I am a Sri Lankan and in the environment I was brought up, it’s heard/implied frequently that ‘You are a girl, keep it in mind always’. I was under the impression that only the girls of South Asian countries are facing this unfortunate situation and frankly I was bit surprised and relieved (because we all scattered all over the world can get together and fight against this) to hear even American girls hear the same kind of ridiculous words.
Anyway my version of the story is, my childhood ambition to be a journalist was brushed away because I AM A GIRL. When informed of my idea to my father, his comment was, “it won’t be a good job when you have a family”. I turned a deaf ear to the comment and proceeded with my plans to enroll for a journalism course. But at the end of the process, I happened to bury every bit of my journalism dream as father quipped ‘if u can find the funds yourself, you can enroll for the course’. I hadn’t even a cent with me and had no chance to borrow money even because father was blocking every source that I can request a help from.
Later he payed a fee equals to ten times of the fee of journalism course for my Information Technology course. But my family’s attitude that I should do a ‘feminine’ job seemed to be intact because once at the dinner, my parents and elder brother tried hard to convince me to be a teacher after I obtain the degree in IT.
I said ‘No, I will go to the industry for a programming job’. They were saying ‘No, it’s not a good idea because you happen to work late at night, it’s very tiresome and it’s for boys that the job is most suitable’ Specially My brother’s resistance to my idea was so high I became very arrogant and declared that he was jealous of my ability to do a well-payed job, to make him silent.
Somehow I reached my dream career without a helping hand from my family members and here I am today working for an American company as a senior software engineer.
My parents may be happy of my success, but still they try to settle me for a ‘stable, convenient’ job, doing which I can be a conventional wife and a mother.
But my attempt is to do a challenging, interesting, well-payed job and be a successful wife, mom as well.
I KNOW I CAN DO IT, because Girls Can’t What?
1 comment
gretchen
Din – thanks for sharing that! Yes we American girls are told we have limits too, but we prove people wrong every day.
It’s interesting that you said IT is a ‘feminine’ job because in America, IT is considered a male job and it’s hard to find many women in the computer sciences. That trend is changing, but women are still very much a minority in IT.