Man! I feel like a woman!

(I'm writing a post a day on all the things I'm thankful for during this month of Thanksgiving)

I'm so thankful to be a WOMAN. And please don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that being a woman is better than being a man or that women are more important/special/valuable or anything along those lines.

Being here in rural Costa Rica I sometime I feel like I have the word 'woman' tattooed on my forehead and I am constantly aware that women are second class citizens here. Let me share some of my negative experiences with being a woman here:

• I facilitated a 12 week girl self empowerment workshop with 12 girls of 5th and 6th grade. Each week we covered a different topic and one week it was gender roles. We had a very heated discussion and in the end they each wrote individually in their workbooks 'why am I happy to be a girl?' When I got home I read through the responses and 50% of them had written that they have always wished they were a boy because life would be easier, more fun, and more free. This broke my heart to read partly because it is true.
• We have a cantina (bar) in town in which I have not step foot in this past year and a half (not that I'm sad about that fact) But the bar is only for men and women of extremely loose behavior.
• Just the other day, I was in a group of four people and one of the men (he is about 35 I'd say) was buying a small lottery ticket. He made a comment that if he won the lottery he would take me to the beach. Since he has made comments on how I need to wear shorter shorts in the past I simply glared at him. His response was what frustrated me: 'what?!?! I haven't said anything inappropriate! I just want to see you in a bikini!'
• Marital fidelity from the man's side is almost unheard of and it is quite normal for men to have kids with at least 2 or 3 different women. A while ago a man in my community was caught in an affair and his blatant response to everyone was 'I deserve another woman because I work'
• I could go on and on. I could tell how this 75 year old man told me five minutes after meeting him for the first time that 'women are like avocados. The more you touch them the more worthless they are'....

But even after all of this I must repeat that I am thankful and grateful to be a woman. . Here are a few things that come to mind:

• So much of what makes me who I am comes from being a girl and I derive strength from being a woman (just like men are hopefully proud of being men)
• We can say that we love our friends all the time (honestly, men, you should too it's important)
• Our clothes are so much cuter
• In the fight for gender equality it is much easier to fight up than to fight down. As in it's easier to fight when you are part of the historically oppressed group and not the oppressor group (huge thanks to all men who realize that women have equal value as individuals and who are standing up for that)
• Me living alone as a single woman is such an unheard of thing that I am working simply by being in my own house.
• Coming to the realization that my value and worth as a person has to come from God alone because I will not get it here as a single woman without children
• Though maybe over stated, the ability of women to have kids is pretty cool
• I could do ballet for a few years without getting bullied. Unlike my brother.