Happy International Women's Day!

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I attended a symposium on "Dutch Culture, Dutch Habits and Dutch Women" where women from countries as varied as Bulgaria, China, Argentina and Germany were invited to speak on their experiences with Dutch women and culture.

Most of the topics discussed focused on the gender battle, within Holland and compared to other countries. Luckily, they included the audience in their discussion as I was busting to comment on several issues. I quickly became known as “our American in the audience.”

Gender battle in the home: Dutch women have won this battle on almost all fronts. All the international women expressed surprise at the amount of housework that men in Holland do. The housework load, on average, is split 50%. Both sexes equally share the chores: dishes, laundry, cleaning, cooking …etc. And that’s not just my Dutch sweetie, it’s all of them. I love that about Holland. We strive towards this ideal in America, but I think society still views the household as the woman’s responsibility and creates very gender specific chores: e.g., the man takes out the garbage and the woman does the cleaning. In Holland, it’s totally accepted and quite normal to find the guy scrubbing toilets on a Saturday morning. I don’t know how the Dutch women did it, but bravo! :o)

Gender battle in the workforce: There is still quite a war being waged here on this front. I didn’t know it until tonight. Much of the commentary focused on the lack of women in upper-level management positions (in both companies and universities). The panelist from China gave several statistics, but I only remember a few: the percentage of women in top-level jobs in their own country are: Holland – 4%, China – 6% and USA – 21%. I really have no personal experience with these numbers. I see a very open view here towards the boundaries between men and women in the workforce. I think it’s much more acceptable and more prevalent to have men in typically feminine positions in Holland, for example, as teachers, in child-care roles, health care, counseling…etc. I also think there is a very large representation of women in the government and political positions. I don’t feel that the glass ceiling in Holland is as thick as the one we broke through in America.

My personal opinion for the reason the percentage of women in top-level positions in Holland is small, has more to do with a question of priorities. As advanced, liberal and forward thinking as the Dutch society is, there is a very strong tradition about how you raise your children and the quality of home life (based on the Christian history of the Netherlands). I think the Dutch feel very strongly about having one parent in the house to raise the children. Most women, given the opportunity, stay home with their children in the early years. As the children grow older, many of them return to the working world, but mostly part-time. The panelist from Bulgaria, a socialist society, pointed out that both of her parents worked and she spent her early years in daycare, which she felt gave her social skills that other children, raised by their grandparents, didn’t have. I learned tonight that good, quality daycare can be extremely expensive in Holland and that is something the government is working to change –to offer the support structure for women to continue to work while their children are still young.

At one point, they posed the question: How do we change this and get more women in the top-level positions? To which I answered: You need to have more women currently in top-level positions to pave the way for other women and make it a woman-friendly environment. In order to do that, there have to be women willing and wanting to play in a man’s world, by a man’s rules. Women have to learn to be competitive and play hardball. By nature, women want everyone to like them, they want to solve all problems and make a fun, creative workplace. By nature, men could care less who like them and only look at the bottom line. I am absolutely generalizing here, but you understand my point. The business world is still, even in America, a man’s world. I've been there. I know it. There are some great companies out there that provide a lot of feminine-type support, but it is still a testosterone-dominated world.

To get to the top-level, I think you have to really want it and love the challenge. The truth is, currently only a small percentage of women actually want it and feel comfortable at the top. Several of the older Dutch women in the crowd commented about how they had had the opportunity to move into higher-level positions or had spent some time there, but quit or remained at what was considered lower-level, because they didn’t find the top-level positions fulfilling or as emotionally rewarding. I think the desire to be successful (if that is measured by being in a top-level position) is seen differently here. Money and status are far less important in Holland than, for example, in America. Yes, people want to make money, but the majority of people are satisfied with just living comfortably. In America, I think that women, in general, have a much more opportunistic and ambitious drive. I guess the numbers prove that. However, I think it is changing. Out of four couples I know here with little children (under the age of 3), three of them are double-income families.

Cool facts about Holland:

• Fathers get pregnancy leave.
• Many companies allow both parents to work less/part-time to allow more time for child-care after a child is born.
• It is standard coverage in Dutch health insurance to send a helper to your home for up to several weeks after you have given birth: this person helps with the chores, shopping, cooking, care of the newborn…etc. ***This wins several stars in my book!

I think I suffer the security of American equality. I feel safe in my rights as an American woman to fight and be legally supported for equal opportunities and equal rights. I feel protected in my knowledge of life as I have experienced it. In truth, we, as women, still have to watch our backs. We should not assume that the battle has been fought and won. It is still a battle, not only in foreign countries, but also in our own hometowns and states. South Dakota recently passed legislation banning a woman’s right to abortion in all cases except in the most extreme life-threatening cases for the pregnant mother. This targets, and could at some point overturn Roe v. Wade. Should that happen – and whether one personally agrees with abortion or not – my world would shift and the feeling I have of security of self and choice as an American would crumble.