I Like Men - Männer - Miehet

In this blog, I write about women and gender issues, but don't that often mention men. This doesn't mean that I don't like men. As I wrote in one of my first posts, I often prefer talking to husbands over wives! Some of my best friends are male. Some of the most inspiring people in the world are men (Mandela, Desmond Tutu, or Gandhi). I'm married to one of the most amazing people in the world, and he's male. I love so many men that my best female friends have chosen to marry. The point: I don't have anything against men per se.

A woman at a party that I went to yesterday said that she's only now becoming interested in women's rights. I retorted that it's because she's pregnant with her first child, but after further discussion, we realized that it's first and foremost the realization that in our careers, in our mid-30s, we are for the first time in our lives hitting glass ceilings (I think one hits these ceilings far earlier, or from the start, in many developing countries). Another friend of mine recently sent me some interesting data on income discrepancy between women with children and without.

A third factor that comes into play is, I believe, something that a man at the party added, and an issue that my husband often talks about when discussing his female colleagues: they are often too complacent. This is the argument that Facebook's Sandberg often uses: it's up to women to push for leadership positions and higher salaries. A "just do it"-mentality instead of "someone else has to do it".

I just signed a contract with the lowest salary I have ever earned. In fear that with my three kids, I can't bargain for more at the moment. Realistically, I don't think I would have been considered for the position that had been budgeted beforehand if I would have gone in with my normal "ask". Sure, it's an "investment" into returning into the game, into the network, and a price for doing a job that I really want to do.

As a woman, with children, facing the competition of (childless) men (and childless women), life is complicated. I probably just think about these issues too much, and make it complicated...