Women need to uncover their “gold” inside ….. to step forward and drive change

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, women driving change

In the latest video in the series of seven in my conversations about Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul, David shares a great story about a golden buddha.

Apparently, in order to protect it from being taken by an invading army, someone came up with the bright idea of covering up the gold with mud. It fooled the invaders who left the buddha undiscovered and intact. It was decided that it might be safer to keep the mud covering on for a while longer ….. of course the years go by and now nobody remembers the gold underneath!

David shares this as a great metaphor for where women are now.

We have to remember to uncover our gold inside.

In our series on Feminine Leadership David and I have talked about how women hold themselves back.    Currently we have an issue with not having enough women on boards; there are not enough women government leaders.   Although the system is actually holding women back because there are many occasions when the men have to ‘give permission’ to allow women to move through; the picture is much more complex. There are things that we are doing as women that are not advancing us, or our game. We could change what we do.   I asked David what he had noticed that holds women back? (Watch the video)

David responded by asking:   Why aren’t there more women prime ministers, why aren’t there more women CEOs … yes we have a few but why aren’t we seeing more women leaders in the 21st-century?  Why is it that we don’t we see more women driving the agenda behind the scenes?
Women are nurturing, they care about the environment, the planet.  So why aren’t women a real force behind environmental issues? There are women doing that but maybe they are not getting their voices heard ….. why are they not getting the publicity?

There is another place where women could drive change: why do we still go to war these days to solve our problems? Why don’t women mobilise against war ?  We could create a women’s movement to stop war, protesting about sending our men away to war…  but there seems to be only silence.  Yes there is activity but women are doing things in pockets. We are against war but we are not organised as a group of women against war. There isn’t a women’s voice against war in sufficient quantity to make a difference. Why can’t we do something which unites us to fight something out there?

CLICK HERE to WATCH VIDEO: Women need to drive change:

The question to women from David is:  “What can you do as a movement, what can you do as a united whole?”   David points out that women connect far more easily than men. Women are always talking …. you see them in coffee shops every day.  Women get together and talk about social things ……. why can’t we use that time, that force to do something even greater than what women are doing today? That is the question for women.

David says the reason we have not been leading and driving change is because women are not united behind a cause. There are lots of causes but they are not united. It’s like we are putting out small bushfires. We are all working on separate fires, we are not united.  Why aren’t the men turning around the global financial crisis?   It’s because men have not got the answers…..  so we need to women step into the foreground and say “this is what we women have been doing…”

David then shared a story about the Golden buddha in Thailand.  When the army was coming to ransack village, the villagers covered  it in mud to hide the gold.  100 years later and with the mud still there,  everybody forgot about the gold underneath.

That is what women have done … they have hidden their gold, it’s now time to get rid of the mud covering up the gold.  Let’s bring out the gold in  women.   When I was touring Australia earlier this year I was giving talks about The Rise of the Feminine pointing out that the biggest threat to this potential shift in society is women themselves NOT stepping forward. In our own inner talk we often ask ourselves “who am I to do this?”. We have all sort of ways of holding ourselves back.   Women have used many barriers and defenses to hold themselves back. In the past we have not been allowed to do many things: it’s not been safe to speak out, many times we’ve been told to keep quiet, shut up and not to say silly things.  That probably remains within us still and yet there is a strong part of us is calling us forth to speak. We now have to listen to that stronger voice.  David says women should use our conversations to get rid of “all that mud”, let’s really think about what is covering up our gold.

David stressed that this is the of decade change. This is when we are going to cross certain lines globally and not be able to go back. The environment is breaking apart, there is a lot of evidence to say that. Unless women say this is a cause worth fighting for we are going to cross a line where we can’t go back ……. our children, the next generations, will not be able to do anything about it.

We have to be outraged and take action. Just like S A W I D (South African Women in Dialogue), we have to get into conversation to discuss what our priorities actually are.  Currently we’re not in that conversation of working out what our priorities are.  We are not thinking about how we could make time to create something better.   David pointed out that after decades of unrest, violence and destruction in South Africa,  things are changing because women are taking an interest. Women are passionate about change.  They are getting themselves heard.

It’s time to reach within, discover what our personal gold is inside and bring that forth with conscious and constructive conversation with other women about how we can drive change. Watch the interview on video.

What are you passionate about? What is your gold? What are you doing now that is driving change? I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading/watching this.

We need to change the negative news reporting of women

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Dr David Paul, Elizabeth Renzetti column, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, Olympics women athletes news reporting, women and media

Here’s the third video (in the series of seven on feminine leadership) from my conversation with Dr David Paul in Sydney. We’re talking about how the media filters stories and comments on women and what we can do about it.

Two current stories about women and the Olympics caught my attention. Right now, I’m travelling in Canada so I am missing the Olympics in London.  I managed to see the Opening Ceremony live  but I’ve not had much chance to watch any further TV coverage. However I have been scanning the Canadian papers for commentary.

A story that I did take note of was about coverage of female Olympians. US research published in June of television coverage of the Olympics by Professor James Angelini of the University of Delaware who analysed all 64 hours of American network NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, found several key differences in the way men’s and women’s sports were depicted. Sportscasters framed men’s and women’s successes and failures in different ways. Male athletes’ achievements were more frequently attributed to athletic ability and commitment to sport, whereas women’s successes were more likely to be put down to luck. When female athletes failed, their physical ability and commitment were questioned, whereas men’s failures were presented in the context of their competitors’ success. The same was noted when the 2008 Games in Beijing were studied.

How damaging is this to women’s psyche and for our self esteem …… I bet most of this goes unnoticed because it’s subtle. Yet it must surely add to a woman feeling “less than”. Some media disrespect and bias against women is much more obvious. This media treatment was spotted by Elizabeth Renzetti, a columnist in Canada’s Globe and Mail who shared her disappointment at the focus of the attention at the press conference for the British Women’s beach volleyball team. “The first question to the athletes” she writes, “was: Will you promise to wear your bikinis even if it rains? …. The male athletes sat there while no one asked them a question, because we already knew they weren’t going to wear bikinis. They were free to think about boring stuff like training routines and nutrition.” Apparently, this year the women’s beach volleyball teams have been given the option of wearing shorts and long-sleeved tops instead of bikinis. She also goes on to point out that Australia’s minister for sport had to comment on criticism of one of the country’s female athlete’s weight saying that the comments were “appalling” while Britain’s Jessica Ennis, even with her washboard abs has been called “fat” by high-ranking officials in her sport.

Now this isn’t in the least bit subtle. What to do about it? How do we divert the media’s attention to a more positive appraisal and reporting of women? That is something David Paul touches on in our conversation in this week’s video. He urges the need for us to have transformative conversations so we can clarify our messages …. basically constructing and planning for more positive PR for women. He says we need to get organised. It’s a very interesting suggestion. He points out that in order for the media to stop criticising the hairstyle of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, she needs to divert their inane conversation and give them clearer messages of what she stands for.

Notes from this conversation with Dr David Paul:
* the media focuses on what Julia Gillard wears….. Nobody else is interested. The news is filtered through the masculine lens of the media and press. There are many transformational possibilities with the media.

* The media shapes everyone’s thinking, whether we like it or not, subconsciously the messages get through.  With Julia, we focus on her hairstyle and what she’s wearing as opposed the messages.  We listen to this because there is nothing else to listen to.

* Julia Gillard needs coaching on really stating her messages and reiterating them. Most people don’t know what she stands for apart from a couple of things: carbon tax and taxing mining companies. We really don’t know what she stands for and women need a vision, that’s the key to our transformation.  Men would get on the bandwagon too if they saw that it was a vision they wanted to follow.

* Oprah Winfrey has created a vision, she is a brand and a presence. She has single-handedly made a success of her programme.  She has created a transformational space where she has invited men and women to change the world. Somehow we don’t focus on the schools that she has created in Africa. We need to start focusing on the good that women do.

* Julia Gillard does not focus on the good that she has achieved because she always says she needs to strive for more.
So the message is:
What is our vision?
What we strive for?
What do we want to change?

We need a clear articulation. It starts with a conversation:
What is important to us?
Articulate it clearly
Get behind it
Put out simple messages.

* We need to improve our public relations and have the right message then push it out through the media and social media. We need to get organised.

* Why do women say my husband does not listen to me?
The message is not said in succinct ways. And it’s not repeated often enough.
To tackle a man’s mind you have to say your message very clearly, men have a very small attention span!    We have to say “this is our message” and we have to keep repeating it, be very clear.

*That is exactly what President Obama does. Martin Luther King said I have a dream about 25 times in one speech.  He anchors this key phrase into our memory. That’s exactly what Margaret Thatcher did, she was a very good communicator.

Be clear
Know our priorities……  narrow down what is important after discussion
Go out and make changes from there.

* In these transforming conversations:
Be succinct and clear
Stay on course, keep with the vision and don’t wander all over the place.
Sell the message: our current systems are not working.

* Women need to get on the bandwagon, we need to talk about what the change could be even though we don’t know what it is. Nobody knows it so discuss it and find out. We have to step forward, women are innovators, we create, out of nothing, the most amazing things. Men are always amazed at what women can do!

Previous postings of conversations with Dr David Paul on feminine leadership:

1) The importance of feminine qualities in women leaders

2) More women needed on boards