Saya as an Indonesian Woman

I take International women's Day commemoration today to remind and refresh my spirit in having solidarity for women, at least for women who are around me; friends, sisters, mothers, and people with empathy for women. When I was in junior high school, my boy-classmate spontaneously shouted, “you serve like a man,” after I served in a volley game during Physical Education session. As a reply, I asked him, “what do you really wanna say?” He answered, “you are strong like a man, and the ball could pass over the net.” It was because most of my girl-classmates were rarely serve that way, and it made the game was like taking turn to do service exercise a bit. This excerpt of my experience created many questions in my mind; is it a problem? does it make me not girl enough? Does only boy can do it?

In life, most standards attached to female are influenced by stereotype, and expectation made by society toward female. Some examples: good woman is the one wearing skirt or dress, woman with straight hair is prettier, white skin is better than dark one, tall and slim woman is more interesting, woman talks softly is real woman, woman who cannot cook is hard to get marry, woman thinks with hearth, woman is careless, woman is emotional thus can not chair an organization, and many more. The statement has two direct impact for woman; firstly, it limits a woman to be herself, and lastly, it may make woman insecure. Hence, it is important to rethinking about all the stereotypes and judgments labelled to woman. Here I just wanna say that be brave to be whatever you want to be, and let respect other person’s right.

#beboldforchange