I (v.)

Isabel Bos

I no longer want my womanhood to define me.

I am a student, a DWARSer, GroenLinkser, friend, daughter, sister, relative, Dutchman and German. This is who I am, this is how I identify myself. Of course, I am also a woman, and I love that. But I don't want this to work against me.

Being a woman means I get 16 per cent less pay than a man would get for the same job. I don't want that, I didn't choose that. I don't want my gender to cause me to have to work more hours for the same income. And yet it happens.

If I am sick, when taking medication 60% I am more likely to suffer side effects than a man. This is because medication is usually tested on men, not women. So my gender can cause medication when I am sick to make me even sicker. Because I am not a man.

In a crowded train, the man sitting next to me in the two-seater put his hand on my leg. While cycling through town, I was clamped down because a man wanted a good look at me. When I walk home from the tram stop at night, I always clench my mobile phone tightly, counting every step until I get home. Men have less respect for me because I am a woman.

RTL 7 tells me that my love for Formula 1 is a man's thing. In commercials, women's main pastimes are cooking, shopping, shaving intimate areas and menstruating. And woe betide us if they are not sexy while doing so. Stereotypes in the media about women are harmful because they are hard to break. Thus, equality remains a distant dream.

All these obstacles I have to face because of my gender. This does not happen to men, and that determines how different my life is from that of a man. And as long as I still have to realise every day how incredibly different my life is from a man's, there is no equality in the Netherlands. Feminism is needed, and that's a shame. Because it is 2016, not 1956. Improving the position of women should no longer have been an issue in our country.

Until my life is no longer affected by my gender, my womanhood will continue to define me. I dream of a day when this is no longer the case.