Women Employee

Some days ago I read in a national newspaper about police women who cannot reach a high position in their job only because they were born as female. Their female bodies are considered as the main weakness for them to do any assignment as police women. Many policemen don’t like to get policewomen as their partners to do one duty, let’s say, coz they say that their burden even will be doubled coz they don’t only think about their own safety, they have to protect their female partner as well. Some of them also complain that sometimes they will have to face the policewomen’s husbands’ jelousy when they have to do a task together. Policewomen, then, will only get desk jobs that often will make their career stop.

According to the article in that newspaper, more than 50% policewomen complain about that. They are in fact ready to do any assignment given to them—not only desk jobs. As policewomen, they used to get training some martial arts too to protect themselves so why their male partners complain about having to protect them?

It reminded me of a male friend of mine who works for a mining company in North Sulawesi, one big island in Indonesia. Some months ago he told me about a new female employee as his subworker. He complained coz he couldn’t give her any job coz she was a female. “I don’t have a heart to send her to a mining site in a forest, let’s say, coz it is a hard job for a woman. It is not an easy area to explore. I don’t have a heart either to send her to a mining site in another site where the weather is hot coz it will ruin her complexion. She will become dark due to that.”

Simply I responded, “Do you think she doesn’t know her risk to choose that kind of job? She must be ready to face any risk she gets in her job coz it is her own choice. Why don’t you just stop bothering yourself and just give her any duty she has to do; any duty you would give to a male subworker? Treat them equal.”

“It is easy for you to say that coz you are a feminist. You always want to be treated equally. I am not sure with her though,” he still complained.

“If she refuses, send her home. She is not ready to work for a mining company then. Tell her that she has made a wrong choice.”

Oh well, I forget to ask him whether my friend eventually gives the new female employee any duty, and whether she still goes on working there.

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