What’s on my mind this Women’s Day?

Dear friends

It’s Women’s Day on the 8th!

All women, let’s get together and celebrate! 

Right?

Wrong!!

Women’s Day celebration is not about women celebrating.

It’s a time for each of us, man or woman, to give importance to a set of interrelated social issues – gender inequality, gender bias, and gender stereotyping. Let’s dwell upon these issues on this day and resolve to not just talk and celebrate, but to think and act.

Let’s look at some of the role stereotypes we have internalized. The CXO, the passenger airliner pilot, the Union minister, the Uber driver. What are their genders – male or female? When you’re thinking about it, like now, you will probably say “can be male or female”. But take this little conversation:

“Have you met the new CFO at Unilever?”
“No not yet, what’s his name?”

Subconsciously you’ve made the CFO a “he”. No harm done but we all need to remove the mental blocks that prevent us from naturally visualizing people in all roles being men or women with equal likelihood.

If we are able to resist this programmed role stereotyping we will be able to create newer, better, more opportunistic growth paths for our daughters and wives, our team members, and even for ourselves.

The stereotyping leads to gender biases. Biases that start at home. Let’s reverse these biases in our own homes. Let’s instead try to have conversations like these:

A father on his daughter’s 11^th birthday, “Doesn’t she look like she can run a Nykaa business one day?”

A mother on her daughter’s 14th birthday, “You really want that pretty black dress for the party? Let’s instead get you a subscription to this online course on Design Thinking.”

A brother to his sister, “Hey, you heat the dinner and I’ll clear up and do the dishes. Next week we’ll swap.”

Mother and daughter watching TV. Mom calls out to her son, “Beta, can you make your sister and me a cup of tea?”

Let’s remove the biases at home and create opportunities equally for our girls and our boys. Let’s save up for our daughters’ higher studies not for their weddings. Let’s remove our biases –

When it’s time to make tea.

When it’s time to cook.

When it’s time to take a day off to attend to an ailing child.

When it’s time to leave a job because someone has to stay at home.

When it’s time to decide about going abroad for higher studies.

Let’s be sensitive to what we say at work. To whether we are playing back gender biases. Did I say “he” when I could have said “she” or “they”? Did I sideline the woman in the group just because the men were louder and more aggressive?

Look around you. The world is changing. Be a change agent yourself.

You don’t want any girl or woman in your sphere of influence left behind because of biases that weren’t addressed and corrected. 

Start your personal revolution now. Within yourself. 

Collectively, we can make a shift in the opportunities that women get, and how well they do in life.

Happy Women’s Day, to all men and women.

I sent this message out yesterday to my colleagues at Expenzing because I believe that as a CEO, I have a duty not just to build my business but to help build values that make us better people. I have no doubt that better values also result in better business. Feel free to reach out to me at ila@expenzing.com if this message connected with you.