Feminism needs to wise up more than it needs to lean in

Feminism is something of an anachronism. I like to draw a corollary with trade unions, which grew up in Industrial Britain in the 18^th century. Broadly speaking, trade unions grew up to protect the interests of women, children and immigrants who had entered the labor force, whose conditions left a lot to be desired. Move forward over 200 years and thankfully (and hopefully), public consciousness has more or less replaced the need for trade unions. Even the world’s largest mining firms couldn’t expect to have children working in mines, for example.

Where’s the correlation between the trade union movement and feminism, then? Well, both were born at around the same time and both sought to improve the lot of a certain segment in society. Feminism, like the trade union movement, has taken on various guises over the years and has made serious inroads to the extent that the public agenda is aligned with its agenda: openly, we all want safe and fair working conditions for workers, just as openly, we all want women to have an equal place in society to that of men.

And just as it’s truly depressing to see a firm like Primark hiring workers in substandard conditions[1], it’s depressing to see a systemic acceptance of women beating[2]. Trade unions wouldn’t have been much help in the first instance (more conscious shareholders and government penalties against this form of exploitation would be more effective) and feminism isn’t much help in the second (honestly, it’s quite hard to know where to start there are so many instances of instrinsic sexism in our society).

Wise up

The motivation behind this piece came after reading Sheryl Sandberg’s critical and commercial blockbuster, Lean In[3]. Despite the catchy title and brilliant writing, I couldn’t embrace a lot of Sandberg’s thinking. As books go, it’s thought-provoking, timely and provocative. But it still falls into the ‘them-and-us’ mentality which is characteristic of so many feminist pieces. To take just one example, the story she tells about her brother coming out of an exam exclaiming that he’d achieved the best mark in the class after copying from her and her friends reads like a childish telltale story and doesn’t have much to do with improving the mindset of men or women.

We should appreciate that women who are successful are often seen as aggressive, over-bearing or intimidating. That’s a real problem in the workplace. Why do women power dress while men just wear suits, for example? That said, making men look buffoonish or like overconfident jocks, as Sandberg does with her brother (and I’m sure she loves him so it also has to be taken in that context), won’t help this. Surely, that’s just pushing the shifting the problem from one foot to the other. Below are some suggestions for how women might approach the undoubted sexism they confront in three different types of workplace:

1. Technology

The world of high tech startups is so male-oriented that it makes Al Qaeda look like a benchmark for gender equality. But to complain that this is the case is to conveniently ignore a few points. First, we have to take into account (without looking at the data behind high tech founders) that the number of technology startups is at least loosely correlated with the number of people studying computer science (see below).

These aren’t relative as opposed to absolute numbers, and an alternative question might be, ‘why are so boys so obsessed with computer science?’  But in theory at least, it provides some explanation of why places like silicon valley are so male-oriented. Saying Silicon Valley is sexist is sort of like suggesting that regardless of what women study, they should be admitted to the club. Unless there’s inherent sexism at the VC firms supporting high-tech startups (and that could be an issue[4]), there doesn’t seem much to stop women founding high-tech startups and evening up the figures.

2. Politics

Say ‘women in politics’ and your mind instantly wanders to a few high-profile women who have made waves: Angela Merkel, Dilma Rousseff, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Margaret Thatcher. There are others you may have crossed but aren’t as easily recognizable to most westerners – Kim Campbell, former PM of Canada, Tarja Halonen, former PM of Finland, Portia Simpson-Miller, current PM of Jamaica and Julia Gillard, former PM of Australia. These women have been extremely influential and about as successful as most politicians can be so why aren’t there more?  Is it inherent sexism? Maybe. But surely, that would be sexism on the part of females. There are enough female voters to ensure that a female gets past the post first in every election (if that’s the issue that’s most important). And if there aren’t enough female elected representatives, when just about every electorate is over 50% women, how can it be sexism on the part of men?

3. Finance

Finance is complicated. Rather, complicated and sexist. The appetite for risk which has created bubbles just about everywhere in the financial system (see article on the rise of shadow banking as evidence of this) has been shown[5] to be linked with the testosterone rushing around the trading desks and halls of influence of financial institutions. Providing women with more roles in finance would undoubtedly rectify this to some extent. Having a financial system less addicted to risk would be no bad thing. How to change this? Well, the financial system has to stop rewarding risk – but this is sort of like saying that politicians have to stop being power-hungry: risk-taking just goes with the territory (although in theory at least, it shouldn’t). Is there some way for women to vote with their financial investments that rewards gender equality? And ultimately, what’s stopping a creative women out there who’s fluent in finance from changing the current – unquestionably sexist – financial landscape with an ETF aimed at female-led firms or a small finance institution with an even gender line-up?

Conclusion

It should be pointed out that everything here only applies to women in liberal societies. Places where women are legally second-class citizens are outside the scope of this article. Unfortunately, for women in the western workplace, there is no silver bullet. The clearly unequal workplaces that we see are an extension of the legal system, the media and everyday life that inherently favors men in most cases. But talking about this endlessly won’t lead anywhere. Women are smart enough to recognize the root causes of many of the problems mentioned above. They’re capable of undertaking what’s needed to change them for the better as well. For women in the workplace, it’s not just a case of lean in. It’s a case of wise up.

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[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/primark-payout-victims-rana-plaza-bangladesh

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-do-famous-men-get-away-violence_55e70283e4b0aec9f35534bf?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

[3] Sandberg, S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead (First edition.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

[4] http://www.wired.com/2015/05/ellen-pao-trial/

[5] http://www.nature.com/articles/srep11206