The Netherlands is a great\ncountry. For a frequent traveler like myself it is impossible to overlook the\nhigh level of organization that we have achieved. And the favorable combination\nof freedom and comfort that comes with our unbridled need to organize. The\ndownside to our fondness of calculations and predictability is that we seem to\nhave become afraid to take a leap of faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Too afraid for my taste. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started my non profit\ninitiative, the Young Lady Business Academy, I did exactly that – taking a leap\nof faith. Without a plan, consultation or the intention of a revenue model –\nbut with the drive to help ambitious and gutsy young ladies on their way – I\n\u2018designed\u2019 the Academy in about half an hour, in the back of a car on the way\nto a radio studio. Not much later I simply started to execute what I wrote\ndown, without guarantee of success. And this summer, two years later, the\nfourth and upscaled edition of the Young Lady Business Academy in\nhet Erasmus Centre of Entrepreneurship te Rotterdam<\/a> is coming up. Sixty young women\nof various educational backgrounds will immerse themselves in an intensive week long program<\/a> that offers them the opportunity\nto take a gigantic leap towards their dream career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is all cause for happiness and optimism, one would think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when I present the story of the Young Lady Business Academy to a for example all female delegation, I mostly get reserve. \u2018Are you reaching all the target audiences? Aren\u2019t there hurdles? Are you doing this for free? Isn\u2019t life more than doing business?\u2019 And: \u2018Why does everyone have to reach the top?\u2019 Now, I do not have issues with comments or criticism. I can take away a lot from that. But sometimes those questions seem to aim at taking the sharp edges of a spontaneous project like the Young Lady Business Academy. So that it can \u2018fit the template\u2019 and becomes predictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile all I strive to do is\nto escape that predictability! There are enough plain Jane\u2019s…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jokingly I sometimes call myself a giving feminist: at the Academy, together with other women at the top, I give my knowledge and experience to the younger generation. Voluntarily. Enthusiastic. Because we think it is necessary and because it makes us happy. But other feminists – I call them the taking feminists – lobby one sided and without offering anything in return for their demands (equal pay, mandatory quota and more media attention) and don\u2019t like to give up \u2018market share\u2019. They see the battlefront in their world of negotiations, meetings, battle points and judging of men. They forget how limited it is to only do something if you get something in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m calling on all feminists:\nlets work together better as a diverse group, and not begrudge each other\nsuccess. We are all fighting for the same cause, right? A little bit less of\nthe taking and a bit more of the giving feminism in my opinion would do right\nby women all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are looking so much further\nahead than the immediate profit and loss statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Netherlands is a great country. For a frequent traveler like myself it is impossible to overlook the high level of organization that we have achieved. And the favorable combination of freedom and comfort that comes with our unbridled need to organize. The downside to our fondness of calculations and predictability is that we seem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-nieuws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4281,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions\/4281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elskedoets.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}