The Future is Female. Thanks, mom.

Having been at an all-girls boarding school for almost six years, female empowerment was something that was constantly felt in lessons, in assemblies, imbedded in the bricks of the building, the wooden floors of the library, entwined in the vines and plants and in our minds. To have essentially grown up surrounded by my teachers, both men and women, who have all always embodied the ultimate ‘feminist’, I feel as though I’ve come along way from being the twelve-year-old girl who thought that ‘girl power’ was wearing matching friendship bracelets and wearing the same school shoes as your best friend.

Some people think that the empowerment of women means that women think they are ‘better’ than men, and that we belong above men in the gender hierarchy. Alas, this is not the case. We fight for the equality of men and women. We want the gap between 75 cents and a dollar closed. We want to be treated with the same respect given to powerful men all over the world. It is hard being a woman. I don’t say this to evoke pity from anyone, but a quick Google search can prove that women, historically, have had to fight that little bit harder to be heard. To have a voice.

My father is seventeen years older than my mom. She is a young and beautiful Vietnamese woman, and he is an older, white, successful man. I grew up knowing what people thought of their marriage. My mom certainly knew what people were saying behind her back. Even now, after nearly twenty years of happy and wonderful marriage, people still question why my mom married my dad. I won’t sugarcoat it. Strangers see them together and do sometimes automatically assume that she married him for his money. No embellishments here. What’s the point?

No one works harder than my mom. She was the proud owner of a Vietnamese art gallery, the only one at the time in Dubai. She manages two spas in Ho Chi Minh City. ‘Little projects’, some people say. How belittling. Sure, she doesn’t have a nine-to-five job, and doesn’t need one, now or in the future. But, she has spent her whole life proving to others, and to herself that she is a strong person, a strong woman. She grew up in Hanoi in the 1980’s, and was expected to prepare dinners for her father and clean the house and find a husband, quick. If she tried to be anything more than that, she was laughed at. Silly, naïve girl. Everything, from her, let’s face it, traditionally Asian upbringing, to the prejudice she still faces all because she married a man she loves, made her even more adamant that I grew up without the same ideals that she had been taught.

Her struggle is not my own. My father told me I could do whatever I wanted if I put the work in. My mother taught me that it doesn’t matter how others may perceive my actions and what I want to do, and that my gender and my nationality doesn’t and shouldn’t affect what I want and am able to achieve. I went to a school that screams female empowerment and girl power. I have been given opportunities that many girls may never get.

I am the Vietnamese daughter of a woman who defied the odds given to her all those years ago in Hanoi. I am the English daughter of a successful man who worked hard to become the man he is today. I am the product of a relationship that has had to work hard to prove themselves to society. I am the product of two people, two countries, two vastly different cultures, and for that I am so grateful, because it has shown me how there is so much for to fight for. My mom fought for herself, for me, so I wouldn’t have to. Now we fight for those who cannot.