What divorce taught me about being a woman today.
I thought long and hard on whether I should share my views on what I learned about being a woman after my divorce, especially since being a woman has become so controversial in the modern world.
Then I got these in the post today and I came to the conclusion that it was important to speak up.
Let me put this into context.
After my divorce the first thing I wanted to do was to return to my maiden name, so I went about getting all my formal documentation reissued and also opened a new bank account.
It wasn’t a difficult process; in fact I think I got most of it done in a day!
And it felt good to get my new passport and driving licence in my birth name.
Returning to my maiden name was more than just about a name, to me it was about the freedom to be whoever and whatever I wanted. It was also my liberation, no longer belonging to anyone but myself and I needed my name to reflect that.
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off”
Then I came across a problem I never expected.
I studied for my degree when I was married so all my certificates were issued in my married name. Because of this I was reluctant to put my hard-earned qualifications on display because they seemed to belong to someone that no longer existed.
But that wasn’t the only problem.
Each time I needed to prove my qualifications, I had to bring along my divorce papers and explain my present marital status as "Divorced". In addition to the embarassement that comes with having to declare my divorce while on a job interview, I resented being defined once again by whether there was a man standing next to me or not.
In 2014, I contacted the university and requested that my certificates be reissued in my maiden name but I didn’t expect the response I got. They simply replied that it couldn’t be done because the name on the certificates was my legal name at the time.
Despite expressing my complete dismay in several subsequent emails, the issue remained unresolved.
However, it continued to bug me over the years because although I had moved on with my life, the sigma of divorce still seemed to follow me.
I still had to show my divorce papers each time I went for a new job or something similar. I still had to write “Divorced” as my marital status, surely by now I’m just single.
It must be a lot simpler for men since they neither change their name or title, they are “Mr” regardless of marital status. Strange that!
Then a couple of months ago I decided to give it another go, after all aren’t universities meant to be places of future thinking?
So, I went onto the University website to see if anything had changed in regard to reissuing certificates and was surprised to see this statement:
“Once your degree has been awarded, we can only change the name on your student record or other University documents if it's related to a change of gender.”
Now I was angry, it felt like yet another violation of womans rights. It wasn't a matter of their inability to alter the name on my certificates; rather, their expectation that I should shut up and put up and for a long time I complied.
Women have been conditioned by society to accept certain injustices as normal.
We are constantly told to "be a good girl" or that "girls don't do this," until we come to believe that our role in life is to sit on the sidelines quietly cheering for our male counterparts.
This is even more apparent in the current climate where women's rights are being violated from every direction.
To be a feminist it seems is to be “phobic” and speaking up for our rights as women labelled as “bigotry”. We may soon find ourselves branded as witches and burned at the stake; nothing would surprise me anymore.
“Never give or take an excuse”
Now, armed with this new information, I composed a letter to the university to express my dissatisfaction with their unfair treatment of women, after all it was clear that they have the capability to make necessary changes, and yet they chose not to.
And faced with this dilema the university agreed to reissue my certificates.
So almost a decade since my divorce and I can finally display those hard earned qualifications.
And I will take great pleasure in having won one small battle for the rights of women.
If you enjoyed reading this post, then you won’t want to miss my upcoming book. Sign up below to make sure you are kept up to date about its release later in the year.