Serious business lessons from: Literature & History for D&I

Well, I want to take the opportunity that LinkedIn provides to have the experience of publishing articles. I want to be able to do a small summary of what I have learned throughout my life from different sectors to apply in business. Lessons for business may come from different areas such as: sports, history, literature or philosophy among others if we just open our minds to see a bigger picture. I will share a personal opinion of these topics hoping to contribute something to those who read it and the option of a healthy exchange of opinions.

For many years I participated in the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) group for the PepsiCo Beverages Latin America Division. Having had that opportunity allowed me to get in touch to understand the concepts of D&I and realized that it is a topic that needs to be spoke every day, even in the 21st century where we would expect that discrimination issues should be a thing of the past. I was exposed to the problems of the LGBTQ + community, women, race, as well as the biases that we can have both consciously and unconsciously.

Today I want to recommend reading a wonderful book by a Nobel Prize winning author. The book is called "The Unwomanly Face of War" by Svetlana Alexievich.

The author, who is a reporter, takes interviews with different women who were part of the RED army of the former U.S.S.R. during the Nazi invasion, what is called the great war there. Those interviews became a constant reminder of the following characteristics that women bring to society: responsibility, trust, accomplishment, hard work, results.

Unfortunately, it is also a reminder of how quickly we could forget all the positive things a human being do and just focus on our biases and the bad things. Although it is another time, and I do not mean to criticize those who were at that time, the book shows many examples of what need to remember to prevent it from happening again. Just pretend it didn't happen opens the risk to forgetting it and encouraging it to happen again.

Brave women left their home at the call to defend their country from an invasion. Some of them only with hunting experience because a father or uncle taught them how to shoot. Others only carried their good intentions and a spirit of patriotism with their families in mind. During the reading of the book, which are short interviews with different brave women telling their own story, we can learn from this period of time and be aware of their fights. Unfortunately, there are also stories regarding discrimination and rejection from society despite their proven achievements on the battlefield.

The story that was more is the memories they have about the victory parade. The moment when those who went to the forefront and manage to live to receive both the gratitude and appreciation of society for their effort, the moment when the divisions of the army and partisans are enveloped in the love of grateful society, everything changes when the women parade. They were singled out, belittled and rejected. Some were unable to find a place outside the army again.

What do I pretend by recommending this book? First of all that we all feel admiration for the courage of this women that attend a call to defend their home, second to feel uncomfortable knowing that they didn't received the credit or reward according to their results and finally, to call for action (at our homes and the companies where we work) to ensure that this will not happen again. That as society we will ensure that our sisters, cousins, colleagues and anybody lives without the proper recognition to their actions.

How we extend this to the business environment today:

A woman who is not publicly recognized and supported for her contributions to the company. A woman who does not receive a promotion under the influence of someone who does not see a dedicated person and might be influenced by an unconscious bias. I'm sure we can identify and recognize different events with this idea. An element of society with all the potential in its being, living with the discrimination of it’s own team.

We just have to think that companies and laws should explicitly state that there will be no discrimination for different reasons, including gender. This despite the fact that a premise of the law is that everyone is equal for the law. Despite this, a second clarification must be made. We can also remember that there are many countries where the right to vote is not even 100 years old, and they are occidental countries. By rejecting the inclusion of women, we are letting go of valuable items that go a long way every day and more than half of the resources that society needs in order to grow and be prosperous

When we get asked the question why there is an official woman's day, we need to remember the spirit of it, which is NOT TO FORGET. We could talk about different contributions of women to society such as Hedy Lamar (Austrian actress) who in 1914 was a co-inventor, together with George Antheil, for a communication system called "spread spectrum transmission technique". That is the forerunner of the WIFI, GPS and BLUETOOTH that we enjoy so much today. That is just one contribution among many that we do not know and that reinforces how important women have been in our history.