Women are seemingly held to a higher standard of niceness – did this unseat Maria Miller?

 

Following a fascinating conversation with Professor Shelley Correll, head of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, I was reflecting this morning on what she said about women being held to a higher standard of niceness than men … and whether this had any impact on the just-announced resignation of UK Cabinet Minister Maria Miller MP. Her resignation, somewhat forced onto her by screaming newspaper headlines and several colleagues in Westminster, follows an investigation into her expense claims and what is now being quoted over and over again as her 32-second apology which was labelled as “graceless”.

I am wondering if it was the expenses claim and the need to pay back certain monies OR… the fact that she was not contrite enough in her apology. I am somewhat suspending judgement as I don’t know the details, only those conveyed through the media which may not have been entirely neutral. It was Maria Miller who was in charge of two very controversial areas of reform: press regulation and gay marriage, both of which seemed to make her many enemies, enemies who now seemed very vocal in her hour of difficulty. The MPs in her own party who spoke out against her were the same ones who voted against Gay Marriage.

I am wondering, in the light of what Professor Correll shared in our video interview, if Maria Miller was being held to a higher standard of niceness than if a male Cabinet Minister had issued the same brief apology? Is she out because she was not contrite, or nice enough? There are so many other occasions where ranks are closed around government leaders by their colleagues but not in the case of this woman. I have watched the apology on the BBC website and it sounds straightforward, she does not sound arrogant but more likely nervous. Her supporters say she was trying not to cry. The atmosphere in the Westminster chamber is not one that is conducive to anything but direct lucid communication, not a place to make an emotional statement.

So do watch the interview … see what you think?

Transcript of conversation

Shelley Correll: This is another one of these really hard problems ….. the unconscious bias literature shows us that women are less likely to be perceived as competent than men are. One of the things a woman might do if she feels people aren’t seeing her is to promote herself a bit

Gina Lazenby:  we are told to toot our own horn!

SC: exactly.  .. And so what happens when they do that, it does raise their level of competence with which they are seen, so it really does help, but at the same time people do not like self-promoting women.

What happens is they see them as more competent but at the same time they like them less. We see this with women leaders as well. Enacting a leadership role requires women to act in a more assertive, competent, confident way. In doing so people often don’t like them. They see them as pushy, selfish or bossy, and not being very likable.   This comes about because one of our stereotypes about women is that we should be nice …….  we hold women to a higher standard of niceness than men.

Acting in a leadership role doesn’t look so nice to us when a woman does it but it looks perfectly fine when a man does it.  So there is a trade-off there when a woman looks confident and is self promoting – people don’t like her. If she backs off and acts more meek and mild they like her but don’t see her as being very competent.  And the problem is, to be effective, it is better to be seen as both competent and likable, and not have those be a trade off.

GL spoke about how reports published in the Harvard Business Review say that people now want leaders with empathy and warmth who are much nicer that previous versions ….

SC: I don’t think the changing way we view leaders is going to automatically benefit women. I think we are going to have to do more than just hope that that is going to take us somewhere.

GL: there are a lot of conversations out there following on from John Gerzema’s book about the traits people want in the modern ideal leader. 8 out of 10 traits are listed as feminine.

SC: Being empathetic is seen as being feminine and is also associated with other low status groups like ethnic minorities who are seen to be more empathetic, even if they are men, than their white counterparts. Again, this is what people say they want from leadership.

A group that is in power has the ability to redefine themselves in ways to maintain their position. I am not optimistic that this on its own will bring about higher representation of women leaders
The biggest gains that will be made is in reinforcing that when women are in leadership positions, it’s good for creativity, it’s good for team problem solving, it’s good for a company’s bottom line …. Those are the kind of things that are going to motivate firms to want to really go out and get more women. That is where the biggest attraction is.

How women broke the deadlock in the Government Shutdown in the USA

Men created the mess, now women get them out of it!

This is what Senator Mark Pryor said yesterday in Washington. An article in the Huffington Post speaks about how it was the men who had got the USA into a mess with the Government Shutdown this month but it was the women who had got the country out of the mess.

Interesting! And if you think that is just enthusiastic or biased reporting then you can actually see and hear Senator Mark Pryor speak about the role of the women senators and his admiration for their work at the Huffpost article.  I can remember standing at Amsterdam Airport departure gate and watching in disbelief as the announcement was made on TV that the Government was going into shutdown mode … a presenter stood in New York with the Statue of Liberty behind her talking about how tourist attractions would be closing. I thought … what are they thinking??!! How could anyone in politics let this happen ….. it seemed so obvious to me that individual interests and aspirations were being valued over the common good and what was needed for the people of America. Looking from the outside at America you get the idea that the players involved don’t realise the damage they are doing with the brand of America in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Then the news today of the breakthrough.  Again … how brilliant is that?!   What’s so great about this is that the valuable contribution made by women to the advancement of  the government negotiation process is not being overlooked as it so often is. It is actually being celebrated and the key women are being given credit, which, as most women will agree, is a rare thing indeed as we so often work hard and unacknowleged behind the scenes.

This revelation affirms that the role of feminine leadership is being recognised as a solution for some of the world’s most challenging problems. Indeed it might even be the case that women do have the leading role to play.  We do have special skills which the Senator highlighted in his speech which can make the difference.

According to the Post’s Laura Bassett, after a deal was announced Senator John McCain said “Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily from women in the Senate.“

Senator Pryor spoke of his admiration for his women colleagues after watching them negotiate. “The truth is, women in the Senate is a good thing,” he said. “We’re all just glad they allowed us to tag along so we could see how it’s done.”

Out of 14 senators in the cross party group, six were women. The group was started by Susan Collins (R-Maine) who told The New York Times,  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women were so heavily involved in trying to end this stalemate. Although we span the ideological spectrum, we are used to working together in a collaborative way.”

That’s the golden nugget isn’t it?  It’s women’s capacity to work together and put aside differences to find common ground so that we can collaborate and serve the greater good of all. Apparently,  the 20 women in the Senate have formed strong friendships of trust.  One of the group spoke about how those important relationships make a difference when we have to deal with what  really matters.

This is what we women do so well …. we prioritise and value relationships and communication so that trust is there when collaboration is needed.

Maybe a corner has been turned with gender relations in Australia?

Tags

Gina Lazenby, julia gillard, sexism in politics

I think what has happened here in Australia with the dramatic deposing this week of Julia Gillard is shameful.  Only time will tell whether this was an appropriate move by the Labour party to change their leadership (whilst serving in office, not in opposition) just weeks before an election.

Julia Gillard’s media adviser John McTernan, brought in from the UK, is quoted in Sydney’s Sunday papers as saying “Australia is 30 years behind the UK in its attitudes to sexism”. I don’t agree with that although I do think there’s some truth when he says that Australia’s misogynistic culture was to blame for her downfall.

In the article he says “Gillard has faced serial abuse as a woman on a scale I believe is unprecedented in modern politics ……

“That negative, corrosive, anti-woman rhetoric that Gillard endured for so long has damaged Australian politics, and public opinion.

“The belief that everyone should be given a ‘fair go’ runs deep, but at the same time there exists a very powerful sense of mateship, of male values and a male-inscribed culture.

“And it is the tension between these two characteristics of Australian life that is the backdrop to the abrupt end this week to Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.”

Mr McTernan said that Ms Gillard was the best parliamentary performer of her generation who was “more than a match for the men around her”, despite being a “lightning rod” for “deep-rooted misogynist forces in society“.

What I have noticed is …. there’s both more opportunity for women and an awareness of gender issues ….. while an undercurrent of anti-females also exists in some quarters.  Only in today’s papers I am reading the following three stories which highlight these opposite positions:

1 Through the extraordinary circumstances of this week Kevin Rudd has eight vacancies on his new cabinet and he is filling them with women – seemingly re-righting the imbalance and is apparently “determined  to ensure that the men in blue ties do not dominate the political landscape”. The Sundaytelegraph politics page headline screams “Rudd’s new cabinet packed with women” ….. the number of women given full ministries will move increase from nine to 11.

2 The former Swimming Australia Chief has resigned and says he feels betrayed by colleagues who worked against him. He resigned because he apparently made lewd remarks to a female team consultant.

3 Broadcaster Alan Jones has been writing another letter of apology to a QC who he had wrongly attacked on air … and this follows the apology he had to make to the Prime Minister last December when he said at a function that her recently deceased father had “died of shame”. And that was after he had had to say sorry for calling Lebanese Muslims “vermin” and “mongrels”. This is what people are subjected to on the radio here.

I think the cartoonist in today’s Sun-Herald (above) by Glen Lelievre highlights an unnerving vein here when he depicts a cartoon figure of animated Australia writing its lines in detention with “I am not a sexist country”  only to quit when the blackboard is almost full so it can read a copy of Playboy magazine …

I don’t agree with John McTernan’s comment about Australia being 30 years behind the UK because I meet so many Australian men who are extremely forward thinking in their attitudes to gender relations and rather enlightened.  What I do see here is both a drive for fairness, to support women with opportunities, to elevate women and to be very conscious of gender issues … while still lurking in the background is an undercurrent of distorted masculinity that is confused and uncomfortable by the rising power of women.

I refer back to a video interview I did with Wayne Grogan and published on the woman-at-large blog last November on Australia’s White Ribbon Day. Wayne talked about how Australian society had been engineered and only 200 years ago it was a society with more than ten male settlers to one female. That has to have an impact that lingers.

He talked of a sense of betrayal that men felt when the largely working class convict community saw the few women who were also deported here were mostly paired up with Officers leaving the men feeling betrayed by their own class. Australia is unique in its culture of “mateship” where male friendships are celebrated and valued more than anywhere else I have seen in the world. Male friendships are indeed healthy but not when they are used to exclude and support each other in diminishing women.

I think the gender debate will continue here in Australia which is healthy. It is unhelpful when male newspaper editors refer to it is as a gender ‘war’ … it’s a debate and discourse not a war but then that’s the masculine mindset going in to its competitive mode!  It is a debate that I would love to contribute to in the spirit of moving forward and creating a society led by more balanced decision-making and one that values the different contributions of men and women, and where neither are diminished. Our gender might have been suppressed but this is not about us now doing that to men. We need to stop competing with each other and find a new way of working and being together. Don’t you agree?

Australia’s first female prime minister hounded out of office

Tags

feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, julia gillard

The machinations in Canberra this week have certainly damaged the brand of Australia overseas. I think any right-thinking man will wonder at what their Australian colleagues have done to their country’s leader!  A newspaper quoted from a Facebook posting: “As an Aussie living in Europe, this actually looks embarrassing”.

It says something about the toxic political goings on here that even a Columbian news publication has picked up the story in Latin America and labelled Julia Gillard as the “most bullied minister in the world.”

It reports that the Australian Prime Minister “has been criticised for the size of her breasts, hit by sandwiches and she has even been asked if her boyfriend is gay.” I’m not joking. If you haven’t read about it then just take note that a radio interviewer in Perth asked the Prime Minister of Australia if her partner was gay … live on radio. I believe he has since been sacked.  Can you imagine that same lack of respect for a country’s highest office being shown in America or the UK? It would be unimaginable. What are they thinking here??

Anne Summers writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about Julia Gillard’s exit speech under the heading Bullying and Treachery are clearly the new normal says “We are now, apparently unashamedly, a country where bullying, stalking, undermining and outright treachery are not just tolerated but the new way of doing business”. It’s an excellent read.

Wow, I certainly arrived in Australia at a crucial time. I’ve been here in momentous weeks before … I recall the November 2007 election which brought in Kevin Rudd who ended the long reign of the right wing Howard government and came in on a wave of optimism, much as did Tony Blair in the UK way back in 1997.  I joined most Australians in feeling optimistic about a new order coming into being in Australia with a leader fluent in Mandarin and willing to make a long overdue apology to the first nation people here. Bravo I thought .. this looks like interesting new blood.  It did not take long for things to go pear-shaped apparently.

Instead of Rudd completing a full-term, and beyond like Tony Blair, who successfully kept close ally/rival Gordon Brown at bay for a decade, Rudd was unceremoniously deposed in 2010. This week was the moment when all the chickens supposedly came home to roost.  The media talks about people not forgiving Julia Gillard for this act of treachery when she stabbed him in the back.… we’ll never know the actual truth but personally, I don’t think for one minute she led the action. There’s much talk here of faceless, nameless men orchestrating behind the scenes … I think it was more likely that a coup was staged because Kevin Rudd failed in his leadership of the party and the knife was put in Julia’s hand because she was the deputy.

At the beginning of this week when I arrived in Sydney, I started to get up to speed with what the media and colleagues were saying about Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It seemed her government was seen as a lost cause, everybody was panicking and that by remaining party leader, she was effectively handing the forthcoming election in September to the widely despised (especially among women) right-winger Tony Abbott. The intense personal attacks on the prime minister had also escalated. They made for very sad reading – my heart sank.

Much has been written in the press this week – you can imagine the kind of media frenzy on the TV and in the papers!  Let me pick up on a few insights that come to mind.

Julia was a successful Prime Minister…
… so say many political pundits and yet she was not loved by the electorate. It’s quite bizarre how that has come about. Even Kevin Rudd said  “She is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, great strength and energy…she has been a remarkable reformer and I acknowledge those contributions”.  This was spoken at his victory speech as incoming Prime Minister after Wednesday night’s coup. Her concession speech was referred to as magnificent and “revealed the person the public so rarely saw but that her loyal colleagues clearly knew”. (Read more from Waleed Aly about her integrity).

Even though the Labour party members detest Kevin Rudd’s impossibly dysfunctional style of governance and her colleagues like and respect her, that was not enough to save her from what turned out to be only a small majority voting in favour of saving their own necks. This was to give themselves a chance of survival at the next election because according to the Opinion Polls, Julia may be a good Prime Ministers but the voters can’t see that – they prefer Rudd, even though his party says he is a terrible leader. Go figure!   This is quite an extraordinary tactic…. Julia was toppled by media hounding and the nervous addiction to what the Polls said rather than bad policies (although there will be folks here who will argue with that).

A very productive term in office:  It is worth noting that writer Anne Summer’s article speaks of 532 pieces of legislation that had been passed by both houses and that was even in a hung parliament where everything had to be painstakingly negotiated. Many pieces of legislation were ground breaking, once-in-a-generation reforms that focussed on the environment, education and disability care. Miss Gillard also established a landmark Royal Commission on child sex abuse which is having a huge impact across Australia. That, and the successful steering of the Australian economy through a global financial crisis, seems to me to suggest she did well against great odds.

Some have asked if Australia was ready for a female Prime Minster. I know many women here are devastated at the way Julia Gillard has been treated and it could easily put off other women who wish to serve in politics but who fear the sniping and denigration that was a daily game for her enemies and many media opinion formers. There is mention of her mistakes (please name me a male politician who has not made any !!!)  and the possibility that she was not ready for the office. I think she did remarkably well for being thrust unexpectedly into the position almost overnight. She is known for her poise, calmness and being unflappable in leading a team who appeared to be obsessed with their own interests and agendas.

The return of the despised hero, Kevin Rudd ..
He is famously unpopular amongst his colleagues, in fact, he was so despised that they ousted him in 2010 and promoted his deputy. The standard political joke was that “Rudd was a man you liked before meeting and Julia Gillard a woman you liked after meeting”.  (Damien Murphy SMH Fri 28th). He is known for temper tantrums and for keeping colleagues out of the decision-making process. And yet he was able to talk in the kind of sound bytes that appealed to the voters and developed a relationship with the Australian public, making a particular point to appeal to the younger Facebook generation. He looked and sounded good but when push came to shove, in everyday politics behind-the-scenes he failed to work with colleagues, in fact he made life more difficult for them.  They hated him.

‘Recycled Rudd’ scream the front pages. Has he changed and learned his lesson?
I am not so sure. He spoke the words about being a changed man, and yes, he said he had learned his lessons about decisions being better made if done collegiately (he likes to use big and unwieldy words). What spoke volumes to me was the photograph on the front of the newspapers – his wife with a gleeful look on her face and adoring smile while he quite frankly was the cat who got the cream. There was no sobriety about this moment. He had been to the Governor General’s Residence to be sworn in and taken three generations of his family for what looked like a victorious celebration.
And yet, his stepping back in to office should not have been about “him”. Wasn’t it more about him stepping forward to be of service to the Labour party and the country? In doing so he had had to break a promise that he would remain loyal to Miss Gillard and not stage another leadership challenge (like he did in March) which is what he did on Wednesday night this week. He broke his promise and engaged in what many have called ‘toxic politics’ constantly fueling rumours against the PM, some say he did this for the last three years. In my mind, there is no room there for self-congratulatory grinning .. better a sober acknowledgement of the unfortunate circumstances around him making a noble gesture to save the party from annihilation.

Where was the decency, respect and kindness when it was needed?
However, if it was all about him reclaiming the ‘leadership prize’ which many pundits were saying he cherished, then of course this display of ego was entirely appropriate. Mr Rudd certainly has a way with sound bytes talking in the House on the first day of his 2nd Prime Ministership about how he wanted to champion “the politics of hope rather than the old politics of negativity” and called on his fellow politicians to “be a little kinder and gentler with each other”. Pardon me for sounding like an anti-Rudd campaigner (I’m not) but that is like eating up the whole apple pie yourself then saying, next time we really should share the apple pie out among everyone else. A case of too little too late … it is far too late to treat the country’s first female PM with decency, respect and kindness. I think it is a tad hypocritical. The opportunity for new politics could have happened while she was actually in office and not after she has been hounded out!

Key values missing from the political conversations here:
My final observation is about the lack of honesty and authenticity and the low regard for the intelligence of voters.  On the day of the coup, Wednesday June 26th, I was co-hosting a Women’s Circle where we were discussing feminine leadership … irony I know. We talked about the front page photographs of Julia Gillard knitting a woolen Kangaroo for the Royal baby.  As an ex-PR professional myself I did feel queasy when I saw the photo on the front page of every paper.  It was taken for the Australian Women’s Weekly and I think the idea was to appeal to women.

Authenticity is missing from politics – it so badly needs some
The scene is so out of character and rather far-fetched that it makes her look ridiculous … it is more of a caricature of womanhood. In order to show a different side of Julia, to make her more appealing to women, it would have been so much more authentic to have staged a picture of her at home sitting with a cup of tea, taking a few quiet relaxed moments before the storm of the election. That would have been believable, appropriate and authentic.

This ridiculous photograph was badly advised and manipulative and I think she only agreed to it because she must have been steered slightly off-course from her own balanced judgement by the recent buffeting she had been getting. It provided huge fodder for editors to write creative headlines – one favourite of mine was “purls before swine! !

Let’s see what lessons are learned in Australia about politics and the role of women in leadership.

What if women ruled the world – an interesting thought for International Women’s Day

Tags

Dr David Paul, Gina Lazenby, Hillary Clinton for USA President, international women's day, IWD 2013, What If Women ruled the world

It’s International Women’s Day so if you are going to ask the question “What if women ruled the world” today would be the perfect one.In today’s BBC News magazineonline, political analyst and former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers says that this may have been a ridiculous thought at one time in history but it is now a topic that can be seriously discussed.More and more studies highlight the differences in men and women and Christine Lagarde, MD of the International Monetary Fund reflected in the BBC magazine on what might have happened during the Global Financial Crisis if there had been “more Lehman sisters than Brothers”. The outcome would likely have been different she says since “women have a very different risk-taking profile to men”with a much more questioning approach to all the end possibilities. When asked what a world ruled by women would look like she came up with 4 key observations.  There would be:

1 a better balanced world

2 more focus & concern on health & education, these are more of a priority to women

3 more peace: women bear children and somehow taking them to war is much more frightening for mothers then men

4 women will be more inclusive because we have been excluded for a long time.

Included in the Forbes List of Most Powerful Women, Christine Lagarde is number 8 in the category of the 100 Women who actually do run the world now so she is not speaking from fantasy. Number two on that same list is Hillary Clinton. She was the USA Secretary of State at the time the list was compiled (the third female to hold that high office) but if she fulfills her ambition to be President of the USA then she will take that number one spot for sure.

In the second video in the series of conversation on Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul, we talk about Hillary and her potential ambitions for that top job. I cannot hide my enthusiasm for this scenario. If you you think about it, gender aside, there couldn’t be a better career politician who is more experienced and well-primed for this role. It’s potentially the world’s most important job and she has already been in the White House for 12 years! Nobody else has had that training and preparation with important relationships already established and in place. She could hit the ground running. David Paul follows Hillary’s work closely and says he has seen her “put her mark on the world saying ‘Let’s move forward, let’s work together, let’s be partners’ ”. That feminine approach of seeking more balanced outcomes is exactly what Christine Lagarde spoke of us achieving. Watch the video

Women who do decide to step need our support

Speaking as neither a Republican or a Democrat, my dearest wish is that she does give it a go and that we do give her a chance. It would be the closet thing to having the women rule the worldscenario start to take effect. That’s only a catchy phrase anyway because none of us truly want to wrest control out of every man’s hand, we simply want balanced leadership and balanced decision-making. Without that balance we are not going to have that game-changing shift in culture and policy that is needed to pull the world back from its current trajectory of self destruction.

In our interview we also talk about the vote last November by the Church of England which failed to back the promotion of women to Bishops. In a Guardian editorial Joan Smith writes that “the General Synod vote runs against the current of history, which suggests that women are increasingly voting for politicians who favour equality, such as President Obama.” So when we find out that half the lay members of the church who voted against were women it is hard not to be dispirited. David points out that it is really an issue of not wanting to rock the boat and challenge the status quo. “If you’re a conservative woman in the Church of England, the prospect of “pushy” women getting power is quite scary, so of course you’re going to vote against it. The last thing any traditional woman wants to be accused of is appearing confrontational” saysanother Guardian editorial.

We have to look at our resistance to the change we want! 
This is definitely where we have to create change, dialoguing together and exploring these underlying fears so that we can unite on a future that is neither about pushy women nor those who are against their own gender rising up.

It is this deep resistance to change to David says stops many women using our power …. if we had opened this doorway before then we would have taken huge steps in our cultural revolution as human beings. When women do step up as leaders, they don’t receive  respect and support, from men or women. That is a key attitude we need to change .. supporting women who put themselves forward in service of their communities and countries to make a difference and created much-needed change.
Go Hillary I say. I am behind her 100%

I’m just using the energy of International Women’s Day to put it out there for Hillary …. let’s start our quest for change with her in the top job opening the doors for many other women to follow

The century for women – we have more milestones to create!

Tags

Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, insights, Louise Raw, Made in Dagenham movie, Madeline Allbright, milestones for women, review, Strike a Light, women archetypes

Who have been your women role models in the last century who have driven change? I wonder who your future ones will be …….in fact, what will you be a role model for?  Imagine starting out this second decade with an idea or even a tiny proposition that would profoundly change the world by the end of this century.Think back to the early 1900s. Women did not even have the vote.  According to Louise Raw, author of a brilliant women’s study Strike a Light, at the end of the 1900s there were effectively three archetypes for women …. the Angel of the Home bringing up a family; the Celibate Spinster who had not been fortunate enough to make a marriage; and the Promiscuous Prostitute who worked outside of these two realms in one of the few occupations open to women, beyond domestic service. There were no archetypes or models for “working women”.   Indeed, although women were working (as nannies, in teaching roles as governesses and also in factories) their contribution was generally inconvenient and overlooked as it did not seem respectable in Victorian society to work outside the home. Where women did work outside the home they were paid poverty wages. By the beginning of the nineteenth century work was generally seen as masculine, it was skilled and it commanded higher wages (still extremely paltry). When women worked their effort was generally downgraded to unskilled and low-waged. It took many years to achieve a breakthrough in recognising the contribution of women.

 Louise Raw’s fascinating book is an academic study of how a group of women went on strike in 1888 in east London at the Bryant and May match factory. It was national news. Although these women were self-directed, mature and made their own decision to strike (the working conditions were unbelievable and full-time pay barely generated enough money for women to feed their families) the media represented them as innocent young girls being used as pawns by reformists who supposedly told them to go out on strike. Louise researched this book to prove this theory wrong in order to give these women their rightful place in history as the mothers behind the modern trades union movement. Their successful strike provided a foundation and inspiration for the Great Dock strike of1889 which was subsequently credited as being pivotal in the birthing of the modern labour movement, but in the popular history version there is no reference to the women. These women have literally been written out of history.

In this last video interview of my series on Feminine Leadership, Dr David Paul references the movie Made In Dagenham which was another milestone for women. Wikipedia called it “a film that blatantly condemns sexism and shows, despite its mostly light tone, the real cost of fighting for civil rights”. It was a true story of the strike at the Ford car plant in 1968 over the downgrading of women’s work on seat finishing to “unskilled” and therefore lower waged. The women also found out that they were being paid a fraction of the men’s wages and so they took on the fight for equal pay for equal work.  David pointed out that the action of these brave women was a milestone in women showing their value to men.

At first nobody took their strike action seriously, after all they were only women …. that was until the factory had to close down because they ran out of seats to put in the new cars. It was a momentous struggle and finally succeeded with the help of cabinet minister Barbara Castle. Their actions paved the way for equal pay legislation which has subsequently helped women across the world.   It’s full of great dialogue …… in one scene the wife of a senior Ford manager puts her support behind the striking women, much to their surprise, saying: “I have a first class honours degree from one of the finest universities in the world and my husband treats me like a fool … don’t give up!”    There have been many ‘firsts’ and milestones for women since this event but we still have more to go.

My conversation in this video with David Paul starts by talking about the career path for men and women and how it is different because women will take time out to have children which interrupts their career flow.  David points out how women miss out on having a boy’s club network to help them up the ladder and face different ceilings that stop them moving ahead.

Madeline Allbright is an inspirational role model who created a career after motherhood. Her milestone for women was in 1996 when she became the first female Secretary of State in the USA.  Although she was ambitious at school, when she graduated from Wellesley College she was married a few weeks later and was aged thirty nine before she took her first paid job after raising her children. She had a passion for politics and international relations, and pointed out that she only got the job of Secretary of State through the intervention of Hillary Clinton, who asked her husband why he wouldn’t appoint her ………  and told him that his mother would be proud of him if he did! Madeline has said that there was more resistance to her doing the job from her own White House male colleagues than from the leaders in the Middle East who people feared would not accept a woman in the role. Since then there have been two further females in that lead role ……. one of them is Hillary herself!

David talks about what holds women back and what women need to do to advance. In these conversations David keeps calling on women to come together behind a cause.  Here he said he strongly believes this is now the century for women to really come forward and create something new …….and that women are going to take humanity to the next level of evolution …….. in a big way. He said what we do will enable men to see new possibilities for what they can do.

Conversation Transcript:….

What is it that doesn’t support women as a leader in business when they have taken a few years out  to raise a family?    David says there are different ceilings that women face in the workplace.
The bamboo ceiling is where women get into management and find it too hard so they decide they don’t want to go any higher (in the old days, blinds made out of bamboo were used as screens …).
The glass ceiling in the barrier in middle management. While the crystal ceiling makes accessing board rooms difficult (the boardroom is where everything is served in crystal).
Unlike women, men do not face these ceilings.  The barrier for men is not being part of the “boys club”. Not being part means they can miss out and not be accelerated to higher levels.
Women don’t even have a girls club!
And also there is competition by women against each other.   And women are not even nurturing each other! Competition happens because of the hierarchy in business structures which is part of the masculine  paradigm. In the hierarchy paradigm we are often waiting around for the top job, so this fosters competition.
Great film to watch:  movie “Made in Dagenham”: This is a great example of women showing men what they can do and what they are capable of ……… and how valuable they are!

David pointed out that the country would not have been so advanced during World War II if women had not stepped in and kept the manufacturing going. We took over men’s jobs.  Think about what would have happened if we women had not done that. The war would have ended differently. Women stepped in then and they can do so again …..

David said he strongly believes this is now the century for women to really come up and say:  let’s break and  shatter these ceilings, let’s break and shatter the old paradigms, let’s create something new.
Let’s unite and do something amazingly different. What Gina is doing is part of opening the doors.
Women need to say let’s connect, let’s unite, let’s fight together.
Gina points out that in our language we don’t want to use the word ‘fight’  because that is a male metaphor!
If we are not going to fight what are we going to do? Instead we are going to:
1 Collaborate
2 have new conversations
3 use creativity and intuition for new solutions
4 uniting behind a cause to create change that way.

David emphasised that the most powerful thing a human can feel is emotion – imagine if we fought with emotion –  we need unite with a passion to drive something for a greater good.

So many women are now seeking new roles, changing their own lives, and they’re deeply passionate about change and about finding a role to play in creating a new world … a role that is ours. This is huge at the moment.

We are not wanting to put men down but men / manhood does not have the answers any more. A lot of men are losing out by being trapped in a system that doe snot work for them either. The system, led by men, no longer has answers. If we need a different thinking is needed then bring on the women. This is where we women need more significant input to emerge the answers through:
1 conversations
2 gathering
3 connecting
4 working out what the answers would be

David says he strongly believes that women are going to take humanity to the next level of evolution in a big way, not just in a small step-way … in a leap!  Men will then see the possibility of what we can actually do and stop focusing on what can be done in the short term to just survive the next year.

Women need to envision what the possibility can be and inspire everyone to that vision, taking humanity to another level.   (The energy in the interview at this point is quite profound after this beautiful possibility is uttered).

Are you inspired to step forward beyond where you have already gone?
What is your role as a woman in creating change in the world?  What milestone could you be part of creating with other women?

Please leave your comments and sharings there.

I’d really appreciate it you could please share this message and video around your circle – thank you!

Blessings 🙂

The importance of feminine qualities in women leaders

Tags

Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, feminine role models, Gina Lazenby, rise of the feminine

I was speaking at an event in Sydney on International Women’s Day about the Rise of the Feminine and of course Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was a good subject to talk about. Whether we sided with her party or not, we all expressed our  disappointment at how badly the news media treated her personally, criticising not just her policies but her hair, her voice, her clothes and even the way she walks. You never hear that about a male politician, ever. Nobody comments on a shirt or an accent or messy wind-blown hair … so why are we still subjected to such meaningless commentaries about female politicians?

My good friend Dr David Paul works closely with world leaders and leading politicians across the globe,  so I prevailed on him to talk to me on video about some of these issues that face women leaders. We had two great long conversations that were filled with rich insights about feminine leadership and the dynamics between men and women. I found it fascinating and I’m sure you will too.  I have edited our in-depth discussions and produced seven short videos which I shall release over the following weeks. I will put them on my blog once a week.

The first video focuses more on feminine leadership and we talk about:
1 how women politicians could be more successful and win more support
2 David’s advice for women today in changing the world
3 role models of women who are leading with their feminine qualities
4 why women can be more effective at changing a culture