Call me naïve, but I think we in the UK are pretty inclusive; more so than other nations. Granted, discrimination in the workplace does still exist on various levels - and much more in some industries than others. Banking, I hear, is one of them. It's not just sexism, of course. I won a disability discrimination case myself only last year. But broadly speaking, I think we’ve come a long way in the equality stakes in recent years.
On the other hand, however, I found out today that I apparently have a lot to learn.
The reason being that I was surprised to hear a talk by an American female Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a very famous company, in which she said that discrimination against women was rife to a very damaging degree. Not only that, but that this was almost uniformly the case across the world. She claimed that the statistics, the data and the research papers (and she'd apparently read every research paper going) supported this.
And yet all the while she was talking, I couldn't help thinking, 'really?' Let me give you an example.
After this lady's first talk on female empowerment went more or less viral on YouTube, she received letter after letter from other newly empowered women, thanking her for opening their eyes. One of these women said that she'd turned down a promotion on the basis that it might upset the bedrock of her marriage. After all, according to the COO speaker, women's fundamental role in America is still, 'speak when you're spoken to', or 'help others.' But after being forwarded the COO's speech, the promotion-refusing woman went in to work the next day, accepted the promotion, 'went home and handed her husband the grocery list.'
<ROUND OF APPLAUSE>
Now, either I've got very modern friends, or we're doing something rather well in the UK, because I don't have any female friends who would turn down a promotion because it would undermine their husband. In fact, I know quite a lot of women who certainly DO have higher-powered jobs than their husbands. Unless my male friends are very good actors (which they aren't), then I can honestly report that, far from feeling intimidated, they actively embrace and encourage their wives' professional success. And their wives certainly wouldn't put up with any sort of jealous, ego-bruised nonsense, either.
And what's all this about handing their husbands the grocery list? Don't they share chores in America? Once again, my experience is that couples do. Indeed, there appears to be some sort of unspoken competition half the time in terms of who can be the most fantastic husband or dad.
So based on that alone (and granted, it isn't a particularly wide cross-section of society), I think we in the UK are doing pretty well - certainly by comparison to our American cousins.
On the flip side, I said at the start of this blog that I may have a lot to learn. I say that because, by coincidence, I am just about to start work on a very interesting project for a women's college. I'm writing up a document in which 3,000 alumnae were interviewed, part of which focuses on how they may have been discriminated against in the workplace. I've only glanced at it briefly so far, but it appears that, contrary to what I believe to be the case (based on my observations about my friends), a lot of them do still feel discriminated against and marginalised.
I wonder what Creativepoolers think, though. What are your experiences of discrimination - or positive discrimination?
Ashley is a copywriter, editor, blogger...and apparently quite a modern man
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Fiona Duffy March 14th, 2014, late afternoon
Ashley - thanks for all the work you did on our report, which gained us some interesting and excellent profile raising press coverage. I did some mulling over your (pre-report!) perspectives and I had a few questions/comments.The first is that I wonder whether you really have heard the truth from the women you know about their work experiences? The women I know (some of whom we know in common!) certainly would back up my report findings that a large percentage of women experience un-supportive, and sometimes hostile, work places. Thinking about each of at least four women we know in common, I have heard them share stories about some very difficult experiences they have had courtesy of their male (and female!) colleagues. I suspect that you hear some of their stories but maybe not all of them.
Secondly, I suspect that those women you know who have not experienced this (or not said much about it) are actually the very confident leaders who work in places carefully chosen for their supportive environments. These are just the sort of environments and cultures we want to replicate - where women feel heard and valued and make progress according to merit.
Finally, I'm pleased and proud to hear your description of the men in your social circle. Gender discrimination is not a "women's issue" it's a human problem, and it requires the work of men and women pulling together to solve it. That means supportive partners who back up career choices and are prepared to be flexible (eg sharing child care and household duties) so that both partners can flourish equally.
My personal experiences of discrimination are varied. And I have, as a woman, done my own fair share of limiting my own progress based on cultural boundaries created as a child and young woman that I accepted as a grown adult (eg thoughts that I'm not good enough/'imposter syndrome' created by confidence sapping experiences which have stopping me from going for more senior jobs before now). I am still angry at the primary school teacher who told me that I could indeed have cricket lessons - all I needed was to go an arrange them myself (never mind that he did it all on behalf of the boys in the school). I am not a believer in positive discrimination, however, except perhaps for parliamentary seats, where still on 15% of the seats are occupied by women after all these years of "equality".