Monday 30 April 2012

I am only human


All of us have priorities in our lives. I have always thought happiness to be my first priority and it still is but sometimes I wonder if I was sick would I be happy. So shouldn’t health be my first priority. If there was no peace here would I be happy. I don’t know. But I am not sick (at least for now) and I am in a peaceful country so for now my priority is still happiness. But for someone living in a country fraught with war, their first priority might be peace. For someone living in a prison, their first priority might be freedom. And for someone who is sick, their first priority might be health. It all depends on each of our lives, how we might choose what is most important for us.

But oftentimes we take things that we have for granted, things that have always been there, things that we have always been able to do so there has never been a reason to think about them.  I have never thought about being able to walk, to talk, to write and I have never been grateful for being able to do these. Instead I have wasted endless hours wishing for things I didn’t have, things that wouldn’t necessarily bring me happiness. And I believe that is what most of us do, we wish for a bigger car when there are people who just want to be able to walk. We waste piles of money buying things just to show other people (who don’t even care about you) that you are fancy when there are thousands who don’t have enough for one meal also. Most of us, we waste half of our lives wishing for luxuries which when we finally achieve does nothing but leaves us wanting even more.

I guess that’s why we are here, still a long way from enlightenment. I wish I could stop wishing for more. I realize it’s wrong, I realize I am being greedy because I already have so much but I am only human…J

Monday 9 April 2012

Gender


Sex         – refers to the biological characteristics which define humans as       
                   female or male
Gender  – refers to the culturally based expectations of the roles and 
                  behaviors of men and women                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                         – Gender & Elections, BRIDGE

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when we say gender? Are gender issues just about women? If it is not, then why are most issues about gender related to women?

Well, let me share my opinions with you. When we talk about gender, the two words that come to my mind first are equity and women. Now I know, one of those two words is women, but gender issues are not just about women as most seem to think ( at least most people I have met seem to think so). The following are some statistics that might interest you.


Female
Male
Local Leaders
5%
95%
Parliamentary Representation
14%
86%
Dzongdags
5%
95%
Unemployed
65.9%
34.1%
Illiterate
65.6%
34.4%
(Some of these data’s are old and may have changed)

(P.S: I had originally made a beautifully colored graph to make my stats look more attractive but I just couldn’t figure out how to get it in my blog. So I guess the table will have to do to get my message out…. J)

Looking at the table above, it’s easy to understand why gender issues are mostly about women. And this is not just Bhutan’s problem. Women occupy 17% of parliamentary seats around the world and out of the 180 heads of Government, only 12 were women as of April, 2007.

 If we look at the table, for the first few bars which shows parliamentary representation, leaders, etc., the male percentage is very much high. But when it comes to disadvantages, the percentages are sadly reversed.

I don’t know whose fault it is. It’s something that has been bred into us, if you know what I mean. For thousands of years, we have believed that the male are the superior of the two and it’s not easy to just wake up one day and change all that. I am someone who believes there should be gender equity but I have also been stereotyping, although unknowingly. I always bought my daughter something pink, with flowers and princess print on them and Barbies. And I bought blue for my nephew and trucks and Ben 10 stuffs. You may think that these things are very subtle and hardly matters but now when they talk, they say that pink is for girls and blue for boys, Barbie for girls and trucks for boys. It was not intentional on my part but sadly I was the one who shaped them that way – I bred it into them.

So if you are reading this, begin your journey with me. Doesn’t matter how small your step, just take it. Buy your daughters guns and trucks and boxing gloves. Tell them they are inferior to no one, so that one wonderful day, we may be able to change the statistics that I have just shown above.

I can’t say that I will change the world overnight, but I sincerely believe that I have begun my journey……