Tuesday 8 March 2016

An article for International Women’s Day ...make a difference


So many young girls grow up to be women who believe that only having a man will really make a difference to their lives. Well, a man can indeed make a difference, but not to the exclusion of everything else a woman can be and achieve. Very often for certain women, life takes a different path, it may be that on their own they achieve a high powered career and that this provides them with assets such as a home of their own. They do not want to have a man and nor would it be advisable in some circumstances, as I found out to my cost in a brief marriage where my emotionally and financially abusive husband was entitled to half the property I had owned before meeting him, just because he had married me and had no such assets of his own. I was unable to prove the abuse, since he made sure that if I insisted on the divorce going to court, he would attempt to take my home…And so for many women, it is to a large degree women who have made the big difference in their lives and growth and been their biggest influence on who they are.

We women are capable, powerful and wonderful with unique gifts which can be priceless when used with intelligence and integrity, we are not the women of many popular TV programmes, cunning, needy for a man, manipulative to get and keep one and dependent on having one for any sense of self-worth.

I certainly can say that I write from experience and gratitude for the women who have and do today influence my life and enrich it by their example, many men have credited the women in their lives or even especially just one, such as their mother for their success in life.

If today I was to be advising a younger woman or young girl, I would say look for and look up to as mentor’s women who have maturity of mind, experience and a stable outlook on issues such as love, life, relationships and their career, especially value women who appreciate and have used to the fullest, their chances for education, and their intelligence. However, also look for women who have not compromised themselves or others in order to make progress and achieve…Do not take your cue in life from the movie Working Girl!!! Actually, life is NOT a competition, there is plenty of room on this earth for all of us and we have a lot to learn from each other.

Look up to women who have more than one string to their bow, who when one door shuts such as in their career, they have alternatives up their sleeve, who have perhaps used talents and skills to make their own business.

My blog is written from personal experience of being an older woman who for health reasons had to give up her career and carve out another one and it saddens me to see women whose lives will always be limited by lack of confidence and a lack of worth, a sense that we are entitled to be the very best that we can be , but who are held back by the attitudes instilled in them from childhood and family circumstances, society and class structure , media that has led them to believe they are only valuable if they have good looks and men who have hurt them . …

Don’t hold back, be all that you are capable of being, it is true that a man can make a difference to your life, but we women for ourselves can make all the difference …

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