It wasn’t until late middle school when I realized that there was anyone in the world that would judge my ability to do a job because I am a woman.
I was raised in a household with two working parents. They would figure out a schedule based off of who was going to drive to school and who was going to take pick up my sister and I from afterschool care.
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But they always told me and my sister, Mommy and Daddy both love what they do.
Before I truly understood the implications of what my parents did, I understood that they both worked because they enjoyed their jobs. I grew up being told that the only thing that mattered about their careers was that they loved them, and that was that.
It wasn’t until I got into middle school, started to be asked what I thought I might want to do down the line. And realizing for the first time that someone was going to judge my capabilities because I was a woman.
And I can say that was the moment that I realized people believed that. But I, to this day, still cannot wrap my head around it. I was raised always told that my parents loved their jobs, never thought to compare the two, and never thought that anyone else would look at the situation differently.
My mother works in the business world, and rose to a rank that was not always easy for a woman. For many years she was sitting around large oak tables surrounded by only men. She knew that she was going to enter the work force, and knew her goals, back when the glass ceiling was made out of a much tougher material.
She is a brilliant at what she does, and loves what she does, and I was raised watching her be too capable at her job to ever understand how some people believe the things that they do about gender.
Mommy and daddy work because we love what we do. That’s how we were raised.
I have no clue what I am going to do when I graduate from college, or what my career will be when I have children. But I know that I want to do something that I love and believe I should have the right to hold whatever job I love.
That might mean that I work in an office and work to run a marketing department or that might mean that I love taking my kids to school, going to PTA meetings, and working as a full time mom. My husband might decide that he loves taking the kids to school and going to soccer practice and working as a full time dad, or he might love any other profession.
But I will raise my children, no matter what it is that I choose, telling them that I chose it because it is what I love to do. Whenever I have children, and they have children and they have children, they will be told that their parents choose their jobs because that is what they love.
My hope is that either a daughter, or a granddaughter, same as a son or a grandson, will never be told anything differently. Will never have to see that someone is there telling them there is anything in the way they are born preventing them from doing what they love.
