Girl Power

We celebrated Maulidur Rasul two weeks ago. I have never joined 'perarakan sempena Maulidur Rasul'. There was once my high school organized the 'perarakan', but a lot of us, including me, 'fly', which means we went home without the warden's permission for the weekend. The following Monday, the wardens called out names of people who didn't attend and asked us to 'berarak' a few rounds around our renowned 'padang lecak'. The rest was history. Well, that is not the whole point of this entry.

I was watching a Maulidur Rasul TV program that morning. They were presenting the 'Anugerah Maulidur Rasul 2011', five of them. On top of that there was Anugerah Perdana Maulidur Rasul, and the winner is Dr Hayei Abdul Sukor, from University Malaya. One of the winners for the Anugerah is our beloved ex-Penyimpan Mohor Besar Raja-Raja. He had been announcing tarikh puasa and raya for 22 years, as old as I am. I'm gonna miss him this coming puasa and raya. OK I still don't get to my point.

Another winner is a Form 4 Chinese girl from Kelantan. She obtained an A in Bahasa Arab in PMR 2010. What I actually want to write about here is the other two winners, first Tan Sri Hasmah Abdullah, ex-CEO of Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri and Tan Sri Robaayah Zambahari, CEO of Institut Jantung Negara. I was amazed when I heard the presenter called their names. It made me thinking, 'Woah they are THE CEO of such big organizations. And they are WOMEN!' I'm not trying to be sexist here. I am just amazed. I don't really pay attention to Malaysian politics, let alone to the leaders of Malaysian big corporations. But when I heard their names, I was kinda inspired. I may be late in realizing this, but after the Anugerah I finally realized that Malaysia really opens up a lot of opportunities for women to flourish in their own expertise. Not only those two, I am sure there are a lot of Malaysian women out there who are CEOs of some organizations, or at least close to being CEOs.

It takes one strong individual to be a CEO, mentally and emotionally. People used to say that women cannot be leaders because of the emotional breakdown that we tend to have. Well these CEOs prove them wrong.

Point is, there's nothing a woman cannot do in this modern world. My mom always said, 'Orang naik ke bulan pun boleh, kamu nak buat tu skit je takut'. If she was to add 'perempuan' after 'orang', that will take the sentence to a whole new level (I've googled 'first woman landed on moon', but found nobody. I guess no woman has set foot on the Moon yet. If there is, then please ignore what I said above :P )

Let us all be inspired by the achievements of women around the world, and prepare ourselves to become one of them in the future :)