Some background on me

I am a gentle feminist. Not the yelling kind, though I think there is plenty of room for them in this world too. Just not for me. I truly think there are a lot of bad people who are stopping women from joining the military, or making them feel weird about being the only girl in a team of engineers, or constantly choosing beautiful women to be the weather person on the news instead of the anchor person. So we need initiatives and protests to make this right. But I think sometimes things can go too far, and make women like me feel bad for wanting to be an artist, or the weather channel lady. Let’s look at this topic.

The problem

Currently most CEOs in America are white men. I think that can’t just be a coincidence all the time, there’s definitely a bunch of men trying to keep their buddies in the CEO chair, and stopping women from getting a bite at the apple. That kind of thing definitely needs to stop, and it does make me mad that it goes on so much, and that no-one is doing enough about it. But at the same time, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I would be a good CEO right now, I can barely get to all my classes on time and make it through exams, let alone to be managing all these people who are always on time (men and women). So maybe I am just young and inexperienced, but that also applies to guys at my dorm who are as hopeless as I am. Do they get taken to a secret class one day, where they become CEOs? I don’t think so. So why does it happen? Maybe it’s that I’m just not given the chance at CEO-like jobs, because I’m female. If so, that is really bad, and that needs to change. At the same time, if I am even more honest with myself, I don’t really want to be a CEO, even if I did have my life in order, it just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s boring (sorry CEOs!). I’m just far more interested in other things than managing a bunch of adults. When I helped out at my aunt’s child creche, I just had the time of my life. My aunt is kind of the CEO of the creche, you could say. And afterwards, I was so happy doing the job, looking after the kids and playing with them (so CUTE!), but then I realised that I would love to do this job, but not my Aunt’s job. Managing the ordering of the food and paying the staff like myself, it just seemed so dull and not connected to the kids. Afterwards, I felt bad because I really just realised that I did not want to be the CEO, I just wanted to be the worker who enjoyed the work. Should I feel bad about that? No, I think I should feel happy that I found something that I enjoy. I should not feel bad about not wanting to be the “CEO” of a creche. Where did that guilt come from? I think (sorry to say it everyone) that it came from the feminist in me. She wanted me to want to be the CEO, but I just don’t. That movement was weighing me down, heaping unwanted expectations and pressure onto me. So I had to give myself permission to just be happy, and to let go. Now I am confidently able to say, “Some women want to be CEOs, and that is fine, I support them and I will fight against people who try to stop them. But it’s not for me, and it’s okay for me to just want to do the work in the creche”. It feels great to put this down on the page, like a dirty secret I’ve been hiding and is now free to float away. If you’re one of my feminist friends, please don’t think badly of me! It’s important to be honest with myself and kind to your own feelings.

Other work

I am completely fine to say that men can keep doing the hard and dirty jobs, like automotive crash repair, firefighting (hot), and other difficult tasks, if women also do the really hard jobs like nursing (my other aunt is a nurse who deals with gunshot wounds all the time), waiting tables for drunken idiots, changing diapers and those other hard and dirty tasks that often are done by women. I think life can be hard and we should not expect to be treated like princesses all the time, after all, we are strong independent women. “Allowing” us to do the same hard work is to respect us as equals. And equality matters.

There are jobs that I know men find exciting and interesting, which I don’t understand at all. Trading stocks is one of them (imagine staring at 6 screens all day?!), another is running an SEO company, which I have no idea about, but I’ve met a surprisingly high number of guys doing this when I’ve travelled abroad. I am also completely fine to not want to do those jobs, so please don’t protest for reaching 50% / 50% men / women in those jobs, at least, not on my behalf. But if you want to do those jobs, please don’t think I’m judging you, or saying that you have masculine interests! You go girl, I want you to be whatever you want to be. And we should all be okay with that.

Concluding thoughts

I think it’s great that there are initiatives to get more women into the CEO chair. I think there’s good reason to believe that there is a fair amount of men just being plain sexist when they deny women the chance to apply. It’s wrong, it’s not fair, and it’s not right. But I think we need to be careful not to have the other side of this activism be shaming women for their choices. Feminism should be about supporting each other’s choices, not shaming each other for things that don’t align with certain expectations. It’s what I want to do, and I hope that this article will make me a little happier about not wanting to be CEO, and make you (the reader!) feel ok about it too. Thanks for listening!