Women of Today

Women of today are busy people. In fact, many are extremely so.

It used to be that the sole role women played for hundreds, if not thousands, of years was that of the homemaker. They were humbly known as housewives.

'Housewife' is a demeaning term. If you are a 'housewife' it means you: (1) belong only to the house, and (2) are someone else's property (a wife).

To make things worse, housewives were usually deemed the least productive members of the labour hierarchy. Because it was not easy to quantify productivity of something so non-monetary in economic terms, housewives had always been a deprived and under-recognised segment of society.

Having said all that, however, these housewives decades ago were the lucky ones as they were only required to stay home and fulfil the 3C's - Cooking, Cleaning and Caring for the husband and children.

However, today, the world is changing and women are now playing a much more significant role in the productive labour force. It is now a norm to have both the husband and the wife working hard to provide for the family, something which used to be a chauvinistic responsibility.

With more women than men enrolled at institutions of higher learning throughout the world, and more and more women taking top jobs in multinational organisations and governments, it is now clear that the world is experiencing a great power shift - one that is moving gradually from a male-centric society to a more balanced male-female partnership model, or even a female dominant society eventually.

In my honest opinion, women are superior to men in many ways.

There are some virtues in women that are not always found in men; qualities such as perseverance, patience, focus and loyalty (in relative term).

Motherhood is a great training and testing ground for perseverance. The pain and suffering women must go through in the process of child bearing can never be fully understood by men (unless we get an opportunity to experience motherhood ourselves personally, which, unfortunately, is unlikely to happen).

Motherhood develops strength and unleashes the infinite potential in women, for without these qualities it is not easy pull through the process in its entirety.

Child delivery has been described as the most physically painful experience one will ever experience. This develops tolerance for pain in women that men can only envy.

Child rearing requires a tremendous amount of love and patience, and love and patience are the two most important qualities you must have in order to build cohesive teams. Having a cohesive team means half of your corporate battle is won.

Women are somehow much more able to concentrate on the things they pursue. This quality of focus is somehow slightly more difficult to find in men. While many men have demonstrated their ability to stay focused on one thing for a very long time, biologically and genetically women are built much more so for this purpose.

As a result of being more able to stay focused, more women graduate with tertiary qualification than men. And the ability to concentrate forges their ability to manage things in a microscopic manner. Attention to detail is an essential success element which many men, not all of course, lack.

Last but not least, loyalty seems to be another area which women excel in better than their male counterparts.

The fact that men have been given special privileges over the centuries is the reason why many of them feel that by merely being men they deserve special rights - amongst them the right to be disloyal, particularly in the marital sense.

Polygamy is a practice which existed for thousands of years, even within the Chinese context. It was supposedly acceptable for men to marry a few wives, but it was not okay for a woman to marry a few husbands. Of course I know there are reasons why this was or is still so, but this is not an area of discussion within in this article.

There is, however, a blessing in disguise in what the women had to go through historically. It has developed a stronger sense of loyalty to the entity they serve or belong to, be it their spouse, family or organisation.

This stronger sense of loyalty is a virtue that is treasured in the corporate world today, for loyalty forges trust, and trust - in turn - forges leadership.

It is little wonder why women of today are becoming more and more successful, and in many instances, much more so than their male counterparts.

To all the men out there - this is your wake up call, mate!

“Life is about constantly going beyond limits!”
- Erican Chong