as to why they were treated this way… That’s how it is with many injustices in society… It always gets set because the victims choose to submit unquestioningly. I know that this is much easier said than done and if I had been born in a different century in a different place I wouldn’t know what exactly I would have done either…

Minting Women Millionaires

I just came across this article on the Business Week website and thought of posting it. Minting Women Millionaires

I was surprised to find out that it was only in 1975 that women won the right to have credit cards and open bank accounts in their own names, without a male co-signer. "We don't always recognize that It's only been since then that women have been able to gain economic independence on paper, create credit histories, and so forth."

Women in the business world and tech world is a subject that's very close to my heart. Something that I have come to realize in my short time in the engineering industry is that if you're a woman you are "guilty until proven innocent" and from the beginning itself you have to work twice as hard to earn the same respect that your male colleagues get.

I guess you might think that I'm a feminist, but I've always disliked that term cos it sounds like I'm "anti-male". All I really want is equal opportunity, without always being considered as the "weaker sex".