Sebuah artikel yang  menarik yang menggambarkan betapa pentingnya kontribusi wanita terhadap ekonomi, sadly, artikel ini juga menggaris bawahi betapa minimnya peranan wanita di setiap negara, terutama di Indonesia.

Dimana persentasi tenaga kerja wanita yang sangat tinggi seperti US dan Swedia, kecenderungan  dari negara negara tersebut mempunya fondasi ekomoni yang kuat, wanita karir yang handal, ibu rumahtangga yang sukses sangat kelihatan. Permasalahnya, dibanyak budaya,seperti di Indonesia, orang tua lebih menitik beratkan investasi pendidikan kepada anak laki**nya daripada anak perempuanya dengan memegang teguh mitos bahwa anak laki** akan ebih sukses daripada perempuan, prejudice sperti ini adalah backward-minded, nggak fair, nggak relevant dan perlu dihilangkan karena gender bukan penghalang lagi di era modern seperti ini.

Bukankah wanita bekerja akan memberi dampak sosial yang negative seperti rendahnya angka kelahiran? tidak benar, sebab di negara seperti US dan Swedia, telah terbukti angka kelahiranya lebih tinggi dari negara** penganut kepercayaan "wanita dirumah" seperti Italy dan Jepang.

Potensi ini harus diketahui oleh para wanita sendiri yang sering beranggapan bahwa mereka adalah makluk yang inferior dibanding laki**, dengan kesadaran ini kemauan mereka untuk masuk ke lapangan kerja akan lebih tinggi. Pemerintah juga tak kalah pentingnya untuk mengkapitalisasi hal ini, dengan membuat UU pekerja yang lebih women-friendly, seperti  memberi kemudahan cuti hamil, flexible working hours untuk ibu** yang punya anak, dll.

Masalahnya, dari pengalaman pribadi, mental wanita sendiri yang cenderung menjadi penghalang. Aku punya banyak temen yang sukses dalam bidang akademis dan diteruskan dengan sukses karir mereka karena mereka punya kemauan dan kesenangan tersendiri terhadap apa yang mereka lakukan, bahkan beberapa dari temenku ada yang karirnya melejit dengan cukup cepat. Tapi tidak kurang pula temenku yang punya attitude lama bahwa, home is where women belong to, yang aku rasakan little bit disturbing is, some of them are highly educated dan sangat sukses dibidang study mereka, tapi naluri kewanitaanya berkata lain. kenapa nggak bisa dua** nya aku tanya?  keluarga dan karir? why not?

One of my friend said, "look Wan, setelah aku lulus kuliah nanti, aku akan menikah, stay at home, rilex, have shit loads of children and watch telenovela in my spare time"

I was speechless. So girls, Which type are you?

The importance of sex

Apr 12th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women

EVEN today in the modern, developed world, surveys show that parents
still prefer to have a boy rather than a girl. One longstanding reason
why boys have been seen as a greater blessing has been that they are
expected to become better economic providers for their parents’ old
age. Yet it is time for parents to think again. Girls may now be a
better investment.

Girls get better grades at school than boys, and in most developed
countries more women than men go to university. Women will thus be
better equipped for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains
count a lot more than brawn. In Britain far more women than men are now
training to become doctors. And women are more likely to provide sound
advice on investing their parents’ nest egg: surveys show that women
consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do.

Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world
has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of
decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.
Add the value of housework and child-rearing, and women probably
account for just over half of world output. It is true that women still
get paid less and few make it to the top of companies, but, as
prejudice fades over coming years, women will have great scope to boost
their productivity—and incomes.

Governments, too, should embrace the potential of women. Women
complain (rightly) of centuries of exploitation. Yet, to an economist,
women are not exploited enough: they are the world’s most
under-utilised resource; getting more of them into work is part of the
solution to many economic woes, including shrinking populations and
poverty.

 

Some people fret that if more women work rather than mind their children, this will boost GDP
but create negative social externalities, such as a lower birth rate.
Yet developed countries where more women work, such as Sweden and
America, actually have higher birth rates than Japan and Italy, where
women stay at home. Others fear that women’s move into the paid labour
force can come at the expense of children. Yet the evidence for this is
mixed. For instance, a study by Suzanne Bianchi at Maryland University
finds that mothers spent the same time, on average, on childcare in
2003 as in 1965. The increase in work outside the home was offset by
less housework—and less spare time and less sleep.

A woman’s world

What is clear is that in countries such as Japan, Germany and Italy,
which are all troubled by the demographics of shrinking populations,
far fewer women work than in America, let alone Sweden. If female
labour-force participation in these countries rose to American levels,
it would give a helpful boost to these countries’ growth rates.
Likewise, in developing countries where girls are less likely to go to
school than boys, investing in education would deliver huge economic
and social returns. Not only will educated women be more productive,
but they will also bring up better educated and healthier children.
More women in government could also boost economic growth: studies show
that women are more likely to spend money on improving health,
education, infrastructure and poverty and less likely to waste it on
tanks and bombs.It used to be said that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily that is not so difficult.

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