Blessed

This week has, to be frank, been fairly horrid. In my position, there are weeks when I feel like I am constantly having to face up to issues, problem solve for my teams in difficult circumstances. I am regularly having difficult conversations with senior members of other agencies, donors and local government staff. I have frequent internal issues to deal with, staff to challenge or defend. Difficult decisions to make. This week has felt like a treadmill of this kind of thing. For obvious reasons I can't list things here but I have had multiple internal and external conflicts to mediate. Believe it or not, I used to be someone who would avoid conflict to quite an extreme level. I think I still tend to be the peace-maker in my personal life, but I have had to learn to be assertive as a professional. I have had to learn that it's possible to be a woman of faith who is strong and feminine and a leader. And by the end of this week, I was being a complete girl and crying over the latest HR issue that crossed my desk and wondering if this was really the right job for me (don't worry - I'm over it already!)

But this weekend as I've been thinking about these issues of gender in the workplace, I have been thinking back to interviews I conducted in our Kirkuk office recently. One of the candidates was a lady who looked to be in her early 40s. During the course of the discussion, she talked about how she could apply for this role as she had chosen to stay single. Her siblings had married, her friends had married, but she had decided that should would prefer to remain single in order to be able to work and travel. To her this was a simple statement of fact. She knew that in her culture she had to make a choice, she couldn't have both a job and a family. She couldn't have a family and be free to travel. And that choice is not really an acceptable one to many people here. In our livelihoods interventions, including women requires real innovative thinking in order to find roles that are culturally acceptable.

I know that gender imbalance is still an issue in the UK. I know that I am in the minority being female working at this level; out of my agency's most senior managers in Iraq there are currently only 2 women out of 7, and as of about a month's time we'll be down to just me. I have had to bite my tongue when told I'm being over-sensitive - not something that I think many men are accused of when they are challenging decisions. However, the very reason that I have been able to pursue my career, with the blessing of my family, is that I was born and raised in a culture where it is acceptable and encouraged. Yet again, I am reaping the benefits of where I was born. When I have a tough week like this, I need to remember women like the one I interviewed; who have had to sacrifice so much to simply be able to choose to work. And the many others around the world who don't even have that freedom. I am in the incredibly privileged position of having an education, doing a job that for the most part I love, and being able to be financially independent. All with family and friends cheering me on. I am blessed indeed.