Always a woman
I was raised by a feminist mother in a small family of four: my two brothers, my mother, and me. Growing up, I didn’t experience the kind of gender expectations many of my friends had to endure. I wasn’t told to wash the dishes or cook just because I was a girl. Responsibilities in our household were shared equally between siblings. I was never told to stay quiet, to be timid, or to shrink myself simply because I was born with a vagina. I was never told that my future should revolve around marriage instead of education. When my mother named me Amirah, which means princess in Arabic, she meant it. When I think about it now, I realise how much unlearning my mother had to do to raise me this way. She was the eldest daughter in a family where patriarchy was deeply entrenched. Her brothers were treated better, respected more, and given more freedom. Yet she worked tirelessly and became the first person in her family to enter university, coming from the background of an anak penoreh getah i...
