Career for a woman

On the bus back, I was sitting with my colleague, J. Initially, was mulling over something at work. Then, as she started chatting with me, we got to share about work and cooking. As, it was nearing our destination, I took the opportunity to ask her: "Do you feel that work is very important for a woman?" Had wanted to ask her, as she has accumulated more life experience and seen much of the world. As she shared her perspective, I gained the following reflections:

For a woman who is young, it is good to do more for learning and gaining experience. We do not have to wait for our boss to tell us what to do.

For a woman who has a family to tend to, scoring in both career and family life would only work if there is strong family support. Afterall, everything comes with a price. We cannot expect to carve a successful career by spending lots of time at work and yet have meaningful interactions with our family. Coz truly meaningful relationships with our family requires lots of efforts and time. A mother would have to sacrifice e.g. in terms of career, in order to build a bond with her baby. And in J's words, we pay a price and get the prize many years later when our children is brought up to have good values and still stays close to us - the "heart strings" that tug and bind a family together. The thing is locally as we are resource-constrained, many a times we are so driven at work (either via societal norms, our bosses or ourselves) that we may neglect other important stuff in our lives.

Why am I thinking about all this now? One thing being I have been feeling very rushed at work recently for a prolonged period and perhaps am wondering how long the rush will persist. Also, as am preparing myself towards the next phase in life, I find that it is something that crosses my mind more. The trigger I guessed would have to be that our MPC facilitator, E, shared about giving up her job to nurture her children and she finding it very worthwhile now. For women in past centuries or even in other locales, they may not face such questions as they are bounded by traditional norms of females being the home maker and nothing else. Not that I am opposing those traditional norms. But for women in modern societies, the trick is balancing both work and home roles and how to do them both really well.