Women have great minds but they also have great hearts. The distance between their minds and hearts is shorter. They have a good balance of both.
I started working at a time when I was encouraged (let’s not say “forced”) to be like men in the workplace. “Wear a man’s hat when you come to work.” I never knew how to do that. That was the norm though and women were not questioning it so much. The women who embraced it were promoting. So those of us who did not want to deny who we are were watching. If women got ambitious or angry those behaviors would not be accepted while the same reactions from men were considered normal.
Now I see clearly how much of that softness and empathy is needed in the workplace. We definitely need more women, not to close the gender gap and fill in some arbitrary numbers, but because the world needs more of a good balance between minds and hearts. We denied our so-called “soft” skills for too long at work like it was a weakness. We exactly need that softness. We need emotions. We need to own them and talk about them instead of denying them; that is part of every human being.
Women are strong. They bring life. They nurture and care for them from the moment they get pregnant. They help others as soon as they get strong. They uplift others and communities. When they are strong they raise other strong human beings.
Women want to nurture and care for others but not taken advantage of those wonderful instinctive qualities around the house. They don’t want men to be proud of strong women out there but deny the fact that they don’t want that strong woman as their wife at home.
Women need to know their value and own it. If you don’t know your own value nobody else will. Women have to see themselves as equals.
We need to raise strong girls not princesses. Please. Our world really needs more strong women. The world needs the balance they bring: a strong tie between hearts and minds.
