It has taken humankind centuries to make any progress on equality, black people were kept in the vile constraints of slavery, Indians forced onto reservations, aboriginals stripped of their lands and children, Chinese and others treated as second class citizens, women being unable to vote, gays denied the recognition of being equally human and able to wed. Many of these scenarios have been rectified but one still riles me endlessly – the equal treatment of women!
Seriously, how can governments and corporate leaders continue to deny women opportunities and pay them less for the same roles as a male?
It’s ludicrous. Are they less smart, less capable, less committed? Not at all! In fact in my 2 decades of working with leaders across the globe I have found women to hold a great deal of leaderships skills that male leaders would do well to embrace.
Female leaders are considered, calm, charismatic and caring and in the modern world these are the characteristics most in demand from leaders. That’s why, Jacinda Adern is doing so well, these are her best traits. It’s not just in leadership though, women have proven to be as capable or more capable than men across a diverse range of industries and businesses. Doctors, accountants, truck drivers, miners, surveyors, designers, carpentry, board roles, executive roles. Women have picked up the gauntlet of filling the roles no one said they could do or no one allowed them to do and done them with equal focus, care attention and outcomes but we don’t pay them equally. In fact we pay them 14% less than their male counterparts.
Its ridiculous and its wrong that in the modern era this inequality is perpetuated!
So lets fix it and lets fix it fast, not in the slow burn method we have taken to all the other inequalities mentioned above. I have three wonderful daughters and a wonderful son and I hate it they those three wonderful girls would get paid less to do the jobs that myself and my son might do! Any stable mind can see that this equality must come at some time in the not distant future. Lets make it happen now.
