Women’s hope for home

By Shierly Mondianti
For the Northwest Asian Weekly

For International Women’s Day, the Northwest Asian Weekly interviewed 15 students from North Seattle Community College about their hopes and dreams for the future.

Leila Benhazir Abdoul, 18, Cameroon

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to be a chemical engineer. I want to do research to design chemical equipments.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
I want women to be more engaged in science and do less domestic work than they do now. I want to encourage education and if I have a lot of money, I will build a school for them.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I am a person who doesn’t believe in something really easily, so for me to believe in something, it has to be hypothetically true. I also enjoy learning about different people, especially women and the way women are viewed in different ethnicity and cultures.

Xiang Li, 18, China (Shanghai)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
Combining my major of business and interest in dancing, I want to open my own dance company back in China.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
More freedom for women. There are many old traditions that still exist in little villages and provinces that restrict women’s freedom to work and live the same way as men do.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I’m from one of those minority Chinese ethnic groups called Hui. It is kind of like Chinese Muslim, but I’m not a full Chinese Muslim because I only inherit it from my mom’s side.

Heike Rodriguez, 28, Germany

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to find a way to integrate teaching and art into my life because I am into performance and theater, but I also want to teach because I have a lot of amazing teachers who have inspired me. I want to be that kind of teacher and not treat my work as an everyday grind.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
That’s a really good question. It is really hard to answer that because I am from East Germany. Women there are honored and international women’s day used to be a national holiday and there are a lot of women leaders and bosses. However, when the wall was destroyed, it became a lot like the West and there was a lot of sexism that poured in. So I do hope that to a certain extent, we could go back to that period or at least remember that time.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I was arrested when I was 15 for looking suspicious.

Wai Sum Yuen, 20, Hong Kong

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to accomplish my hope, and my hope is to be a successful person that is who I want to be. For example, I want to get a wonderful job, then have a perfect family life with my future lovely husband and babies.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
Actually, in my country, women are already treated in an equal way. For example, there are many women bosses in the business world. However, on the family side, some men think that women are under their control, as women have to do all the housework. In my hope, I think women and men are also human, so they should be equal in all sides.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
Hmmm … I like sightseeing/traveling as a hobby, it’s like being exposed to a different world, learning something new or different and understanding it.

Malini Dawda, 21, India (Mumbai)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I am pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Washington, and planning to get my Masters in Social Work. I want to become a counselor, working with families, as well as doing couple’s therapy. I believe that it is vital to connect to people from different backgrounds and to build a healthy society.

One way to do so is through the form of art. I also want to open a dance academy because as a dancer, I strongly believe that we can connect and understand by sharing our passion and building community that includes all.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?

I come from a place where women are often deprived of opportunities, such as education, equal pay, higher positions in workforce, and such. As I was growing up, I’ve seen older women in my family spend their lives as housewives because they didn’t have a choice. I’ve seen many women struggling to achieve their goals, something that comes easy to most middle class men. I would like women in rural parts of India to be able to dream, to have equal rights in society. And I hope I never have to hear another story about a female infanticide.

Tell us something unique about yourself.

The integration of Indian and American values in me has shaped my perspective and lifestyle, something I celebrate every day. It was difficult at first, but it has helped me tremendously to grow as a person and be compassionate towards people from different walks of life. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” It is this passion I have to achieve my goals and help others in need to achieve theirs.

Yenny Laksana, 20, Indonesia (Jakarta)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I would like to be an inspiration for women in Indonesia, and change the perspective of women, so that they do not feel that they can only stay home. I want to pursue higher education as much as possible to pursue my dream of being an engineer.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
I hope women will have equal right in expressing their voice. As I know now, most women organizations that speak out are constantly pushed aside and ignored. It becomes immoral to go against the gender norm for women in Indonesia.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
Something unique about me that most people do not know is that I actually helped my parents deliver cigarette packs using my bicycle when I was just 7 years old.

Tomoko Okada, 34, Japan

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I used to teach in Japan, so I want to work with children, that’s why I am here.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
I would like to see women to feel more confident and to insist more of their rights. I think we deserve equal rights, but we don’t have it.

Nayun Huh, 21, Korea (Busan)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I have never been to Haiti, and I think there are a lot of poor people who are starving, and I would like to help them there. I also think that there are very few doctors and pharmacists there, and so I want to be a pharmacist, so that I can help other people.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?    
There are a lot of single mothers in my country (dual-identity, women from other Asian countries marrying Korean men). There is difficulty for those children to mix with other Korean children because they look different. I hope something can be done about that.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I really love Ryan McGinley, who is a famous photographer. I admire his works a lot!

Kristi Kershia Khiudin, 21, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to be stable financially, experience all the good and the bad, be happy in life as much as possible, so if I do pass away one day, I will have no regrets.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
To achieve the highest education that they can have and get a good job, so that they can be financially stable.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
Hmm … I like sightseeing/traveling as a hobby; it’s like being exposed to a different world, learning something new or different and understanding it.

Era Budhathoki, 19, Nepal

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to be a dentist. Once I am done with graduate school, I want to go back to Nepal, to the villages, and build something/do something for the Nepali kids

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
I want them to be more educated because there is still sexism in the village area, so I want women to be more open and feel free to say their ideas out loud and not be scared.

Sonia Arali Flores Lopez, 24, Mexico

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I guess I want to be a teacher and start a family.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
For women to be in a safer country because there is a lot of violence against women in my country.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I went on a road trip with a friend and we ended up having to hitchhike because the car broke down.

Fay Othman Almeatani, 24, Saudi Arabia

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
My dream is to be a doctor and also a professor at a university.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
Protect women’s rights, and keep the development towards women’s rights in our country.

Huei-Yi Lieu, 18, Taiwan

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to study technology to improve people’s lives/ society.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
I wish women would have more children, there are not a lot of children in Taiwan. It would be beneficial for our future generation.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I really like watching the TV-series FRIENDS over and over again.

Katie Fry, 22, United Kingdom

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
To find a job that challenges me with some prestige using second languages. I don’t really know yet.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
More opportunities for higher education. More sex education and contraception awareness because we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe.

Linh Tran, 18, Vietnam (Hanoi)

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What is your future ambition?
I want to have a stable job, my own company some day, and good health.

What are your hopes and dreams for women in your country?
Equal rights, especially for women in the city, who still need to be at home and cannot go out and work. No violence in the family.

Tell us something unique about yourself.
I enjoy Korean music a lot! (end)