women, work, leadership, and the future
Feb. 20th, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI heard a most interesting talk given recently by Wendy McCarthy about getting women into more of the company executive boards and government positions so that these populations can be more truly representative of the wider population. And while I agree with much of what she said, I feel she kinda bought into the whole old boy mythology of what is important.
She felt that we are defined by our work, which is nice if you have an important-sounding job like research scientist for the European Space Agency, but doesn't have quite the same ring to it if you are a cleaner, or you stack supermarket shelves, or you sort fruit on a conveyor belt. Defining yourself by your work has other unpleasant consequences, just ask the long-term unemployed, or the retrenched, or retirees. See what those who've lost everything thru some illness feel about self-worth being measured by a job.
Another way she seems to have bought the old boy bullshit is in thinking that women have to be aggressive and become like surrogate males to win their jobs because men just don't look outside the boys' clubs to take on new people. While she is right that the inward-looking, self-perpetuating boys only ring needs to be broken, I think she is wrong in thinking that we need to do it on their terms. I think we need to redefine success and failure. I see failure as being unable to negotiate and needing to crush others to get your way. I see success as improving the lot for all those around you. By this measure much of government these days is a dismal failure and the biggest companies are often the greatest blight on the planet.
The most encouraging thing is that I'm not alone in thinking this way. I've noticed a change rippling gently through society, where people are questioning just what success and happiness are. There are even some business leaders who have realised this and have started quietly taking on women. As Wendy McCarthy noted in her talk, companies who have women sharing top roles now consistently out-perform those stuck in the last century with strictly male executives.
What Wendy didn't notice is that a lot of people are abandoning the traditional idea of work and investing huge amounts of time and effort into charities and non-profit groups. This is a time of quiet, almost invisible revolution. People have become fed up with waiting for their boneheaded "representatives" to do something about the wrong things in the world and are simply fixing them themselves. I see this as something wonderful.
The leaders are gradually becoming irrelevant. They are marching up a blind alley, making lots of loud, self-congratulatory noises, with their big, brass band, and when they get to the end and realise they're boxed in and there's nowhere to go, they'll look around to find there's nobody following them -- that they're all alone. Everybody else will have left long ago to get on with doing the really worthwhile stuff.
She felt that we are defined by our work, which is nice if you have an important-sounding job like research scientist for the European Space Agency, but doesn't have quite the same ring to it if you are a cleaner, or you stack supermarket shelves, or you sort fruit on a conveyor belt. Defining yourself by your work has other unpleasant consequences, just ask the long-term unemployed, or the retrenched, or retirees. See what those who've lost everything thru some illness feel about self-worth being measured by a job.
Another way she seems to have bought the old boy bullshit is in thinking that women have to be aggressive and become like surrogate males to win their jobs because men just don't look outside the boys' clubs to take on new people. While she is right that the inward-looking, self-perpetuating boys only ring needs to be broken, I think she is wrong in thinking that we need to do it on their terms. I think we need to redefine success and failure. I see failure as being unable to negotiate and needing to crush others to get your way. I see success as improving the lot for all those around you. By this measure much of government these days is a dismal failure and the biggest companies are often the greatest blight on the planet.
The most encouraging thing is that I'm not alone in thinking this way. I've noticed a change rippling gently through society, where people are questioning just what success and happiness are. There are even some business leaders who have realised this and have started quietly taking on women. As Wendy McCarthy noted in her talk, companies who have women sharing top roles now consistently out-perform those stuck in the last century with strictly male executives.
What Wendy didn't notice is that a lot of people are abandoning the traditional idea of work and investing huge amounts of time and effort into charities and non-profit groups. This is a time of quiet, almost invisible revolution. People have become fed up with waiting for their boneheaded "representatives" to do something about the wrong things in the world and are simply fixing them themselves. I see this as something wonderful.
The leaders are gradually becoming irrelevant. They are marching up a blind alley, making lots of loud, self-congratulatory noises, with their big, brass band, and when they get to the end and realise they're boxed in and there's nowhere to go, they'll look around to find there's nobody following them -- that they're all alone. Everybody else will have left long ago to get on with doing the really worthwhile stuff.