Recent celebrations in respect of the achievements of women in the Sultanate have been well-presented, well-received, and offered due praise, respect, and acknowledgement. However, often such events do tend to create a positive profile for a week or two, and then we ‘put them back in the box,’ until next year at the same time, when we ‘trot out’ a few more.
Let us not... this time! Not when the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Portugal’s Antonio Guterres has described, “achieving gender equality is the greatest human rights challenge in our world!”
Let us work at celebrating the role of the women in our societies, their achievements, their strength, their commitment, their diversity, their ingenuity, their resilience, and let us not forget the simple matter of their beauty, poise, elegance, and subtlety. They are a wonderful contradiction, being delicate, soft, and warm always, granite like when they need to be, and sharper than any stiletto when they must be. They see and hear everything, and are sensitive to the moods and emotions of others in a manner that we men can never hope to imitate, and even when we do try to respond with kindness or empathy, it rarely stretches from the heart to the eyes. With a woman though, there is, and will always be, a depth of compassion a heartbeat away, enhancing all those other qualities.
Now it is wonderful that we do celebrate women’s days and weeks, but why do we have to? Well, demographically, men still rule the world! Most world leaders are men, most politicians and elected or nominated officeholders are men, most corporate leaders and ‘masters of industry’ are men. Men still dominate the world in the spheres of political and fiscal governance, and they, according to Ziena Jalil, a leading diversity advocate, “decide who sits at the table.”
The UN has identified gender equality as a relatively short-term fix, yet in its annual equality study released recently, the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimated it would take 257 years for the economic gender gap to close. That was a sharp rise from a 2018 estimate of 202 years. “None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children,” the report said.
The financial sector has repeatedly advocated greater gender equivalence, with the prestigious McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimating that with complete gender parity, a 25 per cent increased global output relative to a business-as-usual scenario, is likely. Not possible... likely.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) is a powerhouse US lobby and think-tank group, and their statement that, “The magnitudes of the correlations are not small.
The largest gains are for the proportion of female executives, followed by the proportion of female board members, while the presence of female CEOs has no noticeable effect on firm performance.” Proving therefore, that it is not the matter of having a token presence, but a meaningful corporate pathway for women.
Institutional, “because it’s the way it’s always been.” Cultural, “because that’s the way it’s always been.” Misogynistic, “because that’s how it’s going to be.” These are not reasons, but utterances of the apostles of Friedrich Nietsche, who said women with “scholarly inclinations had something wrong with them,” or Napoleon Bonaparte who wrote, “Nature intended women to be our slaves, our property.”
Misogyny is not new, but Fumiko Enchi, paraphrasing Sun Tzu said, “Nothing more than an attempt to get the better of a vastly superior opponent.”
Let us see organisational and institutional sectors embrace policies that are genuinely gender inclusive, respectful, diverse, and encouraging, to deny cynicism and scepticism, and to understand that, as in all things, you will be enriched by greater gender equity in the workplace.
It is said that when a baby girl is born, her wings are clipped... Don’t you dare! When women do better, economies, societies, communities, families, and couples do better... Make gender equality, and gender equity, your unfinished business.
Ray Petersen
r.j.petersen52@gmail.com
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