Over the weekend I spent some time with a few hundred young people who were interested in ideas and how they can contribute to society at an event organised by the Foundation for Young Australians. It didn’t surprise me that some of them wanted to talk about feminism and gender equality.
Gender equality is cool, at the moment. When we have Beyoncé standing proudly in front of a gigantic screen that says FEMINIST on it, how could it not be?
Like many other proud feminists I thanked Beyoncé for her stance. She’s at the forefront of opening up what equality means in 21st Century society. Her interpretation is about choice and being true to who you want to be.
But gender equality is not a fad. We need to keep it as a conversation starter at every table for a long time. With suggestions that we won’t reach parity between men and women for decades, if not centuries, we need action.
Making feminism cool can help bring more people into the conversation. There are plenty of people who haven’t considered, or cannot fully appreciate, the challenge ahead for gender equality, so bringing popular leaders into the conversation is necessary.
However, feminism is not a fashion statement. It’s about getting results that help produce sustainable gender equality.
It was apt that one of the young women at the FYA event who wanted to discuss this asked, “How can I engage more people in gender equality?”
This goes to the heart of what I think is one of the biggest challenges out there when it comes to this issue. How can we get more people involved?
While everyone has different experiences in this area, it is about engaging the head and the heart in working towards change. Having celebrity and prominence on your side is very helpful too.
It also helps to be able to mix the hard, unquestionable data with personal experience when discussing the topic.
I did this recently with my brother. He’s a bit of a sceptic when it comes to the need for gender diversity in business. So I asked him: “Given that women have been the majority of university graduates since 1986, why don’t they hold more civic and commercial leadership roles?”
The rest of our conversation was interesting, to say the least. At the end of it he started coming around to the idea that quotas were a reasonable economic tool to implement.
Merely 20 minutes earlier he would’ve blasted me for such an idea.
Yes, we do need global celebrities to bring their voices to the table. But this cannot be yet another thing they sign onto. Michelle Bachelet noted this best when she said: “Gender equality must be a lived reality.”
Too often I see men and managers say, “Of course I support women in business and leadership!” But then they often become the same people who expect their partners to attend to the majority of the domestic duties at home.
That is not a lived experience.
While feminism is a significant topic right now, let’s not get so caught up in the word that we forget to share how we are actually living it. And what we can do to live it better in the future.