Why are you so obsessed with choice?—he asked me.
How not to be obsessed with it?—I replied.
I have chosen, that is quite an accomplishment, isn’t?

Being is an act. Being a woman. Being a youngster. Age, as gender, is an act. A performance. I am a performer: I play the young woman. And I am negotiating my position as a young woman every single day. But, have I chosen to be a young woman, this young woman?

Age is normative. “Act your age”—the constant remark my parents have always made. “What’s my age again?” was repeated through my mind, but never came up as an actual response to them. Following the norms, I have tried my best to act my age.

Gender is also normative. Not big news for those who have came across the field of development studies. But continuing my short life narrative, I shall share that I had to constantly ‘confirm’ I was a woman—and not only other women can relate to this, but men also: society continuously asks us to prove our position. Acting our chosen gender is an accomplishment. Yet again, out of fear or plain laziness, must of my life I opted to follow the norms and not to question my gender position as I learned it from my family.

Years after, I dare to say that I have chosen to be a young woman. I have understood that this young woman I am might be the result of social forces, which shaped this meaning I have given to my age and my gender. Yet, I have also reflected this role and constituted this young woman I am. I might be a performer, I admit the compliance with the norms. But I am a chooser, I made up the meaning of what I am ought to be (today).

Yet, I know this is not my final version. Choice is an accomplishment, but is neither static nor definitive. It is the ongoing possibility of choice what keeps me alive. Something to struggle for. Why? Because many do not have this option. I have negotiated this choice. Quite likely, chance has played a key role for me to be in this priviliged position of constantly evaluating, interpreting, enacting and choosing. I was given the possibility of choice. And I took it.

But for many people out there, the possibility of choice is rather restricted. Social, economic and institutional means have constrained what is deemed as possible in their lives. In this life lottery, they have got loaded dice. However, they keep on rolling them out. They are the real strugglers.

When asking to poor young girls in a remote town in southern Ecuador about their prospects for the future, they kept silent. While boys, despite the intolerable levels of hardship made big plans about their lives, seeing themselves in a proper job and enjoying being independent, girls responded with reticence. The normativity of age and gender, deepened by social stratification and economic deprivation, made of the possibility of choosing a luxury for young girls. Extremely aware of the restricted escenario they were facing, they remained speechless.

By now, you might have noticed that choice has become an idée fixe. But in times when choice is assumed to always be there—you can ask most of the behavioural economists about it, someone needs to become obsessed with this.

It is about time for fair dice: accomplishing the possibility of choice.