#Leanintogether : Where are we on Gender Equality?
When Nandos went global I was one of the people who was extremely pleased. The brand was born in South Africa while I was living there and made yummy things out of chicken. But what happens to global brands when they enter a local culture ? Do they take on the cultural biases of a country they enter? I am not quite sure. But when Nando's India thought they were being witty and clever recently a number of Indian women took strong objection.
It was a signal to us that gender inequality is alive and doing well in India. All the women found the message from Nando' s extremely offensive from the posts on social media and that drew an apology from Nando albeit a bit late in the day.
Considering that March 8, 2016 was International Women's day the Nandos ad was a setback to a movement on gender equality that seems to be gaining in strength with Sheryl Sandberg's campaign on #leanintogther. The website leainintogether.org and the number of videos produced actually made a difference to our awareness on gender equality and the role that men have to play in it.
And while the NBA was busy supporting #leanintogether another sport was unfortunately letting us down. It was a pity that Tournament Director of India Wells at the BNP Paribas Open made a classic mistake when he openly said 'women hang on to the coattails of men'. One of those mistakes that was not retractable. The only alternative was to resign.
In an era of growing awareness of gender equality and a wave of women's empowerment that is sweeping the world, men will have to watch their tongue. Gone are the days of machoism and male superiority unless you want to project yourself as un-evolved and traditional or tribal.
To add insult to injury Raymond Moore told the media "You know, in my next life when I come back I want to be someone in the WTA, because they ride on the coattails of the men. They don't make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady player, I'd go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport."
Ouch!
Women's world number one Serena Williams said Moore's statement was "offensive and very inaccurate". Billie Jean King tweeted ;
Navratilova said she would not be surprised if players chose to boycott the tournament next year in a protest against Moore's comments.
"It was really disheartening to see Ray Moore offer the extremely prejudiced and very old-fashioned statements regarding women tennis players," said the 18-time Grand Slam singles champion.
Androcentrism
Androcentrism is the practice of placing male human beings either consciously or unconsciously or the masculine point of view at the centre of one's world view. Its a societal fixation on masculinity.
Unfortunately the history of man has been dividing tasks into male and female. So we grow up with fixed notions about our gender. On how we should behave. On what professions we should pursue. Which led to the ad above which hit a raw nerve on gender biassed professions, when it asked 'Are you Man enough to be a Nurse?'
Unfortunately androcentrism is so deep that it also entered our language at an early stage in our evolution and development. 'Hey Guys' and 'Dear Sirs' is only a signal of androcentrism on the superficial outer crust of language. Many Latin-based languages in the world are also male-centric. For instance, in Spanish the word padres (plural of 'father') means 'parents', abuelos (plural of 'grandfather') means 'grandparents', and chicos means either 'boys' or 'children'. Does that partly explain the male dominance of Latino populations? Maybe.
With that kind of weight in our history to looking at everything from a male point of view, some slip ups may happen when our unconscious takes over our conscious and that brilliant editor in the male brain goes to sleep on or goes on a short holiday.
Gender Equality
Anyway Moore and Nandos ( or whoever that man inside Nando is who wrote that ad ) is one example of how men must start rethinking gender roles. No doubt androcentrism is a bit of a historical curse. The curse is not that men and women are different, but that men are unable to consciously overcome their bias against women and be aware that it is an equal world now.
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