Category: WOMEN AND SOCIETY

Hong Kong Women and Women Everywhere – A Letter to You and Me

~ womeninlivingness

by Adele Leung, a woman and perpetual student, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong

Dear Women of Hong Kong,

(Hong Kong – a fast paced cosmopolitan, high spending financial centre of the East)

We have worked so hard, sped so fast, endlessly, tirelessly in action, in constant motion, in building up what we all wish for – recognition, is it not?

We have shown everyone that we can do everything a man can, or more, or better. We know how to dress up, run a meeting, hold a conference, host a large dinner party and discipline kids who misbehave. We are the spotlight of the party, the sexy wife, with flawless and age-proof skin. Continue reading “Hong Kong Women and Women Everywhere – A Letter to You and Me” →

Being ‘Good’ or Being ‘True’

~ womeninlivingness

by Sara Harris, BHSc, Melbourne, Australia

For the most part of my life I have been very conscious of looking after myself. In fact, I used to pride myself on how healthy I was, even as a teenager. I went to the gym, played all sorts of sports, didn’t eat sugar and was careful about the amount of food I was eating. I was also one to do very well at school. Always on top of everything, producing quality and quantity and getting marks to confirm me as being a ‘good’ student. I was also involved in fund-raisers and the 40 hour famine each year… out to save the world!

Looking back now, it would be fair to say that I was living in a bit of a ‘drive’ – a drive to do well, to be good, to succeed and to be the best. It may seem as though there is nothing wrong with all of this, however my body was telling me that there definitely was. I would push myself through anything, constantly, at the expense of my body. Here I was thinking that I was looking after myself by doing all the right things, but I hadn’t considered that simply listening to my body ‘first’ was actually what was needed. I see now how I kept going to the gym when my body was tired, or how I was eating food because of what I had read or what I was told was good for me, without listening to what my body really wanted. And I would work until all hours of the morning to get things done, thinking that the work would be better the more time I gave it. But why did I not give the same consideration and dedication to my body, when it is the one actually doing all of the work? Continue reading “Being ‘Good’ or Being ‘True’” →

Carbon Copy Mum

~ womeninlivingness

For most of my life, I believed being a woman was the same thing as being a mother – there was no distinction between them. The turning point of when a girl would become a woman appeared to be when she produced children and became a mother. From an early age I took notice of every detail of how to be a mother, and because almost all of the grown women around me fitted into this category – there were plenty of mothers to model myself on.

I have three sisters, all of whom are now mums too. It was never asked of us if we would ever like to have children or presented with the idea of there being a choice involved – it was expected of us from the start. If you weren’t born a boy then at least you could have babies one day. It was more a question of ‘when’ it would happen. When I was six years old I very clearly remember being told about a girl in our street who had fallen pregnant in her teenage years and how her life would now be over for her – that she had given up having a life when she chose to have children. So it was at age six that I registered that having children meant you couldn’t have a life anymore. Continue reading “Carbon Copy Mum” →