Because of my former job, I have received and still receive all kinds of invitations to all sorts of tech events dedicated exclusively to women in the field. For the field is somehow still dominated by men, but not because men would exclude women or not consider them competent enough. The rights are equal; opportunities are equal; women are valued as much as men.
I’ve seen women succeed where men have failed. And they applauded them with sincere admiration and even came to the presentations they were giving and showed genuine interest, trying to learn from them. And yet, some ladies decided to organize events dedicated only to women. Beats me why.
The field is IT to be more precise, but it could just as well be construction. That’s not the point.
Anyway, today I find stupid the events dedicated to a particular gender, be it male or female, and I do not understand what’s going through the heads of those who organize such monstrosities. You want equality, but you discriminate. Well, isn’t it like beating the one who hits? At least I could agree with that. At least once!
Events organized only for a particular gender exist for the same reason that brothels were invented: for that gender to shed its frustrations.
Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for the right to vote, the right to wear pants, to take birth control pills, and so much more. I get and admire the struggle of women when all these things were not accessible to them. The story of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers in their fields makes me cry with snots of happiness that such people existed. I said people, not women or men, because, most of the time, people who opened a road did not do it despite the opposite sex, but because that is how they saw their own destiny with their mind’s eyes and did everything they had to do to build it. And that is, actually, what caused the world around us to change.
I wonder how the women who participate in such events position themselves at home. If they differentiate between equal rights between specialists regardless of gender and gender equality? For I had never felt, as a professional, that I would have fewer rights than the man in the office next door or at home than the man beside me (it’s also true that when I met belligerents with different visions, I chose not to take them home – because, yes, that’s also a choice).
As for gender equality, I’m not interested in being the equal of the man beside me. I don’t want to be inferior or superior to him, mainly because in my book, it seems to me that it’s like comparing yin and yang.
The rest is smoke in the wind and absurd fighting in the house you bought together.
