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Tag Archives: Gina Lazenby

It’s OK for men to be fathers … and put family first

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in men

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Georgina Dent, Gina Lazenby, Women's Agenda, working fathers

In my presentation tomorrow, Tues Nov 26th for the Brooklyn Institute about what Feminine Leadership can mean for men, I will be talking about the need to re-think the whole nature of work. One of the (many) reasons that senior women drop out of the pipeline of opportunity for promotion that will get them to the top (and potentially Board level where women are currently so under-represented) is the dilemma they face in creating a work / life / family balance. Stepping out of the hot career trajectory can reduce the chances of women getting promoted as they take time out and/or move into a part-time role during the early years when their children are younger. This choice is usually the preserve of women as men forge ahead with an unbroken pattern of good work opportunities and senior positions as they aim for the top.

Today’s issue of Women’s Agenda (a fabulous woman-centric daily news hub based in Australia) had a great story about a senior politician who is  stepping down from the cabinet and his leadership position in the Western Australia government. His reason is that he wants to spend more time with his family and children.  Hurrah! It is rare for a man, especially one in a reasonably high profile position in public life, to make that decision. Maybe it is slightly more possible in civic political life than it is in a corporation where the young ‘uns are yapping at your heels. Still, the more role models we have for different positive behaviour it opens up the choice and possibilities for everyone else – mothers and fathers. Read more from Georgina Dent’s news story.

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

01 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in gender relations, Politics, women's leadership

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Gina Lazenby, julia gillard, sexism in politics

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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?

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Australia’s first female prime minister hounded out of office

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in Politics, women's leadership

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feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, julia gillard

Screen Shot 2013-06-30 at 1.40.54 PM

Screen Shot 2013-06-30 at 1.35.47 PMThe 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.

Screen Shot 2013-06-30 at 1.30.04 PMAuthenticity 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.

Is it time for a revolution … starting with feminine leadership?

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in Dr David Paul, Video Interview, Women, women's leadership

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, lynne mctaggart, The Bond, Video Interview

Lynne McTaggart

I have just been reading Lynne McTaggart’s latest book The Bond. In the intro she talks about the world we have now which, post Global Financial crisis of 2008 and other significant events in the last decade, quite clearly, no longer works. It really does not serve humanity in the way it should. Right in the introduction she points out that “We urgently need a new story to live by……. We need some new rules to live by. We need another way to be.”

In a nutshell that is what our latest video is about in the conversation series between myself and Dr David Paul, a Sydney-based expert on global leadership and complex change. Because of his expertise in complexity and his gift for expressing his ideas in such beautiful, clear and simple language, David has often been called on to give advice to world leaders and senior government leaders all over the globe.


If you think about it, the problems we face today are indeed so extremely complex and go way beyond the expertise that any one single person could now be expected to provide. It’s as if the solutions are destined to emerge from many sources rather than already residing somewhere and our job is simply to find out where and who has the secrets. No single source has the answers now……. but together, using different thinking, we have a chance of bringing forth some new answers.

Lynne talks about the current world order which is failing us having grown out of three Revolutions which originally held such promise (the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s and the two Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries). A culture of what she calls “competitive individualism” is what we have now created and this has disconnected us from a much saner, fulfilling and holistic existence.  I mention Lynne’s book here because in this video you will hear David calls for change and says that in actual fact, another revolution is what is needed now. He says we have gone so far down a path of destruction that the system is way beyond tweaking. Now, only radical, revolutionary reform will bring us back from the brink. And he feels that this next new global revolution needs to be in the hands of women who are the only unheard voice left.

I was quite taken aback when David first said this. I have had these stirring thoughts in my head for some time now … what would that revolution look like? How do we start it? If we as women take leadership, then how do we enrol the men in it for it is not a revolution against men. It’s more a push-back against a patriarchal system and masculine way that has trapped and failed the majority of men too. So even though I don’t yet know what the revolution will look like, I am clear that it is feminine leadership that is most needed to get it started and maybe see it through….

The conversation on the video is about how women are leaving middle management in droves and so removing themselves from the pipeline that supplies the most senior women to join organisations at Board level. David talks about the choices that face women and how they often opt for a work / life balance so they can accommodate the needs of family and their many roles. These choices often lead to taking a part-time option which is generally seen as giving less commitment to the corporation (in favour of family) and so is penalised by taking those women out of the frame for the top leadership jobs.

In pointing out that change is usually most effective when it comes from the bottom as a grass-roots initiative or movement, David is again challenging us to think about what we, as women, with our different thinking, different perspectives, different needs can bring to bring to the table. What new questions can we ask… what new ways of being and working can we model so that we indeed spark a revolution and so actually start to bring forth what Lynne McTaggart calls for in her urging for a new story for humanity?

I’d be interested in your responses and ideas …… I am not letting this drop. This is not a throwaway line in a conversation although it is true I could just have left it at that. But no, it is time to create change, it’s a call that I cannot ignore. Can you?  It’s time to be a leader in change and model new ways of being, living, working and leading … the feminine way. I know you have been thinking about how YOU would do things differently. It’s time to share what you are doing in your own life or enterprise or inside your corporation that is going to create this new story, this new way of working, living and being.  Men and women … we have to find a new way. Answers on a postcard please …….. email me … comment .. tweet me … let’s continue the conversation.

Love from London

Gina

why have women left management?

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in Dr David Paul, Video Interview

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, where are the women leaders?, where are the women on boards?, women in business, women in management, women leaders, women leaving management, women on boards

The third video in the series of conversations on Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul…

While I was in Australia a report was issued by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency presenting census data from the last decade showing what little progress women have made in the upper ranks of corporate Australia. Subsequent media coverage trumpeted the headline:  ‘Reform Key to Women’s Progress.’ Unless something radically different is done, most commentators were saying that change is just never going to happen.

 

63% of the top 500 companies had no female senior execs at all
63% of the top 500 companies (on the Australian Stock Exchange) had no female senior execs. None. And Australia trails its overseas peers with only 9.2% of female board directors (in ASX500 companies). Compare with the UK which has just 13.2% of females on the boards of the top 250 FTSE companies and 16.5% in the USA on Fortune 500 company boards.
The CEO of ANZ Bank Mike Smith was quoted as saying  ”More radical approaches are called for … to drive more women into senior leadership positions … Businesses need to take the time to understand what is needed and  take direct action to ensure more women thrive and advance in our workplaces”.

It is clear that companies need to implement structural change to appoint and develop strong pipelines of female talent.  When a top male leadership team wakes up to the shifts happening across the planet and decides to appoint women they find the queue of women waiting outside the boardroom door has gone. Those who were actually waiting for a boardroom place probably weren’t standing in the line anyway, but they became impatient and left .. some went downstairs and elsewhere in the organisation to part-time roles so they could juggle family life, others walked out the building, some even left their industry … all so that they could find other creative, flexible, more rewarding and nourishing ways to express themselves and make a living.

Why are there less women in management waiting for those top positions?
I asked Dr David Paul why he thought there were less women in management and therefore not waiting in the pipeline of talent for the top jobs. His response is captured  in third video in the second series of conversations on Feminine Leadership.

David said that women have realised that they don’t want to play the male political game anymore, they just want to do the job, get on with it and get home. They don’t want to spend every night working late as many executives are unreasonably expected to do. The masculine culture does not work for them so they seek employment elsewhere often starting their own enterprises. Certainly in the UK & USA, women are behind more start-ups than men. David says this is a huge loss of talent which also impacts the culture of a business when senior and promising women leave.

“There’s a huge gap and now we’ve gone back to the military style of leadership which is, you’ve got a general at the top and we’ve got all the forces down below. Whereas now, we’ve passed that metaphor. We need to say, “How can we partner? How can we expand? How can we grow together?  I think part of the problem with women’s slow progress, with some of the articles that we’re seeing, is that men are fearful of what do we have to give up. Women are fearful of what do we have to give in to?”

What we need in order to see more women stay in management is a whole culture change. Even the chief executive of the ANZ, Mike Smith, is talking about taking a radical approach. We need to involve women in creating a culture change. What’s up for reinvention is the whole nature of work and finding a way to make it a more nourishing and compassionate workspace for women and men.

David continued, “I have a feeling that if women were at senior levels, they would say, “Let’s all take a pay cut at the senior levels but let’s keep the people that we have.” I’m not talking about the corporate deadwood. I’m talking about people who actually add value to the organisation.   I think we need to smash the notion of thinking outside the box, as well. What we need to do is smash the box and start with a completely new shape and say, “What can we create together?”

The article headline in The Australian newspaper says “Reform key to women’s progress”. Let’s take this a step further and turn this the other way round … women ARE the key to reform. Do you agree?

Dr David Paul is a Sydney-based expert in global leadership and complex change.

Watch the video

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

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, international women's day, Politics, Video Interview, Women

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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 supportHillary

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

Do women leaders attract more criticism?

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by ginalazenby in activism, Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Video Interview, Women, women's leadership

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binders full of women, Dr David Paul, Gina Lazenby, Julia Gillard speech, misogyny, One Billion Rising

I think they do, judging by what I saw when I was in Australia.

During my last visit to Sydney I had the good fortune to spend time again with leadership expert Dr David Paul. The video series I did with him last year, with seven conversations on Feminine Leadership recorded on video, were extremely popular. We continued our conversation and another six videos have been created which I shall release over the next month. (Here is the link to the blog post with all seven of the previous interviews collated together)

What are we expecting from women leaders?
More positive dialogue needed ….

Kicking off our first session in November, was the discussion about the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Of course, as the PM she will be in the media all the time but I noticed how disrespectful some of the reporting about her often is in the papers. This may be increasingly true for many heads of state in the western world (a colleague of mine talked about how the largely Republican-slanted TV news during the election coverage referred to Obama without the use of ‘President’ in front of his name which they had normally done before …).  It does seems that more is expected of this first female leader in Australia and she is attracting much more criticism.

And then came the most downloaded political speech in history!

Screen Shot 2013-03-04 at 9.58.01 PMIt is one thing to be forced to debate and defend policy decisions, it is quite another to receive a deluge of personal attacks as she says she has done.  So one morning in Parliament she hit back at Opposition Leader Tony Abbot and gave the famous misogynist speech which apparently has turned out to be the most downloaded political speech in history. In the Australian media it was given quite a bit of negative reporting but outside in the rest of the world it seems it was universally applauded. And obviously more so by women commentators.

As David Paul points out, she gave chapter and verse of what she said were comments and actions that she found deeply offensive ….. this is what you said, this is how you made me feel. It is quite unprecedented for a woman leader to speak out in such a strong way. If you watch the video of her speech (and there is a full transcript too, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald) you will see her refer to a placard that Tony Abbot apparently stood next to with the words “Ditch the Witch”. Needless to say she found that offensive.  He also suggests at some point that the unmarried Prime Minster make an honest woman of herself and on another occasion refers to the housewives of Australia doing their ironing. Comments like that are never going to go down well.

Screen Shot 2013-03-04 at 7.09.33 PM

This speech followed some press reporting about inappropriate comments by a government minister and also much-talked about comments about how the Prime Minister’s father, who had recently passed away, must have “died of shame” because of how Julia Gillard is performing. You can’t quite believe that a public figure would actually say that!  I think Julia had had enough.   She took a very important topic about how society sees and treats women, and gave it a very public airing.

Many male politicians have what Julia Gillard calls “in my view such old fashioned and close-minded attitudes. I was not going to sit silent”

Screen Shot 2013-03-04 at 10.03.44 PMI don’t know opposition leader Tony Abbot – he’s a husband and father to daughters and I am sure he wants the best for them.   I think there are some underlying attitudes that are coming out which show the confusion for how women public figures and women in professional life are treated.  This also came out during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in the USA when he talked about being presented with “binders full of women” when he was looking for more female applicants for his cabinet. That comment, and others, set off a massive furore across the USA. It was very demeaning.

Thinking that women are ‘less than’ in some way comes from a culture where throughout history, women’s rights have been secondary. How women have subsequently been treated is all on a continuum.  Somewhere in the negative spectrum is a lack of understanding and disrespect, while shift further along to the other end and we see extreme behaviour of violence and complete subjugation.

Men need to be engaged in this conversation
This month violence against women has been brought to the fore by Eve Ensler’s campaign launched on Valentines Day called One Billion Rising.  There seems to be have been a wave of action across the planet where men and women are taking up this issue to stop violence by a new kind of activism based on celebration and dancing. I definitely think this is a much more creative and enrolling way to engage men in this conversation with women. For change will not come from women setting themselves against men … violence against women, and men, will only stop when we both work together to create the cultural change needed to make violence a thing of the past.

The treatment of women by corporate leaders, politicians, law-makers, police and out on the streets is really becoming a weekly conversation in the media with the most dramatic shift happening after the horrific rape in Delhi at the end of 2012.

Time for women to take leadership in change

David Paul ends this interview with a statement about strong leadership saying that “women are just coming to knowing what that power is”. Exciting times ahead … women finding their voice, connecting with their power, bringing about change…. yes it is time for us to really understand what power we have and how we can use it to help create a balanced, fairer society and a safe world. What does it take ? .. each one of us to step up and speak out whenever the opportunity presents itself …. or to decide what opportunities we ourselves will create.

Now there’s a thought …. what opportunities are you interested in creating?

LINK for document with full transcript of the interview

Seven conversations about feminine leadership

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by ginalazenby in feminine leadership, Women, women in business, women's leadership

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conversations on women's leadership, Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, women in business

gina david laugh

During the summer (in the northern hemisphere) I published seven videos of conversations I had this year with leadership and complex change expert Dr David Paul. These conversations were extremely popular and I received a great deal of feedback affirming many of the points made.

Now I am back in Sydney again I am delighted to say that David and I met for another series of conversations talking about several topics that are currently in the Australian (and international) press about Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the publication of the annual data census on the number of women in board, executive and management positions (or the lack thereof). I have now have six videos to share with you … before I do you might like to review some of the previous conversations.

Here they are:

Number 1
The importance of feminine qualities in women leaders
David’s advice for women today in changing the world and how women politicians could be more successful and win more support

Number 2
More women needed on Boards
How women can lack confidence and doubt themselves

Number 3
We need to change the negative news reporting of women

Number 4
Women need to uncover their “gold” inside ….. to step forward and drive change
the metaphor of the golden buddha and how that correlates with women now

Number 5
Olympic Golden Girls & Yahoo’s Mama-to-be CEO show new role models are emerging
new role models emerging for women

Number 6
The century for women – we have more milestones to create!
David talks about what holds women back and what women need to do to advance.

Number 7
Why men don’t listen to women … or can’t hear them?!
Why men don’t listen to women  …… a subject to amuse or to get to the bottom of?

Why men don’t listen to women … or can’t hear them?!

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by ginalazenby in feminine leadership, Women

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, men can't hear women, men don't listen to women

Why men don’t listen to women  …… a subject to amuse or to get to the bottom of?

Well it certainly made David and I laugh.

I have lost track of the number of times a woman has shared her experience of being in a meeting with mainly, or all, male participants, and has presented a new idea or provided input only to have it completely ignored. Not only that, but later on, a male colleague has put forward the same idea and had a very different response with people agreeing that it is good input and accepting it as a valuable contribution.  Women also experience the issue of being spoken over in gatherings or simply not being heard. Yes I know it is annoying but what is happening here? Why are women not being listened to?   Why do our voices get lost and why can’t men hear us?

This is not a blame-throwing conversation  …… for me it is an interesting enquiry so I put the question to Dr David Paul in our continuing conversation on feminine leadership. In this sixth video in the series, David gives a surprising response. Most women will say that men tune out women’s voices because they are not interested in what we are saying. There may be an element to that and David talks about why this is.   Surprisingly, both genders are not wired to listen (Ladies … apparently, we are not blameless!)

It’s clear to me that as we take on world change we need to work side by side with men so we have to start cleaning up our communication on both sides so that we can hear and understand each other if we are to make any progress at all.

Following what David said, I have done some ferreting around and have unearthed some fascinating research…..

I had heard about the idea that men apparently process female voices in the auditory section of the brain, which also handles music but I’d not found the source of the research. It seems the University of Sheffield have done studies where researchers played recordings of male and female voices for a test group of males.  What they found was that there were startling differences in the way men deciphered male and female voices in different parts of their brains. Their website says:  “The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice and has greater natural melody. When a man hears a female voice, his brain analyzes the different sounds, in order to ‘read’ the voice and determine the auditory face.”  In other words, when a female is talking, it’s not that a man isn’t listening to what she’s saying, it’s that he’s hearing it in a different way and processing it like music.

Ah, well that explains everything !!! ……. And yet it doesn’t quite because David highlighted other research which accounts for why older men in particular don’t hear and it is to do with aging. (Watch the video)

When you search around the web about this question of men not listening to women you will come up with some hilarious blogs from men bemoaning the fact that their wives are always exasperated with them. This plea made me laugh:   “Women have a bad habit of changing the topic of conversation halfway through the conversation – and sometimes halfway through a sentence. The woman knows she has changed the subject, but she doesn’t deign to inform the man. She then has the audacity to shake her head at the man when he says ‘What was that?’  Look at it from the man’s point of view. One minute you are talking about the color of your hair and as you are speaking you look out of the window and see a plant peeking up through the snow. It is a plant you have decided to get rid of. Out loud you say, ‘That’ll have to come out.’ Can you blame the man for saying, ‘What was that?’“.     (Thanks to Jeff Kaley on ThirdAge)

Hands up if you have ever done that ……. me! ……..  and my Mum does it too ……  it can drive me nuts 🙂  Like mother like daughter I bet you are saying? I’m thinking people in glass houses should not throw stones!  LOL

The bottom line:  I think it is clear, for a variety of reasons, that we have our work cut out, not only in trying to understand each other but to even hear each other in the first place!

Listen to what David Paul suggests as one way to improve our conversation with men. (CLICK HERE to watch the video)

Here is a transcript of the conversation on the video.
David asks: who is it that listens to the children? It’s the mother.  Fathers, who are absent because of work, they don’t know what is going on in the home (to the same extent as the mother). There are fathers who are more hands-on and who do listen, but the one who really listens to the emotions of the children and their needs is the mother.

David said that there is a biological fact which determines that men do not hear the higher registers of women’s voices. Successful political women leaders learn to develop deeper voices to add gravitas to what they say. Margaret Thatcher and Julia Gillard are two examples.

Men over the age of 45 lose the ability to hear the pitch of higher notes in women’s voices.  Women’s voices tend to get higher when they are excited, stressed or anxious. If women want to make an important point,  then they need to drop the register of the voice.

I have learnt to speak directly to a man’s face instead of making a throw away comment across the room. I emphasise just one point and make an effort to ensure that I am heard.

Women can multitask wonderfully, they can cook, they can talk on the phone, they can sort out problems,  while men have to shut the door with a do not disturb sign and cook alone.    Women need to respect and understand that difference.
When we multitask and don’t focus, the men interpret that as something not being important.  We have to be specific and direct with what we communicate.

Women tend to give out a lot of instructions. It is important not to over instruct the men:
* Make one point
* make it clear
* make it important

We have to break the paradigms that men can’t listen and women just banter.
We need a deeper understanding of how different we are and to honour and respect those differences. We must not disrespect each other so that we can have better communication. Let’s work with our strengths instead of putting down each other for our weaknesses.

Women need to work side-by-side with men.  There are centuries of learning that we need to harness so that we can actually get on.  Feminine Wisdom is a huge force on the planet:  we need to tap into this in a way that has not been tapped into before. And the wisdom of older women is an important resource on the planet.  Older women seem not to be of use to a society obsessed by youth.  What role is there for older women?

Please leave your comments and do share your take on this subject as well as any amusing stories or exasperations you would like us to enjoy 🙂    Yes it is a serious subject but we might as well have a giggle and enjoy the new insights that we discover and start applying to our lives.

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

07 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by ginalazenby in activism, Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Politics, Video Interview, Women, women's leadership

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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.

Strike a light book 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.

made in dagenham

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 🙂

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