Misogyny. Leadership. Let’s talk about it.
Misogyny. Leadership. Let’s talk about it.
This is going to be the first of a few posts where I’ll be exploring this topic, looking at:
🪟my own experiences of facing misogyny since starting my business;
🪟interrogating senior female execs and internalised misogynistic power dynamics and how we can overcome these;
🪟male and collective vulnerability as a strength within a modern, attuned, emotionally intelligent leadership practice.
Let’s lay the groundwork:
Traditional approaches to leadership and management were deeply entrenched in misogyny - sometimes overtly, sometimes insidiously, frequently structurally:
Hierarchy, patriarchy - ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ - glass ceiling - gender pay divides - ‘Better knowledge’ - perpetuation of the ‘mental load’ on female colleagues (note-taking, tea-making) - ego - power… A world created by and for men.
Modern leadership recognises this and takes intentional steps to redress POWER.
I recently attended a fascinating one-day session on feminist leadership, during which we talked about power and wellbeing.
As a feminist and a feminist leader, let's clear something up:
➡️Feminism is not about more rights for women and fewer rights for cis men. It is about greater EQUALITY for all, across the gender spectrum.
But sticking with a more binary phrasing, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered in her powerful 2012 TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists:
“We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently. We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard, small cage, and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves.”
Leadership clients and colleagues tell me they want to avoid vulnerability. They feel afraid of showing their true self, afraid of turning up to lead as their ‘whole self’. When we have a foot in Camp Fear like this we are never fully flourishing, actualising or thriving. If we can’t create this for ourselves, it is harder to create it for others.
Where do we start?
🧠Mindset is key.
Remember:
-To thrive - really thrive - your team and interpersonal relationships require a foundation of trust.
-Your ability to foster trust with others is directly related to your ability to connect and relate.
-To connect and relate we must bring something of ourselves to meet something of the other.
-Trust cannot be built on a mask because you’re not truly there; you’re showing up as something else.
-Foster connection-driving behaviours over disconnection behaviours.
-Identify the spaces and places where your power is prevalent and consider how you can share it with others.
-Consider who you are and how you want to be in your leadership power and design a way to move towards embodying this fully.
How I can help
I work with leaders to:
examine their power and design their presence
deliver learning, training and masterclasses in ethical leadership approaches, underpinned by feminist leadership and emotional intelligence
help leaders develop strategy and implementation plans to imagine and change their organisational culture.
