This will be a different post. An exception in my writing style. Why? Well, all started because today is May, the 4th, and the nerd inside me said I needed to honor the day and write a post with this title/topic. But still keeping the blog’s purpose, of course. As the main word, I can see here is Force (that’s what Fourth represents in this wordplay) I started to analyze what I struggle more and why. Boom! The topic of this post was born.
Before going deep on today’s topic, I would like to explain something. It was not long ago that I started to see it as a source of problems. I had to hear from many friends, men and women, that it could be the reason. I had, and still have to be honest, reluctance to believe that this is for sure the reason. I never saw any of my problems being originated by it, I always tried to do my job in the best way no matter what. I can’t accept this still exists nowadays. With no more runaround, let’s talk about gender discrimination.
When I started at University, in my whole first semester I was the only woman in all classes. For me, it was not a problem or something that could catch my eyes. During most of my childhood and adolescence, I was surrounded by men, including my father, my brother, and their friends. Until nowadays, most of my friends are men, including my BFF that I met at university. In my first internship, I was the first woman in IT to be hired by the company. However, all of that was pretty natural for me.
Today, I can see more and more women join this career, which is awesome! Looking in the past, it gives me a good feeling to see how much we conquer but unfortunately looking at our present we still have a lot to fight for.
I am really grateful for how Germany welcomed me so well, I am happy to live here! But Germany still has a lot to improve on gender equality. With the second biggest difference in Europe, there is a gap of up to 20,9% between gender salaries in Germany. The biggest gap is in Estonia where it reaches 22,7%. (At the end of this post you can find the link to the European Parliament website where I got those numbers from.)
Besides the financial aspect, we still face the behavior aspect. Like I said at the beginning of this post, it is not natural for me to see things from this perspective but they do exist. I am sure this topic is huge, but I will focus on two main ones that I could identify more in my professional life. It is hard for us, women, to be accepted as equal intellectually and strength.
The oddest moment for me in which I felt that I was treated as intellectually inferior was once that I had to prove mathematically that I was right since by the other option that was suggested the numbers did not match. And even after that, the other person was questioning me, saying that I need to check with the financial department if I was right. Sorry, but as far as I know, there is only one math! And that is why I love math and logic, no matter what 1 + 1 is always 2!
One of my most recently self-reflection made me realized that when women are strong, assertive, and with high self-esteem, we are taken as bossy or aggressive! Why? I had seen so many men in a real aggressive behavior while managing other people but they are not judged as we are! People say “Men are not sensitive”. Ok, but if we behave with a resolution, not aggressively, we became dictators!
Long story short, I wanted to use this data to point it out that we may not say it but we do realize our gender is used to judge us. Yet, I will not point out those situations as gender discrimination but just because I don’t want it to grow, to become a thing. I will fight every gender discrimination situation I face to show how qualified I am to do my job. And here is how all of that connect to the title of this post: Women, May the Fourth be with us! We will get there!
Source for gender pay gap in Europe: