To change the world, start with THE WORD

There is one interesting topic that inspires me nowadays - the new motivation for a new gender-diversified society. New gender-diversified motivation.

What is this?

I base it on two postulates:?

1. the male-oriented motivational slogans dominating in the society: “Rise and fight”; “Fight your enemy inside you”; “You is your main enemy” etc.?
2. no doubt that gender diversity is one of the trending topics in the world within the last 10-20 years not only on social media but in law as well.

I am now, as an LLM student at the University of Birmingham, studying International Corporate Governance, including gender diversity on the board. Hence, once I started to do research on this topic, it triggered me immediately.

There are mainly two reasons why it inspires me to write about it:

1)? ? Gender diversity has been existing in Soviet Russia for a long time before even my birth. My mom, being an uneducated worker, at some stage (depending on her productivity measured in the number of fish tins she would produce in a time unit) would earn more than my dad, who was at that time, deputy captain of a plant with 300 subordinates. Thus with this belief and looking at my parents’ example, I made a big leap on my career ladder becoming a head of the legal department at age of 24 after several successful defences against the hostile take-over of our company. So my career did not really depend on my gender or age, only on results. I have never felt that there was a glass ceiling due to my gender. I guess my experience is quite unique for the West and I am happy to share it. Yet, of course, it was not always that smooth. There are specific problems with gender diversity in that society as well which I will speak about in detail later on in my blog.

2)? ? I have a perception that what we are trying to do - is to change the system from the above (ceiling) whereas all the systems are to be built from the fundament (this is 10 years of construction experience talking inside me). What I mean is that we change corporate governance and implement laws to promote diversity, whereas all this inequality starts in our thoughts, i.e. mindset. Indeed, look/listen to the leading motivational speakers now - what do they summon us to? “Rise and fight”; “Fight your enemy inside you”; “You is your main enemy” etc.

Why is it that “me is my enemy”? Why cannot I befriend myself? Why cannot I have a dream job without fighting someone including myself? Why cannot I be on the board without beating someone at negotiation?

We use this masculine terminology everywhere. And under “we”, I mean both men and women. We allow the competitive fighting mood to control and manage our lives. No wonder the result is a lack of diversity. Because it is the lack of feminine words and feminine actions. It is the lack of acceptance, starting from ourselves. But there is no anyone’s guilt there. It was led by necessity to survive (thankfully to both genders, we did it) and then stayed for a little bit longer than required due to our (again, both) lack of constant consciousness (presence) and recognition of the words. We use most of them automatically without thorough thought about it. So, if to change the world, start with THE WORD.

We want to create a new world. Some say that this is a “male-built world” and “we gonna change it”. Yes, we gonna change it. But we are not going to fight for the change. Because in this way there will be no difference between the “male-built world” and the “female-built world”.

We will start with the gratitude to men for the world they built (I use this term just to address this claim not that I particularly believe that this term is justified), and supplement it with our acceptance, serenity, respect for each other’s role in society as mothers and fathers, grannies and grandfathers, boys and girls and with those who decided that their gender is not to be identified. We are going to look at our daily motivation step by step, we will calm down our wording by being sensitive and grateful to the existing world and turning it towards ourselves but not against us.

Thus, it is called new gender-diversified motivation.? Write comments with words and phrases from motivational speeches which resonate with your ear. I promise we will discuss many exciting topics here.

Hugs, #HelenOwens

#newmotivation #newspeaker #diversity #inclusion

#changemanagement #leadership #teammanagement #corporategovernance