(can’t help noticing my writers juices comes up at the beginning of the year)
For the last few days I have been thinking about this, literally, the phrase has been going through my mind, I m a black girl in a white man’s world. You hear about the world is a man’s world and how white people have priveledges etc. As an African girl who pretty much grew up in a stable African country without much exposure to the huge racism and disadvantages African American and other African people have been exposed to, I never really contextualised it. It was always just another historical phrase I hear, understand but never really think of it for more than a couple of minutes.
Now here I am, a year into my career as a solicitor/business owner and I’m really feeling like a black woman in a white man’s world. My blackness is so obvious and almost more obvious than my presence…if that even makes sense. Every room I walk into, I’m not just noticed as the black woman who just walked in, but now I have to really prove that I deserve to be there, that I know what I’m doing (after I prove I’m the right person, not the help).
I’m aware that most women have to deal with the invisible glass ceiling, it’s frustrating and its real I’m ashamed to say in my naive youth I used to think that just talk but its real, and unfortunately, I’m not immune to it either. But you know what really frustrates me about being a woman in a man’s world, especially this world, it the idea that you can have it all. But let’s face it, you cant have it all..the minute you become a mother, which most of us do, you really CANNOT have it all, no matter what you think the man has the upper hand, put simply he can be at work till 12 minutes whilst you have to be home with the kids by 6pm?
But I have to say, the journey is rather interesting.