The idea of gender—not experience, initiative, work-ethic—but gender preventing qualified individuals from pursuing ambitious goals is incredulous. In the international school I was raised in, success basically came hand-in-hand with merit and hard work—as it should be. Ambitious girls took advanced math courses, led entrepreneurial clubs, and participated in scientific research because they wanted to—sometimes in greater numbers than boys.
Read MoreA headline on a morning news show caught my eyes. The chief of the Tokyo Olympics had expressed annoyance towards women in his speech, stating that “women talk too much” because “they are competitive”. What was wrong with women being “competitive”, I wondered. Why was it annoying when women talked too much? Even though I knew this man was not addressing me in his speech, I nonetheless felt my lips tightening as if the comment really had been made about me, about my passion for making speeches, about my ambitious personality. At the same time, my face took on a competitive shade of red as it occurred to me that I lived in a country where people responsible for representing the nation were instead degrading women in public.
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