It’s 2015, it’s all about equality for everyone. Yey!
Calling all women, calling all women, equality; what does it mean to you?
I’m a CEO of a company that invests in women all over the world. But right now what I do doesn’t matter too much. More so I want to talk about the glass ceilings that sometimes appear. You know that ceiling can happen to anyone right, not just women. It can happen based on your gender, colour, religion… But today I want to chat about women, our glass ceilings and our glass slippers.
If like me you were born in 76 or around that time, I want you to have a think about what you watched, read, what you were told and how you were influenced from 1985, 1995, 05, and now 15. Ok I’ve made you feel old (or maybe you’re now thinking I’m old and irrelevant to your struggle). We started some time ago on the path of the glass slipper, the romance that a man will save us, he’ll be the bread winner and of course we can choose to have a job, kids and look after the chap in our lives, or not work at all and be a housewife and all it entails. Now let’s be honest, that’s not necessarily the man that was wrong in that scenario. More that as women what we passed on to friends, children and loved ones was that was what was normal. The glass slipper wasn’t just put on by a chap, it was put on by your mother, aunt, sister and society and we were meant to be happy and fulfilled. The glass ceiling appeared and became popular about the same time as shoulder-pads and I hated them as well! But right now being traumatised by Ra-Ra or puffball skirts isn’t going to help.
I’ve found in my career that my biggest inhibitors were not men, but other women. Insecurity, jealousy and not fitting the mold caused me in one job to miss out on 4 promotions. Of course I didn’t know at the time that the wife of the CEO took a dislike to me after her husband sang my praises. Whatever her justification for her actions and his lack of action, it was detrimental to my career at the time and my self-worth too. It wasn’t explained to me in simple terms like “I’m sorry I won’t be promoting you because my wife thinks I fancy you and that we’ll have an affair and all that goes with it” . I wants to even lied to either.. I was just left in the dark until I found a better opportunity and one of my colleagues confessed. Have to say, worked out well for me in the end.
I was young at the time, I didn’t have the confidence to ask why and my family was saying such positive statements like “don’t rock the boat” “you’ll make enemies” “well maybe you didn’t deserve it” or “chin up, least you have a job eh”. Sisterhood is important. But more so is to remove gender from any place of work. The best person for the job is the right person, if you’re holding a position of power can you say to yourself all your choices are based on that principal or are you sabotaging subconsciously.
So I want you to think on this, where you are in your life right now, who are your influences? What’s your inner voice? Whose holding you back?
For me I’m now helping with the women in far flung countries create and maintain their win businesses. I have to manage respect for age, religion, culture and the daemon that is misogyny. I’ve received death threats, I’ve witnessed violence, I’ve had to bribe to reach women, I’ve had to learn skills they don’t teach you in any universities just to get ahead and make my business grow. I’m not there yet but each month, each place I travel. I grow and I learn. I hate the effects of male dominated societies in some of the villages, town and cities I travel too. But it give me perspective too and what we can achieve when we leave the glass slippers to the brothers Grimm and we take a hammer to the ceiling.
We, as humans, have control of only us. We allow what’s in our lives or how we feel and how we grow. Be free.
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