Searching for Inspiration
The Let’s Talk campaign has set me thinking as well as talking – what is it about gender equality that’s really tough to understand – surely we all believe that men and women are equal – end of debate!
So I started to think about my own life – with so much privilege and opportunity – had I ever felt unfairly treated, discriminated against?
Well there was a time when as the chairperson of a National NGO at 25, I listened to the sarcastic remarks of men in suits – what does she know, she has no experience, why should we listen to her – How dare I have assumed that I had something to offer?
How my partner struggled with the fact that I earned more than he did, despite being one of the most gender understanding people I know.
And even recently on a trip to China with business men (and they were mostly men) where I felt like I was treated like the ‘little woman’ …..
When I was younger I was far more overt about my feelings of passion and righteousness, but overtime have I become more accepting or have things really changed?
Well I think somethings have changed – there is much more recognition for the importance of women and the roles they play, more role models certainly – but prejudice, exclusion and discrimination still remains in society, in the workplace, in the home and I am still horrified by the violence and inhumane behaviour women still suffer….
That’s why the Let’s Talk campaign can be that inspiration to me, to you and all in Oxfam.
Tell your stories, share your personal experiences if you feel you can, shock us, inspire us, make us laugh, make us cry – but don’t stop talking about it!
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November 21, 2007 at 01:44
Hi Sarah,
Thank you very much for your blog.
I would like to thank you to you about your participaton in HIV & AIDS workshop in BKK. Anyway, your huge contribution and support to HIV & AIDS Champions.
I would like to say all East Asia Champions share information to all of us too on 1 December 2007 for HIV & AIDS Day.
One thing that I remember you all the time is your huge pay attention to staff all levels, with respect and friendly.
Thank you,
RIAM
November 24, 2007 at 06:38
It took me a while to write this after I listened to Sarah and after I read her writing on her very personal view of gender issue. It touches me to the deepest feeling of mine as I started to remember my own personal journey. Gender issue is a personal issue, she said. Yes indeed. I could’t agree more. That is what I learnt and experienced myself on my journey from being a ‘weird’ person to a welcomed person, with all of the ideas on gender equality and equity that I brought, to my mother, brother, sister, and the rest of my extended family members.
I began my journey on gender activism in 1986 when, with two other students, we were elected to represent our university in a national student competition for social sciences category. We were required to write and present a paper on development issues and we decided to choose the topic of ‘women and development’. Never did I imagine that it was the beginning of my journey on the struggle for having a better perspective on my ‘gender’ that was constructed by my society. I started to engage with other women activists and started to be an activist myself within my family. I brought the ideas of gender equality to my parent’s house to the point that my mother get disturbed. Her feeling of being disturbed slowly grew to a confusion and curiosity that one day she came to me and asked ‘what gender is actually about?’ And that was the beginning of her activism to raise awareness on the issue, especially on violence against women, in her PKK (women’s welfare movement organisation). She began to be my close ally for addressing the issue within our extended family and society. My encounter with some fellows from Africa in 1996 enlightened me even more on the fact that apart of many other forms of discrimination, women also suffered a lot from gender based discrimination.
I realised that this is a long life journey that I have to go trough. I become someone who always feels thirsty of leaning from others.
Since the beginning of my journey, Oxfam has been contributed in enriching and equipping with necessary theories, framework, tools, and stories from the other site of the world. Oxfam’s work was one of the limited resources that I consulted since 1980s. To me, Oxfam is unique in a way that it bridges the conceptual and theoretical world with the practical world. In addition, it has provided me with valuable and, most importantly, applicable frameworks and tools which some of them are made available in the Internet for free access. For someone from the South like me, such resources become basic necessities.
As now I am in here, within the Oxfam Family, my intellectual engagement has transformed to a personal engagement. I internalised even more the core values of gender equity and equality because of my current assignment with Oxfam. Thanks for this! I believe I can be enriched more by other personal stories from other Oxfam staff, such as what I just learnt from Sarah.
I do not know where life will lead me to. But, wherever I am, I will carry Oxfam within me. They can take me out of Oxfam but they can only dream to take Oxfam out of me since Oxfam has been in my personal ‘gender journey’ since the very beginning.
November 27, 2007 at 02:49
Hi Sarah,
Let’s Talk is a great initiative, as it gives an opportunity for reflection and sharing. Let me trying sharing my experience.
I have only one experience of a training, where I was the only man and all others, about 25 participants, were women, including the trainers. Participants were actually trainers in a government programme in India; highly educated, some of them very senior to me in age and experience also. I realised it was for the first time in my 12 years career in development work, that I was in such a setting.
In the beginning of the training, I felt nervous, collecting my confidence. I was thinking: when I spoke, I should be careful; hoped I wouldn’t make mistakes. It was really very difficult to decide what to speak and how to speak. Everything went well, I spoke as little as I might. However, I can still remember that feeling of being scared, at least for a while.
I think often men do not have to face such situation of being in a setting where power dynamics are “scary” in terms of sex composition of the group, combined with age and experience factors. I had only one experience, which taught me to be more sensitive towards such dynamics in a group setting, whereas many forums have similar settings for women. One of my colleagues said that first few meetings of her career were just “listening”, and then she started speaking out, after a couple of events, very cautiously. Talking with her, we discussed an idea: the insight that I got coincidently (if it was a coincident!), could help us to strategically plan such incidents for more colleagues!
I would love to hear more of such experiences from others.
Sam, Indonesia.