Equality for women is celebrated as a great achievement in our society. The emancipation of women has freed us from the chains of patriarchy. We, as women, have our own money, we can decide our destiny and we are no longer dependent on men. But is this really what we wanted?

We stand shoulder to shoulder with men in positions of authority, in lorry queues and with guns in the armed forces. Women are no longer denied anything.

We are allowed to take part in the adventures of the Wild West out there, just like the cowboys. As cowgirls, we join the ranks.

After a few generations of women experiencing the world of employment in 9-5 jobs, we can ask ourselves if this way of living and working is the holy grail for us women.

Second-class men

We women have entered the world of men and are trying to do the same as them under the same conditions:

• Same working hours,
• same working environment and
• same structures.

But we are not like men. We are fundamentally different. In particular, the 9-5 job is completely unsuitable for us women. It is a killer of our creativity and a killer of our mood.

A lot of women out there will think: “Oh, she’s exaggerating. We women have fought for so many years for equal treatment and now she wants to say we are different from men”.

We women have simply taken over existing structures and declared them to be ours. But I think that it only resulted in one thing:

We women have become second-class men in the world of employment.

What do I mean by that? By entering the male world of work, we have entered circumstances that are more suited to men than to women. Of course, there is no clear boundary here, but rather a boundary field. Some women have a lot of masculine energy in them and some men have a lot of feminine facets.

But if we look at the pure biology of men and women, there are major differences that receive little or no attention in the working world.

Cycle vs. linearity

Women experience the world differently from men because we go through a monthly hormonal cycle. These hormonal curves cause fluctuations in, for example:

• Performance,
• the need for sleep
• emotional strength
• receptivity
• and social bonding skills.

Men do not have these hormonal fluctuations, which usually makes it easier for men to perform similarly every day. A man’s consistency is amazing and a quality that should not be lacking in our society.

This is in contrast to our female and hormonal changeability, which is not a disadvantage and should simply be better utilised.

Different levels

To understand what I mean, we need to look at femininity from different levels.

Physical level

The cycle

As already mentioned, we women go through a cycle. This enables us to bring a child into the world potentially. It affects our mood, our libido and above all our performance. Every woman knows when she feels she can perform best and when she feels she needs to rest. Of course, women and many men are familiar with the phenomenon of PMS, which makes women more irritable and stressed. Menstrual cramps, migraine headaches and general discomfort during the menstrual period also go unnoticed in the traditional workplace. Like men, we are expected to turn up at work and perform. No matter how we feel.

Physical and mental stress

On average, women are physically weaker. We cannot build muscle as quickly or as much as men, which means that we tire out more quickly for the same physical effort.

Because we tend to be more concerned with the needs of our loved ones. We think not only of our work but also of our children’s doctor’s appointments, our mother’s birthday present and our girlfriend’s problems who rang us before work.

Men find it easier to block out these things. Most women in long-term relationships know from their own experience that men are usually of little help in organising and planning everyday work tasks. They even manage to disappear to the toilet for three-quarters of an hour with their mobile phones during periods of maximum stress and don’t see simple tasks that need attention.

It’s not that men don’t want to. It’s just that they see the world differently and have different priorities than we do. They’re happy for us to tell them how they can contribute, because many times, unintentionally, they don’t see the things that need doing around the home.

It is more in our nature to see the home and the people around us as part of us. We are predisposed to keep an eye on everything in this area.

But as great as this quality may sound, the more energy it costs us.

So we women need more time to relax to stay balanced and not fall into grumpiness.

Passivity and creativity

Women are recipients of energy. We passively absorb the energy that surrounds us and eventually create something from it. (Unlike men, who actively send out energy to create).

This is not only reflected in women’s ability to give birth. We take in the energy of the man and almost as if by itself, a child is created within us. It is a process that cannot be accelerated. These are laws of nature.

In my opinion, we women receive more impulses from the outside, which we first of process within ourselves and then, after a certain period of maturation, we carry them out into the world as idea babies.

This means that in the working world, we should also be allowed to mature the solution after receiving a task. This maturing process comes from doing other things. Whether it is housework, playing with the children or a wellness day.

My male colleagues do not understand this at all, because they are men who immediately start working on a task without weighing up all the eventualities and letting it ripe.

Of course, this way of working is only possible when it comes to conceptual or creative tasks. You do not need this kind of passive process for purely physical or routine work.

But when you are tidying up, cooking or at the gym, you can come up with wonderful creative solutions that you would not have come up with in the office sitting in front of a computer.

But very few women understand this quality of ours. This is why we are often so stressed because we try to solve work tasks like men, where we fall into immediate action.

Energy givers and energy takers

In my opinion, it is completely unnatural to work eight hours a day in an office in front of a computer. This may not be a problem for manual work, but for conceptual work, my concentration ends after two hours of intensive work.

At this point at the latest, the job starts to drain my life energy. It costs me energy instead of giving me energy. My creative power dwindles.

I need a break to recharge my batteries. But in the normal working world, there are no such breaks. Instead of a nap, there’s coffee. Instead of a walk in the countryside, I sit in front of my computer. The main thing is to make the 8-hour block.

Of course, there are days when I can concentrate for longer, but that is not the norm.

If I sit in the office for a full eight hours and have my most productive period in the first two hours, and then sit in front of the computer with steadily decreasing energy, I come home with a grumpiness that nobody likes, including me.

→ A possible solution

The biggest energy wasters are jobs you don’t enjoy. So you should always try to do a job that suits you and that you enjoy doing. All the other problems discussed could be solved with the following approach.

A possible solution for us women could be that the tasks to be done are agreed upon with the employer every month. The work could then be done completely free of any constraints. There are no fixed working hours. The place where the task is done is also completely free.

A weekly status meeting is then arranged to discuss the progress of the tasks. Weekly and daily targets can also be set. Depending on the type of work.

The quality of the result is discussed in a separate meeting at the end of the month. Possible improvements are discussed.

As a result, we would be able to use our time more responsibly and take our rhythm into account. Communication is key. It would also mean that quality would not be tied to working hours. Because one needs an hour and the other one two hours for the same task. In addition, the job would remain a secure source of income, especially for mothers for whom a fixed monthly income is essential and are afraid of taking the self-employment route.

Employers would benefit from blossoming women who can carry out their tasks responsibly with their feminine qualities and still manage to reconcile family and being a woman.

The plant of creativity

When we women have more time for ourselves and are not so rushed, we also find our way back to our playfulness and creativity – to our inner child. That’s what makes us so precious to this world.