International womens day

Today it is international womens day. And despite it being 2015 women are still to a large extent discriminated in the world. It's a disgrace if you ask me.

In the 90's when I was in the middle of my career I employed a guy from Romania, and he told me that in Romania on this particular day every woman got half a day off from work plus they were given flowers and sweets.

Nice. So 364.5 days a year the same women got to cook, clean, wash, take care of kids and do everything else to make a home function, but this day they got a rose and some chocolate to make up for it. I tell'ya, it makes me angry.

And still today, women in certain countries get raped, and then blamed for having sex outside their (probably forced) marriage, and sometimes even executed for it.

I remember the early 90's when the top dog of the company I then worked for, a large corporation with 130.000 employees, and this particular manager was making a tour trying to mix with me and other people who made the company successful, with the message that he was like us. Except for that he was making a helluva lot more money than all of us.

 He was sitting next to me, and I asked him why there were so few women in leadership positions, and he responded like I was a kid, saying "these things take time".

Well he was right in a way, since nothing much has happened since, but it's only because we choose to. There are too many woman in rich Western countries who do not claw their way up. I'm not saying the men are not to blame, 'cause they are, but I like to see more women standing up for themselves, rather than focusing on how they look and to please everybody around them.

I know, I have chosen to quit the rat race, and may not have so much credibility anymore, but when I was still racing, I was doing it fiercely. More women should do that.