When being asked to fill a recruitment form or even email sign up form, all of you must have been asked what is your gender. Have you ever thought why ‘Female’ choices always come after ‘Male’ (even in drop down menu) though ‘F’ comes way before ‘M’ in the alphabet? I do.
When it comes to gender equality at work, obviously I never give a damn thought about it. As I wrote before, I believe there’s thing made to do for a man and a woman, and sometimes I leave it as it is. In the case of my field of work, sometimes there’s really a bold line to everything. My friend sometimes whines at her timeline how people see woman to be inferior on this industry. I can’t blame it even though I don’t believe it.
While it is a common thing to do for my fellow male co-worker to work overtime, I never work overtime during weekdays simply because I avoid using public transportation late at night (the traffic and the high number of criminality have been around, so you know). I don’t stop there. As the replacement, I got to work earlier than my fellow co-worker (I usually arrived at work 1.5 hours earlier than my office hour) or sometimes I finish my works at home (though I avoided this one too), and I catch up to things.
The thing is I don’t get my gender equality, because obviously I don’t want it. I don’t want to be treated equally, because certainly I’m doing things differently. So why would I need the same treatment? But I believe by doing the works my way, I got the same respect than my other fellow male co-worker got. I do, and that’s what matters, to show the same capability I have. By having those so called respect, then I’m quite sure that I will be having the opportunity.
And here’s what they all talk about. It is the opportunity what this gender equality is all about.
I got lucky when I finally got a site visit to Sulawesi and then East Java to see the ‘real world’. To finally touch things I see on pictures and 2D drawings, or maybe things I overheard. I know my company is being too kind to give a chance to female employee conducting a site visit. I’m not sure either if I’m being the last resort (because certainly nobody can attend the site visit, ‘oh well then you go’). But then again, my total 8 days of site visit cannot be compared to my cubicle male friend who’s on his 4th month already got a 1.5 months visit to be an engineer on site on the completion of the running project. And once again, I can’t blame it.
Although the number of female engineers on my company can be count by hand (one hand actually), I don’t see the light will ever fade on me. Everybody has different ground to shine, to question that we need to be treat equally is a waste of time. Well, I really don’t see the time when people grab the opportunity from me. Because when they do, I just pity them. I pretty much believe with the sentence “if you don’t get one, then make one“. And I know, I will be having better
because I don’t need permission to jump… or fly :)