When a woman learns to speak her truth everyone wins.
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” - Maya Angelou
A girl should, and a boy must – the stories we were told in our childhoods continue to haunt us today and cause untold harm to both ourselves in our personal lives and also to our work, businesses and our society in general.
I was about 14 when my grandmother started telling me – that I was now at the age that I would be required to learn to cook – dal and chapatis, (lentils and the basic Indian home-cooked bread) the staple food that sustains millions of Indians. My categorical refusal to do so was seen as an inborn and inconvenient stubbornness. I did not have the words to explain my refusal at the time, in fact, I did not find them until much later after I had a daughter of my own.
At the time I did not know anything about the feminist movement, but my gut told me there was a certain unfairness in being asked to step into a predefined kitchen role, especially when my brother did not have to. I asked questions like “why do I have to” – to which the standard reply was “ because it is important and that is what girls do.”
I would argue that if this was indeed an important life skill why are boys not required to learn how to do it? During one of my many arguments with my grandmother, my brother stepped up and said – “I could learn how to cook.” I do not know why he said that – was it to get my grandmother off my back for a while – he might have been feeling protective. There is, however, another possibility - he might really have wanted to learn how to cook – but no one actually thought of asking him if he would like to.
(We now live in different times than those my grandmother was brought up in, with the need to modernize our thinking being evident – but for those who did not have access to the knowledge and did not live in the context that we do today life was very different. My grandmother was a product of her times, and I loved her very much so I tell this story to illustrate a point but without malice or judgement towards her or her memory.)
Equality is an everyone problem.
Where many girls suffer from inherited or imposed ideas of the one way to be a “good girl” at home or the “ballsy one” at work…just as many preconceived ideas are laid onto boys about their need to “toughen up” because “boys don’t cry”…and they, therefore, learn to not express their emotions and to never break the unspoken rules of manhood – “don’t ask for help, don’t be a wuss, don’t admit you are wrong and most of all - never, ever admit to being afraid.”
Unequal attitudes and biases have been tough on both boys and girls. This is not a story about women who are victims and men who are bullies.
Apartheid harmed everyone in South Africa, including those at the top.
Decades later, my friend and colleague Alexander shared this story about his high school rugby coach James, a self-exiled South African. James used to talk to his players about team selections using apartheid in South Africa as an analogy for inclusivity. He would say “If I block players from our rugby team based on their category, I shrink our talent pool. f we lose games because I only recruit players from “acceptable categories” the whole team suffers and so does our school. That’s how apartheid harms everyone in South Africa, including the white elites.”
Arbitrary limits harm our current workplace and everyone concerned. Both businesses and society lose out when there is a lack of equity.
These stories explain how arbitrary limits and unconscious biases also harm our current workplace. Men and women are both told stories of how they must be in order to be accepted. They are also fed cultural lies about what is possible for them. These stories restrict their possibilities and impoverish our businesses and our societies.
When we use these arbitrary limits to penalize or restrict how we hire or what we allow employees to do, we shrink our talent pool and our possibilities. This undermines performance which damages the entire organization. By contrast, both men and women benefit when we replace silos with teams. When we replace doubt with respect, businesses profit.
