We Need to Nurture and Mobilize Female Leaders

This piece is from a few weeks ago - reposting here because it's an important analogue to my own story of life in the tech/media industries.

You can read my story here...

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We Need a Movement to Encourage More Female Leadership World-wide

Some big news this morning: Fox News’ Roger Ailes has died at the age of 77. Ailes has been at the center of some big scandals lately, including sexual harassment lawsuits recently settled. Some of the words used to describe Ailes makes it clear that his reign over Fox News was managed with an authoritarian hand. This is too often the case these days as women (as well, of course, as some men) continue to grapple with glass and silicon ceilings alike. This is an issue of culture in workplaces, which are not democratic in nature, nor does it acknowledge or address female potential or more feminine leadership and collaboration styles. Even worse, there are often factors that subjugate women to certain roles and sometimes hyper-sexualize them, which makes upward mobility extremely difficult.

I wrote that piece because I spent 25 years in the tech industry, which is dominated by what I referred to as ‘masculine’ approaches to business. Very few women are able to crack the silicon ceiling, because of a lack of respect for how we choose to work and a lack of awareness that there is another way. I also see this happening in other corporate and governmental milieus. I think ‘male’ culture is privileged, because men vastly outnumber women in STEM-related settings. Women therefore try to conform to the established culture, but it means many missed opportunities to mentor them into leadership roles they can excel at. ( Source)

Our world is a horrible place. We are several millennia into a patriarchal, authoritarian regime that privileges war, violence, and scarcity thinking over fundamental human rights. Women make up over 50% of the humans on our planet. They are concerned about matters of home and family. They are DEEPLY concerned about recent trends in politics that appear to be unraveling DECADES of progress in civil and human rights. We need to be represented more equitably, but we are not. We are marginalized and denied access to the most powerful bastions of mostly corrupt elites. Why? Because we won’t put up with their politics of exploitation, abuse and division. Roger Ailes is just one of many, many examples of how organizations, both commercial and governmental, are run.

This is also about Trump and the culture he is bringing with him, based on hatred, intolerance, exploitation, and bullying. He is lauded for being an extraordinary businessman, but all I see is ignorance, dishonesty, exploitation, and abuse. Steve Jobs is also worshipped, even though he was himself a horrible leader who hurt people working for him day in and day out. ( Source)

What most people don’t know about Roger Ailes is that he wove a career in both media and politics into a behemoth that was strategically planned to embed the GOP agenda into a cable television channel. There was even a strategy document penned in 1971 that laid the whole plan out in stunning detail. This is covered in the documentary, ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad’, which addresses alt right and so-called hate media, which are infamous now for their blatant misogyny and sexism (see The Red Pill on Hulu to understand how some negative aspects of the men’s rights movement has illuminated these problems — trigger warnings though, it is controversial stuff).

Ladies, we need a new movement! Let’s protest in a larger and more sustainable way: we women need to start leading and we need to be given authority that will allow us to help shape the future our children deserve. But we need to help our world realize the benefit of female leadership. We need men to support our right to reasonable and representative access into leadership roles. We need our voices to be heard and carried far and wide.

For one thing, we now have a president who believes in running our country like a corporation. This is an authoritarian approach which embraces control and domination values, short-term thinking, and an unquenchable need for profits at any cost:

Let’s reflect, discuss, and document why the time for female leadership is now. Imagine what we could do. #WiseWomen #MobilizeWomen

More Reading:

Learn to Lead Like a Woman

Why I Wrote ‘How to Lead Like a Woman’

Why I Resist