Rock Health recently organized a women public speaking event in NYC. There were amazing Shirley Bergin from TEDMED, Julia Wu from Luminary-Labs and Halle Tecco from Rock Health.

I used to hate this kind of event, because I thought this event further segregate women and men. As Sheryl Sandberg said, "only minorities will be described with an adjective in front of their job position/achievement". If we are doing great ourselves, why do we need "female event/workshop/training" right? But as I travelled around the world, I found out that I was just the lucky one who is surrounded by people who respect me & my decisions and with parents who raised me untraditionally; hence, I could grow up with resources, ambition and goals. I know for fact that women in Afghanistan are still facing notorious torture, girls in some countries in Asia && Africa are still going through genital mutilation. It is ONLY in more developed countries women have a voice, have the ability to fight back and have the opportunity to belong to themselves.

But I am not a feminist.

It is not my nature to fight. I prefer to cooperate.

I am going to put the ugly truth in front: I do realized (based on events I went to), women fight. We fight for attention, fight for resources, and sometimes, fight against each other. At times, we look like the 2 main characters (Cady and Regina) in "Mean Girls". We fight for a boy, we recommended an energy bar to a girl just to make her look fat. We are not sincere enough to share information and resources with each other. We are jealous of each other. We hate each other.

(i was about to insert an actual event happened to me, but abandoned the thought because it did no good to me... )

But here is the good part. There ARE women out there that wowed the world, and they are the role models of us. They don't fight, the share. As an organizer at MIT Global Startup Workshop and attended countless conferences around the world, I have met fantastic women: Julia Winn (Founder of MyBetterFit), Alex Cavoulacos (Founder of The Muse), Andrea Ippolito (Founder of Smart Patients), Tyras Banks, Krisztina "Z" Holly, Esther Dyson, just to name a few. They are over-achiever, fearless, gorgeous, ambitious. But most importantly, they are willing to share and help.

I totally understand how difficult it is to be a woman and how much stress we have from our family and the society. Sometimes we might just want to retaliate and put our steam somewhere so that we do not blow up ourselves. But only if we bond with other people will we produce more oxytocin (a hormone that evokes all sorts of good stuff including but not limited to: contentment, wound healing, sexual arousal).

Last but not least: please start to share and help more for others.