I was in a meeting this week where two female associate directors sat across the table quite proudly flaunting about how their personalities had changed over time, how they had become colder and harder. How they have become immune to a horrible system which drops your confidence and causes you to doubt yourself.
They sat there bashing being emotional, promoting ‘step out, have a cry, come back with a smile on your face and pretend everything is okay’. But isn’t that the root of the problem? The sugar coating and masking that everything’s great, when actually the corporate politics have such a dirty game blended into them.
I just sat there in awe and couldn’t help think this is exactly why Allah has put our place behind men. We aren’t meant to compromise the traits Allah has naturally instilled into us. The modern day feminist will absolutely slash this blog post, in that it goes against everything they stand for. But I’ve seen the softer females with slower progression, and the ones where ‘come what may they need to get to the top’, truly get their quicker with more perks.
It’s unfair but clearly the way this corrupt system works. Females are known to have to work harder and I definitely feel as though unless you nip it in the bud, it will only progress into the same manner as the directors I mentioned earlier. And that is not a personality shift I’m prepared to endure. To sit there saying let yourself go with the flow and embrace the dynamic movement in your strength, your ability to take comments on the chin, the courage to keep your mouth shut – isn’t that the root of the problem? Rather than addressing the core issues, we are having to mould ourselves to a very old and deep rooted management approach that is overflowing with flaws.
You see it in the clothing, you see it in the eye contact, you see it in the words that are spoken to put someone down, you see it in the warmth and affection when someone is down, you see it in the simple messages of checking in, or clearly when’ someone is having that bad day, there is no reaching out – amongst juniors and seniors we all do it, but management has lost that touch, and in effect, people just lose respect for them.
Why do we need to exert extra efforts to get to the top, speaking louder or in a more assertive manner, being known for being brutal and harsh, having to put extra effort in outside of work to prove yourself, because the 8-10 hours a day you do in the office aren’t enough? Why do you we need to re-surface our positives, and constantly reassure ourselves that we aren’t awful? The concept of praise is just so non-existent, almost forced when they have to chuck a couple of points in to tick a box.
Dare you add the spin of an Asian woman and the singling out in that sense, then you’ve crossed the line completely. So you just cook your ‘khiyali pilaou’, i.e. let your imagination run free and ‘suck it up’. Because you have to just get over everything, and move on, put that smile on and pretend nothing happens. No one addresses the problem, so what?
We’re told to be assertive, be confident, not take things personally (??) ( even though it’s a personal comment??) – how have we narrowed that gap between male and female so much. Allah put men above, and women had to hold the fort. Why oh why have we compromised our femininity so much so that we’ve lost ourselves? Don’t we just end up blending into the traits the males too then? Have we even tried adopting the ‘niceness’ at work, long enough to let it work? Or have we just failed at the first hurdle and reverted back to our ways?
We’ve been made softer and more gentle, please can we not lose it in this generation or the next, otherwise it really will be wiped out to the extent that there will be no difference between a male and a female, not only in the work place but life in general.
May Allah allow us to not compromise out personal values for the sake of worldly success, at the extent on the impact we have on others, Aameen ♡