Today is international woman’s day!
This appears to be something not celebrated in the UK. I just looked thru the Sun, The times and the Guardian on the net and found nothing! To be honest I only breezed thru the pages so I guess there might be some small footnote somewhere that I missed, but all in all, very disappointing!
Sweden on the other hand is mentioning it as a headliner in there newspapers. The one I’ve been reading the most being Aftonbladet (=the afternoon paper).The sad thing is that the newspaper has done some articles on how equal things are between men and women in Sweden, sad because the answer is that things really aren’t (equal that is).
Women still get paid less then men for doing the same work, and when it comes to positions high up on the ladder, women generally get passed over. Completely!
When I was little I never knew things weren’t equal, I always just assumed that of course women would get paid the same as men and get the same high positions. It was only when I started reading and watching the news that I realise I was wrong. The thing is I never really understood why this is. I was brought up with a sister and two brothers and we were always told that how capable we were had nothing to do with what sex we had. You study hard to get the job you want and then nothing can stop you from getting to the top!
Now I did by all accounts not go for that route since I finished studying after college. I would have gone to Uni if I could have gotten into the course I wanted (which was Journalism) but studying was never really my cup of tea so my grades weren’t good enough (also there was some bullying issues which didn’t help my chances much). But now being an adult I know something I didn’t know when I was younger, I am very smart (bullying does screw your self value up quite a lot), I kind of always thought I was, but it was something I never fought for. I wouldn’t admit the things I completely suck at (such as maths) and I only recently realised I have an affinity for things such as numbers (I seem to memorise bank number, tax numbers etc for no particular reason). But these days I can happily admit what I can’t do and fight to prove the things that I can do. Most important of all, I am very dedicated to my work. It doesn’t matter what I work with, I arrive on time unless I have a very good reason for being late. I take great pride in doing my work and I will offer to do more if I finish my tasks. I like organizing things to an almost ridiculous degree and I even make a good team leader, any company would be lucky to have me! And if I did get a job it turns out I wasn’t good at I would quite because I can’t stand NOT doing a good job. I have been responsible for a big number of people and I have sorted out problems that hasn’t really fallen on my shoulder to sort out and the older I get the more I want to find a good steady position in a company that I can work my way to the top in. I want to work for a company were I have a future! My only issue is that I also love to travel making the work thing hard, and finding this great company to work for isn’t easy either. I honestly believe that being a manager for a company is something I would be great at and I have on numerous occasions thought about starting up my own business.
So why haven’t I you might ask? Well this goes back to me being smart again. I know my strength and that I have a goods chance of pulling it off if I did start my own company, but on the financial climate of today I am worried about the large amount of money involved. I mean I could probably get a loan but what if the financial climate gets even worse and people stop spending even more? Plus I could be wrong, good business ideas fail everyday because life is unpredictable and I refuse to ever consider going bankrupt! So what I really need is a good capital to start up with myself, meaning any possible money loss would be considerably reduced. But if I make money I find it hard to not spend it on my other passion (travel), also I’m not sure whether or not I would be good at the tax side of being self-employed, especially since the tax office will go to considerable lengths to NOT help you.
OK I know I’ve been rambling on for a bit now, I guess what I was trying to get across is that it is economically unwise for a company to just hire men. If you want your company to be the best it can be you hire the smartest and most suited person for the job, and I refuse to believe that if they did that they would only be hiring men.
And secondly we should all celebrate International woman’s day! Now I don’t think woman are better then men and I can understand if men go, what about us? Why only celebrate women’s day. Well guys you are great and all but women didn’t use to have the right to vote etc so we should celebrate how far we’ve made it. And being the smart men I hope most of you are you should try and help us women get equal rights in pay etc, because you know it’s only fair.You know what they say: Behind every successful man is a wise woman. Well the same works in reverse so we kind of need the wise men to help us out on this one
Here is some more info about The international Woman's day if you are interested.
