Whenever it is published, today, March 8, I am writing this first entry for this blog. Today is International Women's Day, and, contrary to the herds of angry herds, I refuse to enter into inane discussions about whether we should congratulate women, with flowers and bonbonnieres, or commemorate the seamstresses who marched on that day, in 1857, in favor of their labor and human rights. 

Frivolously, here I'm going to talk about me and about, why unlike many friends of mine on México, I won 't make the lists of the "most powerful women on México."

Love-Hate Relationship with Recognition

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Since I was a child I have had a strained relationship with status and, by the same token, with recognition. I grew up in a "rich" family at México, which is relatively easy in a country where having a roof over your head and a television puts you in the middle class. Let's say, then, that although I am light years away from being one of Carlos Slim's brood, I am just as far away from sleeping under a bridge. 

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Coincidentally, I do have something in common with the seamstresses who marched on March 8, 1857. My maternal grandmother was a seamstress in New York, a member of the Ladies' Garment Workers Union, one of the strongest garment unions in the world. My grandfather, who also worked the rags, opened perhaps the first nylon stocking factory in my country. They did well, not as well as Slim, but well enough to grow up in a family that had plenty of money to live cultured and sumptuously; we were able to travel, collect art, see the world and educate our children in the best schools. I grew up in Polanco, where the rich live at México, and I went to a school close to home, which was attended by the children of my country's political class. And, while my classmates, and in particular my teachers, licked their chops, I was in a married quarrel with them all my childhood. I confess that much of my bitterness was due to prejudice: some were very uncool and others were not. For example, the daughter of the then Secretary of the Interior was insufferable because she was haughty as well as stupid. On the other hand, the granddaughter of a former president, and also the daughter of the owners of the dominant television group in México, was rather flat and gentle. Her face and temperament were like a screen saver. Anyway, her political lineage was repulsive to me. For as long as I have had sense, I know that México has had only democratic interstices, and I have been, like my grandmother, one of those who go out, work and write, to protest on behalf of many causes. And I don't deny it: I like the spotlight but I hate to look for it, and even more, that my self-esteem depends on it. Some Greek philosopher, whom I cannot identify at the moment, once said that "honors depend on who bestows them, not on who deserves them." It is healthy not to become addicted to something that, for whatever reasons, someone stops giving you.

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Path or Race? Open, Horizontal Growth

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Almost half a century has passed since that little girl's stumbles with status and power. Since then, I was a bad student in junior high and high school (with failing grades), while I obtained outstanding results as a university student. I studied four degrees, including a master's degree and a doctorate in literature, after which I studied law to earn a living. My father, annoyed by my aristocratic hobbies -horses and letters-, warned that, after financing my legal education, he would not give me a penny again, perhaps until his death. So, after getting my degree, I accepted the first well-paying position offered to me in a government agency charged with regulating energy activities, i.e., the gas and electricity industry. As mind-numbing as I found the subject matter, it gave enough to keep the horses. However, after a few months, I found the energy industry very entertaining because it was buoyant with stories: big companies, tycoons, lots and lots of money, politics, corruption, intrigue and adrenaline. I no longer had to read novels; I lived them day by day. But, since I worked for the government, it didn't take long for me to run into some very high-ranking, thuggish public officials, defended by my boss, who was an inveterate iconoclast. However, when he left, I knew that my days as a bureaucrat were numbered. 

Because I was talented, I moved into private consulting, in some of the international law firms where I grew professionally. In spite of my own fatalistic predictions, today I am proud to be an energetic lawyer who enjoys wide recognition, even outside México. But the hamster wheel of the big firms made me very unhappy. I say "hamster" and not "rat" because the former is more of a metaphor. Hamster" in German means "purse" and my role at the firm was to stuff the partners with bills so they could decorate themselves with status symbols : cars, ties, private schools for their children, and golf clubs . My clash with the system was inevitable and predictable. Out of dissatisfaction, I crawled out of my glass and chrome cage.

Since then, I have done everything: I have been a professor at the best institutions of higher education at México, but I am not an orthodox academic, so I did not resist the punctilious scrutiny of my colleagues. My work did not fit into any methodological scheme. So I opened my freelance office, I write, and bought a ranch where I maintain a forest conservation sanctuary that also houses 40 small animals rescued from abuse and perol. Despite the ups and downs, although I can't afford to do whatever I want, I earn and have enough to do, for better or worse, what I want. 

Meanwhile, my friends -because they are or have been public officials or high-level businesswomen- are today on the lists of the 100 "most powerful women of México" and I am not. I would be lying if I said I didn't care. So much so that I've devoted an entire post to reflecting on why I'm not there. And it's because I freely chose to leave the system. Because, for me, the cost of "breaking the glass ceiling," whether in political power or in the corporate ladder, would have been too high. 

Anyway, this day is to commemorate seamstresses, who did not and will not appear on any list, but who, thanks to them, opened the space for women who, like me, are free to choose between climbing to the top of power and money or walking in the open field. Thanks to her, I go from Polanco to pulque, from the highway to the dirt road. 

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