At a company skills competition, a reporter once asked me, out of 100 contestants, as the only woman there, how did I feel about it? Did my family support my work?
A female judge had an even better line: was my department so short on people that they sent me just to fill a slot?
Honestly, before I went, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be the only woman in the finals. I was there because I had placed in the top three in our internal round. That was it. But put on the spot, I still had to smile and say something like: women aren’t at any disadvantage in this kind of competition, and if anything, women are more detail-oriented. My family is very supportive of my job.
In the end, all ten winners were men. Still, that little segment about the “only female contestant” made sure to earn a place in the company news roundup.
Lately, my workplace has also been soliciting submissions for a Women’s Day reading campaign, even though March 8 has long since passed. The assigned books were titles along the lines of Falling in Love with Reading and Steel Roses: Striving Women Are the Most Beautiful, and we were expected to produce reflection-style essays about them.
To be honest, I lost interest the moment I saw the titles.
Both books were edited by men. Men assembling books for an audience of women who are supposed to feel inspired as women. You can more or less guess what kind of inspiration that turns into.
One of those books profiles 45 accomplished women, all high achievers in their industries, all successful, decorated, and publicly recognized. But reading through their stories, I kept thinking: if you swapped the gender labels, these would simply be ordinary middle-aged male executives and professionals, the most familiar type of “so-and-so general manager” imaginable. A woman in leadership, or a woman doing front-line work, has somehow become a selling point in itself.
It’s not as if hardworking, highly capable women are rare now. There are already plenty of them. What I absolutely cannot get behind, though, is the kind of story that glorifies lines like: her baby was only three months old when she rushed back to the front line, and when she saw the child again half a year later, the baby no longer recognized her.
I don’t find that moving. I don’t admire it.
I work hard because I want to make money. That’s all. I don’t have some grand noble mission attached to it. If I’m being honest, my real dream is to become an excellent housewife.
Anyway, I should go write that Women’s Day reading essay now. After all, striving women are the most beautiful.
And payment for the submission isn’t exactly unattractive either.