GENDER EQUALITY

The term of gender equality are often have misinterpretation to society. Most of them
think that gender equality only taking sides on women, besides it supports both men and
women. But when it comes to this issue, women should be concerned related to the fact that
there are still many things that put women in isolation. It doesnt happen years ago, but it
still happen till now and what we have to do is obviously support the movement of gender
equality and women empowerment.

If you asked me who my role model for women empowerment, I will dedicate it to
my mother. It doesnt mean that I dont put respect on my country women empowerment
figure, Kartini. Because without her work, maybe young women in Indonesia couldnt have
a better education and maybe now I would put away my dreams to be an engineer and take a
master degree in Europe. I choose my mother is because she already encourage her children
to do whatever we want as long as it is good for us. She already made me and my sister not
to give up on our dreams to be engineers. Unfortunately, there are still many parents that
wont let their children to be anything they want just because their gender. Parents are only
one of many reasons that somebody should have limit, we forget that our environment or
even of friends can be one of them.

For me, to be supported to be an engineer is more than enough. I may not be an

engineer in the future, I may have other jobs, but for now all I need is a support. As my
major in IT, I feel like women sometimes are being discriminated. And its true, because
most of them who works on IT field are men. There are no one that can be blamed into but
the conventional way of thinking which thinks that men are more skilled when it comes to
anything that needs technical skill. Im not working yet but I feel discriminated almost like
everyday in college whenever there is a team project that involve men on it. For instance, we
should made an application or a business system but the men always look to women as
nothing but a report writer. Im also not an ambitious who wants to know everything but at
least I should know how to make a website, an application, or a system or in the other words,
at least I should know and feel that I am skilled, I am educated, and I can proof it. But we, as
a women, sometimes dont have enough power to against it. We already labeled that we are
unreliable.
 It seems that women always want to be treated more special but the truth is not. Like
what my favorite actress and also the HeForShe campaign maker, Emma Watson said,
Women want to be women. We just want to be treated equally. Its not about man hating.
bell hooks says, Patriarchy has no gender. Indeed, we as women just want to be treated
equally and have the same rights as mens. The fact told us that both men and women now
can go to school, but how about the result?. Still, the number of women are less than the
number of men in many company.

There are many things we can do to support gender equality. First, it comes from
ourself. We as women should proof that we can be anything we want by being successful in
whatever we do, whatever our jobs are. Because once we can proof it, we can be an
inspiration to others to do the same thing like us or even more than they expect. Second, treat
everyone equally. As an example, men thinks that women has less technical skill and them
and women often thinks that man are like god that should be strong all the time instead we
should think that both men and women are born different, we all have same rights but all of
us has our own weakness. So, like what Emma Watson said, gender equality is also men
issues.