1. Encouraging more women to come forward to stand as MP’s.

There is research from the US (applicable here) that shows that women need to be encouraged to run for public office rather than going for it themselves. There are several reasons for this, confidence being one, culture being another. (Yes I know there are examples of women who come forward but this research shows a tendency).  Addressing this would require a campaign not unlike an election campaign, reaching women in their homes and social lives.  We would need to expand the scope of  the political parties campaigns for increasing the numbers of female MP’s and empower them with budget to get out and about, round the country to encourage women to stand.  Now that the Lib Dems are in government we might find money for increasing the work that the Campaign for Gender Balance does.

2. Changing the perception of women as leaders in the party, in politics and in society.

This is even trickier.  Research shows that people automatically  think of a man when you use the word ‘leader’.  Our concept of leadership is masculine, which obviously makes it harder for a women to get elected, promoted within a company etc.  They have to work a lot harder to prove that they can lead, rather than it being assumed they can, the position men find themselves in.  (Yes I know there are examples of the opposite… etc)  The solution here is, paradoxically, to create role models of female leaders.  We need to develop and promote the female MP’s we have to be seen more obviously as leaders.  We need to actively encourage local parties to do the same and we need to encourage the media to run stories that portray female leaders in a positive light.  Less of the shoes and handbags stories about female MP’s and more about what they actually achieve in their roles.    This will make it easier for women to come forward to stand because they can see they will get recognition and will decrease the numbers of female MP’s leaving due to being constantly harangued by the press.

3. We need to change the nature of the job of MP.

It’s currently set up for a man.  Well, really for a person who has someone else at home looking after the kids and house full time. That tends to still be men. If a woman wants to be an MP, currently she has to fit into this mould. Hence the data showing that there are few mothers in parliament.  If we are serious about making room for women, then we need to understand that women bear the burden of raising our future generations.  We need to make it possible for them to do this (and dare I say for men to be able to do this too) and still become MPs.  We need to work out what parliament would need to look like for women to be able to contribute their thinking and their time, as well as taking care of community and family.  This is not a simple task and yes, is the redefinition of gender roles in society but it is basically what needs to happen.

So, you see, we should not moan about the numbers of women we currently have in parliament without a recognition of the deep systemic issues affecting a women’s chances of being successful at the job.  I’m up for changing this and will be making an offer to the Lib Dem/Conservative government to that effect.

Photo by Mike Baird on Creative Commons

The point is that my standard state nowadays is not one of fear, it’s one of hope.  Having met thousands of people over the course of my life, I have high hopes for humanity.  I see that we bleed the same, we wish for the same things, we love our children in the same ways.  I hope that we can live in a society where we can accept each other as human beings, can look beyond stereotypes and into the humanity in each others hearts. It’s why I’m a liberal and always will be, I hope for a better world.  A world with less fear and less need for fear.

That’s why I’m surprised this morning to be feeling it and I wonder if I understand the nation a little more. A friend of mine once told me that her abiding memory of being a Christian was one of fear. Fear of the Devil, fear of burning in hell.  Now, I’m not for a second saying that all Christians are like this, totally not and my family and friends would be appalled if I thought that.  The heart of the real Christian message is love, I know that, though I myself am an atheist.   I am just amazed at how closely together those two things, love and fear, sit and that people in this country who believe themselves to be moral, loving people are being driven by fear.  Being controlled by fear.

The right wing press have upped the ante and are stirring fear like I’ve never seen it before.  Fear of a hung parliament, fear of a nuclear attack that we cannot defend, fear of immigrants, fear of Europe, fear of the other, the unknown.  And I’m starting to fear them! This is what I must watch out for, what we all must watch out for. The game of fear is the old politics game, the old world game, the game that keeps us divided and separate, hoarding resources and letting people with less die.

The new politics is a story of hope and dare I say it, of love. Love for other people regardless of whether they feel, look, sound like us.  Hope for a world where people’s voices count, where a vote matters, where we have a press that reports what happens not what they would prefer happened.  I hope for the capacity to love my fellow human beings even when they stand for things that appal me for that is the future I want to live in.  I want to be the change, not just call for the change from others and it is in situations like this that I have to remind myself of that.

Photo by mattwi1s0n on CC

Being a woman is an interesting thing.  It’s an accident of birth, a slip in a chromosome, from XX to XY, that makes a man a man and an absence of this move that makes a woman a woman. There certainly are some differences between the two genders. One has external sex organs, the other internal. Indeed, that is the very definition of what it is to be female or male. And that is about the only meaningful thing we can say about ‘all men’ or ‘all women’. Why on earth then do we continue to bleat on and on about ‘men’ being one way and ‘women’ being another?  Because we are using faulty logic.

Take the example of Ceri Thomas, editor of Radio 4′s Today programme and his nonsense about women not making good anchors because their skins are not thick enough to handle the job.  It’s possible that it’s true, in his experience, that there have been some women who have been unable to take the pressure of interviewing live on the Today programme (not that I have an example but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt).  He is entitled to draw a conclusion from that experience that ‘some women’ cannot take the pressure of the job or do not have a skin thick enough.  I can even see that if he’s had experience of, say, 100 women failing under these circumstances that he might even infer that ‘most women’ are not suited to the job.  What he, nor anyone else using simple logic, can do is deduce that ‘all women’ are not suited to the job of being an anchor on Raido 4′s Today programme.  Or that there is something about being a woman that makes them less suited to the job, by the very fact that they are women, as opposed to just being a person that didn’t have enough experience, etc.

We need to stop this nonsense.  It’s illogical, it’s stupid and it’s damaging to women. (Of course, not to ‘all women’ but you get my drift).

Why does this matter? The press in this country love to make sweeping generalisations about all kinds of things, including what it is to be a woman. We are told women are this, women are that and we buy it. We hold some sort of belief structure that ‘all women’ want to be mothers or are caring, or prefer relationships over task, or are more emotional than rational or prefer floral wallpaper to stripes.  Whatever.  Now it’s perfectly sensible to use common, shared knowledge to get by in the world.  I don’t need to experience everything individually in order to believe it.  Most of my scientific beliefs are based on the word of others.  My senses tell me that the sun goes round the earth and yet I rely on the work of others to inform me that this not the case and the earth actually goes round the sun.  It’s sensible and rational to rely on the word of scientists as we have a clear understanding of the validity of their testing and they can show us the workings if we enquire.  This is not the case in terms of the rubbish we come out with about ‘all men’ or ‘all women’.

I’m guilty of this nonsense myself.  I am moved to write about gender so much because I am sick of the accident of my birth determining what is possible for me in life.  I’m sick of reading what my preferences are as a woman. I’m sick of being told that women don’t have as thick a skin as men, that we prefer shoes and handbags to sports.  It is certainly true for some women but not for all. It’s true that some men have skins thick enough to do the Today programme job, but not all men do.  The more we go on about the special qualities that men have or that women have, the more we fall further into the same mistake.  We will never prove that women should be leaders/politicians/radio show anchors/writers/CEO’s by virtue of them being women. We can only show that they can do the job because they are people possessing certain skills.  And, of course, seeing as the positions we are now looking to take on have been occupied by men for so long, we will need to show that we are capable of doing it in the way that they have been doing it, because that is currently what is valued in those roles.  We need to do this before we can change the positions into something more women friendly.

Urgh, did I just write that?  What does it even mean ‘women friendly’?  Nothing at all!  That’s more of the same faulty logic.  It actually says more about the responsibilities that women hold in our culture, as carers, as mothers, as human beings raised to care over being logical.  What we really need in order for women to step up into leadership positions is the nature of work to allow for people with caring responsibilities to still contribute their leadership skills.  Am I saying that women are just like men?  No, I’m saying that you can’t say anything meaningful about ‘all women’ at all other than that they have a certain type of reproductive structure.  Arguing the case for ‘women’ having special skills merely pushes us further and further down this faulty path. We need to side step it altogether and move to a place where we see each other for what we actually are, not through a stereotype.  This will free women and it will free men and it will allow our children to be able to contribute the best of themselves to society. Whether that fits the gender stereotype or not.

(Photo by Ginger Pig http://www.flickr.com/photos/27888428@N00/3113175683/ Under Creative Commons)

Women make up 60% of all graduates in Europe and the US this year. In January 2010, for the first time, there were more women in employment in the US than men.  Women have become the majority of the workforce. Yet, only 12% of FTSE 100 directorships are held by women.  This is clearly not because there are no women working that can rise to be leaders or because women are not bright enough to do the job.  Britain also just became 74^th in the world in terms of the percentage of female MP’s, behind countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and recently overtaken by Nicaragua, the Philippines and Uzbekistan.

Why is this? We know a lot about the barriers to women progressing which exist within organizations.  Women still bear the burden of childcare so can work fewer hours if they have to pick up children from school, etc. A lot of opportunities go to people who can schmooze in the evenings and, as many women are essentially doing a second shift when they get home, they cannot attend these events. Women ‘step out’ of work to undertake the social service of producing more consumers yet are penalized for this unpaid service when they get back to work.  Work is set up for an old fashioned male paradigm when the workers and professionals were supported at home by unpaid help, (women) so they could work all the hours possible and get ahead.  And women were (perhaps) happy to be at home looking after children, when the mans wage covered all the costs.  This does not match the reality of our countries aspirations today.

There are also internal barriers to women excelling as leaders.  Women tend not to celebrate their successes in quite the same way as men do.  One client of mine expressed her dismay as her male colleagues went running to the boss to crow about what they had achieved on a shared project as she just got on with the work. Of course, those men then got promoted as they were noticed, whilst she did not. Women are not as canny about what it takes to get on in a masculine corporate culture, nor do they want to do what it takes when it conflicts with their values.  Women wait to be invited to run for public office for example, according to Marie Wilsons research at the White House Project.

One of the most telling pieces of research that the White House Project did was on perceived leadership characteristics. They sat a test group in front of small screens with a dial, and showed them clips of men and women speaking.  The test group were asked to dial up when the speaker displayed leadership characteristics and dial down when they displayed characteristics that were not associated with leadership. When the women came on screen people dialed down.  Our very concept of the term ‘leader’ is masculine. We do not internally regard women as leaders so we have a great deal of work to do to meet the masculine ideal.  This is why a lot of women’s leadership programmes are about training women to be more like men.

As far as politics goes, women largely don’t want to get involved because of the way that female MP’s are treated.  Remember Jacqui Smiths cleavage being of more interest to the media than her words as the new Home Sec?  That kind of reporting is pathetic and childish, frustrating and nearly impossible to relate to.  Also, generally speaking, women do not profess an interest in politics per se but will express an interest in issues, such as education, health and community relations. These things are the domain of politics but your average woman in the street does not see herself as having much to say about ‘politics’ because it has become synonymous with economics and defense.  Topics that traditionally men think of when they relate to politics. Of course, that is why we need both genders in politics, attending to both groups of issues.

Of course, this is not a crime that has been perpetrated on women.  Far from it.  We have been complicit in this set of arrangements.  We have accepted the status quo, we have left work in our droves when it got too hard.  We have not led in a way that made a difference to our culture.  It’s time to do so.  We need to step up and bring our voices to the table, for the sake of the women coming along behind us and for the children of the nation. We need to put ourselves forward for public office, stand an MP’s run for local council, as that is the only way that we will reach the tipping point necessary for the culture to change to something more female friendly.  Nobody is going to do this for us, we need to do it ourselves.

(This last bit of my talk wasn’t so popular…)

Paddy Ashdown came on first and appealed directly to our heads.  The country faces four great threats, he says and goes on to tell us why the Lib Dems are the party to address them.  The first one, the economic crisis, basically needs to be handled by Vince Cable.  Given the fact that Dr Cable predicted the collapse, we trust him to come up with some sort of way through the mess.  Yes, I can buy that and as he pointed out, you need to vote Lib Dem to get Vince Cable as Chancellor.

Paddy Ashdowns style, tone and rhetoric are all convincing and moved me to follow his logic calmly and sanely, to understand deeply that the Lib Dems are an option this election. Perhaps the only real option.  But for all his logic, and he was inspirational, it was Shirley Williams that captured my heart and made me want to act.

Dame Williams reminded the audience that we get involved in politics because we have a passion for a just society.  However we start, we share a desire to live in a country that is just and fair.  Right now, it is clear that we do not.  Though I can intellectually grasp this, Shirley’s words reached through to my heart when she asked ‘Why are we not furious?’ about the state of housing, our classroom sizes, the bankers bonuses.  Good question, why are we not furious? Because, she says, we have lost the capacity for indignation.  We allow so much to slide by us, to go un-noticed, unchallenged.  She reminded us that we are called upon now to step up and make a difference. As I listened to her I felt she was awakening our morality.

Both speakers had good points to make, though through appealing to different parts of me.  Great orators know this, that to fully engage with an audience takes more than a rational argument, it takes something that appeals to the heart, that stirs the spirit.  I think politics needs more of what Shirley Williams was offering, more of an appeal to that part of us that is more that just logic.  Just logic is what created the financial crisis.  Just logic is what produces poverty.  Its humanity that will be required to solve these problems. Humanity includes logic but logic is not sufficient.  More is required.  An ability to feel, to connect with another human being, to be moved to action by an individuals predicament, by the state of the world, that is what is required of us now.  This is what will engage people back in politics, the sense of making a difference.  We need to be more like Shirley Williams, ready to accept that we need to stand up and be counted, or there will be no-one left to do the counting.

Those that oppose the idea of quotas often appeal to meritocracy as an ideal for the selection and election of our members of parliament.  They say that to introduce quotas is to give women an unfair advantage and that they should be able to get elected on their own merits.  In fact some argue that the women that are selected using this method are less worthy than potential male candidates that could have occupied that space.  What can we say in response to this argument?

Meritocracy is of course something to aim for.  In an ideal world, female candidates for office would be assessed alongside men fairly and equally on their merits.  That seems logical.  The question is not so much is this happening or not, but ‘what criteria are being used?’ Just what is merited? Much has been written elsewhere on the different styles that men and women display when leading and the benefits that both styles can have on a business environment. It’s recognised in the business world that having women take part in the running of your company with drive tangible benefits. This information needs to be passed on to and fully understood by the selection committees of our political parties and to the British media who routinely scorn female MP’s.

However, that aside (and it will be explored more fully later), I wonder what else is at play in producing the UK’s disastrous results in female political representation.  We may see a reflection of ourselves in India. The Economist featured a piece this week on Gendercide, the murder of girl babies due to a preference for boys. I’m not talking about abortion as murder, I mean the actual physical murder of female babies when they are born.  This happens widely in India, and in other countries, as well as there being a large rate of abortion of female foetuses. The Economist article explains that this is causing a problem in China, as the large numbers of men are now unable to find wives and crime levels are rising due to the unchallenged masculine energy.

In the UK we do not sanction the killing of any babies and lets be thankful for that but I wonder what vestiges of this preference for the male over the female we still hold in our psyches.  When we judge female leaders on ‘merit’ are we actually holding up the male version of leader as the ideal? When we assess a women for the job of politician are we actually assessing her against men that can do the job of being available 24/7, with support at home, with no direct caring responsibilities for the family, with an ability to compartmentalise thoughts and feelings?  Are we deeply preferencing men when we choose our leaders?

I think that the percentages of female leaders in business and in politics speak for themselves. The cost of equality is giving up the idea that men are more worthy than women. In India and China giving up this belief would save lives. In the UK it would open up our power structures to women and enable them to make the contribution they are capable of making, for the benfit of the country and our future generations.

(Photo by handmadebymaria, CC)

“the family, motherhood, delinquency, women and the economy, the concept of ‘women’s work’, [and] equal pay”

These are largely still the themes that women are concerned with today.  How far we have come and yet how much further there is to go.  I wonder what the new feminism is and what it’s goals are going to be?  My money is on power and leadership, transforming the nature of those terms and the relationship that women have to them.

Though I also believe that we need to demonstrate women’s leadership, not just talk about it.  What marked the beginning of the feminist revolution 40 years ago was action and we need that again.  Something that allows women to come together to do what they do, in their ways, to step up into leadership roles.  On our terms.

What do you think would help this cause?

(Photo by felipe_gabaldon under Creative Commons, no association to post)

“Do Women Really Want to be Leaders?” with Lee Chalmers

Much is made if the low numbers of female senior leaders in UK companies but what is the real problem? Is it the working practices or do women just not want to lead? Do we actually want men to lead for us? Let’s explore our resistance as women to stepping up into leadership and what it would take for us to do so.”

Three easy ways to book your lunch:

The money for these lunches funds the training of long-term unemployed so they get on-the-job skills to find (and keep) a permanent job.

1. RESERVE YOUR PLACE AT corbett.castlevale@googlemail.com

2. THEN PAY £45: Phone Events Manager Laura Gomm on 0207 749 2826 for credit card payments (only that – get all info re timings etc from invitation) Or: BACS transfer: Acc Number: 32 03 64 69 Sort Code: 60-40-05.   (Nat West Bank, London WC2H 0PD.). Your place will be confirmed once payment has been received.

3. Please send Val Corbett your job title, and 3 or 4 lines of job description (unless you already have.) And any dietary requirements.

PLEASE NOTE : Networking starts from noon we sit down at 12.45 precisely. Unlike other lunches, the speaker starts before the first course is served.   Please, be on time – as the airlines say, if you’re late, we won’t wait!  Things change and if your diary suddenly frees, call 07920 107323  as there are always last-minute cancellations.

Quickest way to get to us: Northern Line Old Street tube, exit 2; walk straight, past traffic lights, Holiday Express, first left Coronet Street and Hoxton Square at top of this short road. Hoxton Apprentice is top of the Square next to the church. Takes 6 ish minutes.

About the Organiser

Val Corbett, director of Hoxton Apprentice. Born in Cape Town, Val has had a career in the media spanning national newspapers, magazines and BBC television. She was founder director of an independent TV production company producing several programmes for BBC TV and Channel 4. After that she co-wrote six novels but now gains far more satisfaction from her work with Training For Life. Val has the specific brief of marketing and promoting the Michelin-recommended Hoxton Apprentice.

Full detail on the Hoxton Apprentice website

David McCandless and Stephanie Posavec have made this beautiful infographic of right/left politics in the US.  Check out the book for more details and McCandless’s website http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/left-vs-right/

“And now they want to stop members of Parliament travelling first class. That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class. So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats. And why are we going to waste our time when we can work on the train as we do. I’m sorry. It infuriates me.”

Well, I can totally see what he is getting at.  I travel a lot for work and if I am lucky enough to get to travel first class it does indeed allow me to get a lot more work done that if I am pressed tightly against someone in standard class, with loads of noise around me.  Fair enough, you’d think.  But then he digs himself into another kind of hole.

“They [standard-class passengers] are a totally different type of people  -  they have a different outlook on life. They may be reading a book but I doubt whether they’re undertaking serious work or study, reading reports or amending reports that MPs do when they travel.”

This, obviously, is a lot of rubbish.  Most people would choose to travel in First Class if given the choice.  Its quiet, it’s more spacious and they serve you tea and coffee.  Why wouldn’t someone want that?  There is nothing different about the people that travel in standard class other than they have paid less for their seat.  What is present in Sir Nicholas’ view is privilege and the mistaken idea that the reason you have something that others don’t is because they are different and somehow don’t deserve it.

Sir Nicholas’ view seems to typify the view of privilege held by many people in the UK.  Not that I grudge anyone decent stuff in life and a chair in First Class if you can afford it.  Lets just have a dose of reality alongside it.  He has the First Class seat because he can pay for it.  People have the privilege they have because they can afford it, be that through family money or their own hard work.  Lets not make the mistake that that simple fact makes them ‘better’ people than those travelling in standard class.  It only makes them better at having money and spending it.

What is problematic about privilege is the justification that arises in the minds of the people who posses it and their blindness to the reality of others.  The fact that Sir Nicholas really feels this way about the people who travel in standard class is frightening.  There is no ‘they’ that travel in standard class.  There is only the diversity of humanity in all its guises, each living a personal experience that Sir Nicholas cannot conceive of.  Surely we need to be able to embrace this truth in order to be a good public servant.  Otherwise the constituency you are serving is the constituency of yourself, from your own perspective, true only to your own needs.

(Photo by ThePatrick, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pftqg/, used under Creative Commons license, artist not connected with any opinions here given)