Make Me Roar!
Public speaking often scares many women, but recently I had to give it a try when I was asked to speak on the Manager radio talk show about my business, MeetNLunch. The thought of it was pretty terrifying, but I did it because conscience told me that I should. I figured I would not wait around for the general Thai public to change its stigma around my introduction service. That would have been a business suicidal or worse I would be waiting until the end of time! My confidence grew out of my belief that my introduction service is the best way for busy Bangkok professionals to meet that special someone. It seemed to me that I could help a lot of people who needed and wanted it once they knew that my service existed. A great deal of Thai women also shares my fear of speaking out in public, but is that why there are so little of us representing in the Thai politics? Or is it that Thai politics is such a joke and the whole world know it, and that any sane women would stay as far away from it as possible?
Let’s face it Thai culture still isn’t comfortable with powerful outspoken women. We equate outspokenness with manliness, the traits which women fear being associated with. No wonder women are often afraid to stand up, take the lead, and speak out.
It takes some exceptional qualities for a woman to rise to the top, including bearing the harassment on the way up of being too ambitious, obnoxious, pushy, and worst of all bossy. But I contend that the biggest obstacles for women are not male colleagues, the society or some of our fellow females, but our own fears that we are setting ourselves up for attack of what we believe. Now more than ever, we need women leaders to take us beyond the mess we live in. Real leadership is too rare and too valuable to limit to the pool to half the world population i.e. men.
My point is we need a new model of leadership, one that doesn’t lead through fear but rather lead through bringing out the better nature of people. The quality we need in Thai leaders right now is someone who is strong and decisive while at the same time being nurturing, wise and respectful enough to tell the truth with a moral authority that inspires and empowers the public. Women are ideally suited to supply these qualities and therefore we need more women leaders.
I believe that women would bring strength and vulnerability, passion and discipline, intellect and imagination into the masculine political order. It is impossible to be a leader if we’re not willing to publicly stand up for what we believe, and this is clearly a fear which everyone, especially women, have to stand up to. I know from my personal experience that it can be done. At the end of my radio show, I came to enjoy it and was no longer as afraid of expressing myself in public. But I must confess it was not easy. I conquered this fear only because of my love for matchmaking and wanting to see people happy was stronger than my fear of criticism and failure. After all I live vicariously through other people’s happiness when they find love!
One thing I very much believe in is that that no one pays as much attention to our humiliations and defeats as we do. I made a couple of slip during the radio show, but no one was as focused on my silly rambles. Achieving confidence in expressing our views is not a one step process, nor will it be a smooth journey without pain along the way, but you will never achieve it without taking that first step.
A good example of a female leader is Mrs. Pavena Hongsakul, founder of abused women and children organization in Thailand, would not be so famous if there wasn’t a massive problem with women and child abuse in Thailand. Who is there in the U.S. who is still alive and standing up for women and children’s rights? No body, because the problem has been resolved to the point where it is considered a rare occurrence.
It is not enough to just be a woman to be a leader though; you have to have a popular conviction or political view. Believe me, Hillary Clinton will not get American women vote because she is a woman and because they are women. Similar to Ségolène Royal, a woman candidate in the French Presidential election, lose, and she lost because of women’s vote. By campaigning on her gender and emphasizing on her feminist credentials, Ms Royal lacked a clear policy to create jobs and revive one of the European weakest economies, which were needed to convince the French voters. Learning the lesson through Royal, Mrs. Clinton has been avoiding the women’s politics, and toughening up on her ambiguous economic agenda in the running up election. A woman must have strong and popular policies; otherwise she can’t get the female vote.
I have no experience with Pavena first hand, but I can feel that she has empathy, which is an essential requirement for leadership. Her ability to empathize with someone’s hopes and fears and happiness was astounding. On many occasions, victims felt more secure to ’speak’ to Pavena herself rather than reporting the event to the police. They felt that Pavena’s response is more immediate, by passing lot of ‘red tape’ and most importantly she has always help the people in need. Part of her leader is the ability to recognize fear in others and help to diminish it. It is more important that she keeps doing this because Thailand needs someone like her to continue raising gender equality awareness.
Wake up Thai women! Don’t you find it an outrage that there are nearly nine times as many Thai male MPs as female MPs in Thailand’s Lower House. That puts Thai females in one of the lowest positions in the world; on par with Paraguay and Zimbabwe! Why are there so few female MPs?
If we can give women the equal chance, not just to become MPs but also to become ministers, and that the culture in parliament is female-friendly, then there is no reason why the best women should not become a prime minister. At the time of writing this article, I also couldn’t help but notice that Thailand’s constitutional council was also all male.
Happy Facts Box:
- The Democrat Party is the only party which targets 30% women candidates for election. (This maybe just a publicity statement, but at least it tries.)
- The minimum corrupted rate is 15% of the total value of the project, according to the EPC bidders. Women are generally less corrupted in nature, but there is always an exception to the rule.
- Norway has a “zipping system”, where they alternate between women and men on the party electoral lists.
- Thailand is one of the few countries in the world which has no constitution and electoral law quota for women.
Despite a larger percentage of women MPs in some other countries, what I realized is that it takes more than an “open door” such as quota system, to encourage women to get involved in politics and become potential leaders. Whilst we could get more women into the parliament, the prevailing political culture is still overwhelmingly male-dominated. Watch Thai parliamentary debate, which is full of pompous, arrogant, male rants, to realize that this isn’t really the environment that most sane women would be happy to work in! Let alone women, any reasonable decent person would stay far as possible from politics and governmental departments, particularly in the existing climate of compulsive-obsessive-corrupted politicians.
Whatever the personal price, we must speak out what matters. Thailand needs the leadership of women now more than ever.
No responses yet
