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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 142: Women must Lead:
February 21, 2005:
After writing my recent essay, number 138 entitled Succession, I have continued to think about the role of women in our political landscape. In that essay, I suggested that Hillary and Rice might very well be the candidates for 2008. That would put us in the position of being forced to choose a woman for the oval office. Considering the men who have held or vied for that office, I would have no problem at all with a female president. I am not at all sold on Hillary and I have absolute contempt for Rice, but why not a woman?
When I think of the task I have outline for Groundswell, I automatically think of women being the key to a successful organization. In fact, I expect women to take the lead in this, because they are in general more ethical and moral than men. Once they are convinced, women are much more likely to work hard to bring it off. This is a natural endeavor because, in our culture and most cultures, women have traditionally been the force for moral and ethical behavior. Most men will want some kind of reward for behaving well. For most women, seeing the effect of the behavior is the reward.
Men will never grow up. It has been this way since the beginning or time. We will continue to find trivial and imaginary reasons for going to war, because we want to go to war. Although we give much lip service, we men have failed as examples of ethical behavior. How can we teach ethics when we do not practice them in our daily lives? We have clearly demonstrated that we are incapable of exercising power in an ethical way. In the world and in the communities, men have failed miserably in leadership qualities and in ethics. Most women have not done that yet, so there is hope. For sure, some women have gone bad. We see some of them playing the men's games and doing weird fringe things. Still, that is not a majority so there is hope.
We will never know until a large number of women do step up. Most women I know have more courage and more integrity than most men I know. They can lead if they want to, and they should. When they do step up, they will have to be careful of becoming associated with the fringe people on one side and the wallowing political hacks on the other side. They should not want to be associated with the Green Freaks or with the classic political party bosses and politicians. That is exactly why we need a new organization of people working for change. I choose to call that organization Groundswell.
When it comes to morality and ethics, women are the natural teachers. They can also be the natural doers if they choose. However, we must be honest. In our traditional culture it is very difficult for women to be effective. We put many roadblocks in the way. Not the least of these is our refusal to provide the structural situation to allow for the care and nurturing of children. We just dump that task on the woman and allow no space for anything else. The structure and bigotry especially of our commercial culture makes it very, very difficult for women to contribute. That is a very stupid waste. It indicates a very ill culture. We are essentially forfeiting half of our creative talent. One thing Groundswell must do is organize in a way that will allow great flexibility for all of those who can contribute and particularly women.
Now, here are some edited notes from a piece I wrote for my book, The Gaffer's Shorts. The piece was entitled Principles of Ethical Business Practice. This piece is about the business environment, but I believe all of the points apply equally well to Groundswell.
In observing people at work over many years, I believe the ideal new colleague to be a very bright graduating high school senior woman. We have to include the concept of brightness because we know some teenage women and men are inane as hell. Here's the conundrum. If a person is inane at age seventeen, they will probably die that way even though it's a learned behavior. It's a behavior which was once effective and will not be unlearned without expensive help. What seemed precocious at age seven will be annoying at age seventeen and sad at age fifty. This inane behavior is not as common as we pretend. It's like any other stereotype. There are more bright young folks than inane.
Here is the rationale for young women colleagues. These are
not laws and have many exceptions. They are just the sum of personal
observation over time.
Women are easier to train because they are relatively free of
that male ego dumbness. You know it! It is the silliness which
causes a man to nod his head and say, "Yeah I know,"
even when he doesn't have a clue. He just can't let the other
person start to think he is dumb. So he will go and waste time
learning it by himself instead of asking questions. Also, young
people in general are easier to train because they don't have
so much baggage. They don't have things to unlearn. Unlearning
is much more difficult than learning.
Young bright women are eager to learn. They want to understand. They listen carefully and ask questions. Women on the job spend more time actually working than their male counterparts. Now low self-esteem is a likely problem with some female colleagues. This is happily less true each year, but many women do have a somewhat diminished ego. This is always due to early conditioning. So, some women are not as likely to speak up in group situations. They are not as likely to offer ideas even though they have an abundance. Sometimes it gets so silly that a woman will go with an inferior idea because it came from a man. A leader must be vigorous in encouraging the female colleagues to express themselves lest the very best creative talent be suppressed.
As to parents with small children, we must make it possible for them to care for their children and still be creatively employed. Both colleague and employer must be extremely flexible about this. If it means putting a crib and a bottle warmer in a key person's office, it must be done. It could mean five people sharing four jobs so one of them is always with the children. In addition, we must get used to mothers nursing their children and not treat it as a titillating incident. We must provide a receptive environment for children in the work place.
Flexibility, I believe, is the most important concept in the
organization of Groundswell. We must make space for everyone who
want to contribute. This lack of flexibility has been a huge failure
in our business community and in our political parties. It could
also be a problem in Groundswell. We cannot let it happen. We
must make it possible for women to not only contribute, but to
lead the way.
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