Name: Unraveling the myths of gender inequality
Uploaded: 2017-09-26T04:46:16.000Z
Duration: 23 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Many of you know my story and you know that I grew up

Past simple

and I carried that belief with me well into adulthood.

As a young adult, I even allowed myself to be coerced

into an arranged marriage because it was actually

ingrained in me that I had to relinquish control

of my life to men, whether it was my father,

who can relate to this but we are actually taught,

or it's ingrained in us, it's part of our cultural paradigm

that women have to be looked after by men.

So it starts out with being looked after by our fathers

and we are expected to stay at home with our parents

That's the kind of cultural environment I grew up in.

I couldn't go out with just women friends or girlfriends,

There had to be a male chaperone who was trusted

by my family, like it could even be my brother

or somebody who my family knew and trusted.

And women were treated like we were very vulnerable

Think about the kind of messages this sends to us

or gives us, think about the kind of beliefs

It makes us feel that we need to be protected

by men all the time but it also makes us doubt

our own abilities as women to think, to react,

It makes us doubt our confidence in our own emotions

In addition to this, at home, there were a lot of chores

around the house, like for example, kitchen chores

and things like that which were just assigned to me

and not my brother for example, when I would ask my parents

why he didn't have to help with the washing up

or the cooking, they would just say, because you're a girl

And if you recognize it, that was Abba "Dancing Queen".

So when I was growing up, no other explanation was needed

other than that you are a girl and he is a boy.

And I actually grew up believing that women were

the inferior culture and that our role was

a supportive role, that we existed to support men.

Looking around even at my world at that time

as a young woman, as a teenager, as a young girl,

and leading figures, news readers at that time

For example, assistants, secretaries, nurses,

Now think about this, what kind of an impression

and you're impressionable, you don't question it.

I'm interested to hear from you and to know

whether you grew up in a similar cultural environment.

I know that a lot of people say that in Western culture

particularly in American culture, we have nothing

to complain about, that women are very free

and very liberated from all these beliefs.

That is true to an extent but only to an extent

and I'll get into that a little bit more in a moment

So here's what I want to say next though.

When I died, when I reached end stage cancer

I realized that there is no gender in the other realm.

There is no gender because we have no biology.

We are strong, we are powerful and everything about us

is needed here, our empathy, our sensitivity,

all the way down to our assertiveness, our masculinity,

our femininity, it's all equally important.

Like yin and yang, there's no judgment in that realm

about which is more positive and which is more negative.

There is absolutely no judgment in that realm.

I realized that the roles we play, the roles

we stick to, the gender roles that have been taught to us

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Unraveling the myths of gender inequality

empathy

embrace

journey

matter