Why are women just tagged onto what is right for men?

Yesterday I attended a day's workshop on Tibetan Healing Exercises. Rather than coming away from it feeling healed I felt frustrated and polluted. Strong word, but that is how it felt. During the morning we did some self massage techniques but as I looked around the room full of women (not a male participant in sight) and the single male leading the workshop without a thought that the anatomy of the participants in front of him were not the same has his, all the times where women were assumed to be the same as men flooded in. It left me feeling invisible, that all the women taking notes in front of him were invisible.

I did raise this issue during the Q & A time and the answer I got increased my frustration. Apparently women are to be treated the same as men without any recognition that the ancient text were written by and for men during a heavily patriarchal age. It felt like history was repeating itself again, just like when heart attack symptoms for men were assumed to be the same for same for women until some smart inquiring person decided to start asking if they really were and discovered that women have their own and different set of symptoms. Also women's moral development was assumed to be the same as men's until Carol Gilligan decided to question and check to see if that was so, and discovered that girls and women have their own set of standards and questions in terms of deciding what is right and wrong.

What bothered me most was when the male facilitator silenced a young female participant who seemed to know a lot about Tibetan healing. He said that she should go back and re-read the ancient texts because she was questioning the ancient male texts. Questioning these ancient male texts is good! They need to be questioned if anything is going to be change to include women! Women need to start questioning what we are told to be truth and start asking ourselves, "Whose truth is it?" "Does this truth include my voice, a feminine voice?" "How does this truth feel?" and "How does this truth empower me to be stronger within myself and speak my truth?" I think I'll be more careful when I sign up for a workshop because I can no longer stomach being in a place or workshops were men think that they know what women are like because they assume we are the same as them without asking, checking, wondering, questioning and inviting. 

UK is behind in its empowerment of women

Having visited Australia, New Zealand and the US during the summer I've come back rather frustrated about how far behind the UK is in acknowledging and understanding that it isn't going to flourish as a country if it doesn't start realising that half its population matter just as much as the male half. During the last 13 years of living in the UK I've noticed some improvement but now having witnessed how much New Zealand has caught up since leaving it 17 years ago, I'm wondering how well prepared the UK really is to recover economically without the direct and equal input of its females. Study after study has shown that when women are treated as having an equal voice, companies do better, the country does better, the population as a whole is better fed and cared for, and the environment isn't exploited. This isn't rocket science but somehow in the UK it is treated as if it is. As other women who are fighting for women's empowerment and equality know, the UK and especially the businesses and politics is rather deaf to these ideas.