Women's Day

I love how Indonesian have their own woman independence day where the celebration is based on Kartini's birthday, the first influential woman in Indonesia who pursued her life beyond typical characteristic of woman at that time, At the most difficult time for Javanese woman to pursue their education and career, Kartini managed to hack her way into getting proper education and learning several studies that most women still find it unfamiliar at that time. Also, she wrote letters that she had sent to her friends in Europe to express her views about social conditions, particularly Indonesian native woman. This letters was collected and publish into a book titled "Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang" and later become an inspiration for a local woman to fight for their independence.

Speaking of which, with the growth of technology especially in media where everything became digital and messages are beautifully handcrafted, how we celebrate Kartini's day also come in more creative ways. The interesting part is, we can celebrate Kartini's day with different angles because as a woman, we have to admit we have more than one face to show to the world. We celebrate Kartini's day as a working mom, as a worker who take important seats, as the probably the only girl among our male siblings but still keeping up with them, as a daughter who exceed our parents expectation, as a woman who are not afraid being in the field that people said the only man can do, and as a woman who's are not afraid to publicly speak up and influence other people regardless their gender.

As for me, I celebrated Kartini's day with the most influential women from the field I'm familiar with, Technology. Have to admit, that sometimes, I'm still afraid to jump into this field where they said everything they had done in tech industry has to be logical, that women's emotional traits has no advantages and they prefer to work with men, Women tend to afraid as they are not as high tech as men when it comes to coding, engineering, designing products, etc, when in fact, we are as good as them. Another myth is that women's traits have no advantages in the tech industry, well, that is so wrong. Women has a good listening ability that can translate what market need and what to be delivered by the company, including what have to be delivered by fellow engineer and coder, our motherly traits can be used to fill top management position because we are detail oriented, our intuition can be a good radar to spot opportunity and we have many other women traits that will be advantageous.

So no, you don't need to be a coder to work on the tech industry, they have people to do that, Sheryl Sandberg is not a coder and she still climbed her way to the top. The point is, don't be afraid to be women in a field that are not familiar with the presence of women. What you have to do, is to know your strength, know your ability, don't stop learning, widen your knowledge, be an expertise on the field that you like, and don't be afraid to hang out with the boys once in a while.

I have to admit, that sometimes I'm still struggling to express my authority over men or to be in a debate with men, but I'm still learning. As for moms, don't be afraid to encourage your daughters to have careers in technology and science, because I think a well-known women inventors, especially in science and technology, is still rare to find. I still don't know the women version of Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, or the women version of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or at least they are not well-known.