In our privileged world “Feminism” has become a dirty word. For most western young women, to be called a Feminist is an insult.
My son and his girlfriends associate Feminism with anti-men and women who wear unattractive clothes. To them the “F” word is, at best, dated and no longer relevant.
If we could perhaps change the name, I’m told, Feminism might become more palatable.
I don’t really care what it’s called.
What I do care about is that the job of Feminism is far from done. In fact, there are many urgent reasons why we need Feminism now, more than ever.
Here are 20 of them:
- Approximately once every ten seconds, a girl somewhere in the world is pinned down. Her legs are pulled apart, and a local woman with no medical training uses a knife or razor blade to slice off some or all of the girl’s genitals. In most cases, without anesthetic.
- Of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, about 40% are girls and most are sexually abused.
- An estimated one hundred million girls worldwide are involved in child labor.
- More than 900 million girls and women are living on less than a dollar a day.
- More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. (Read this one again to make sure you really got it.)
- Female infanticide persists in many countries, and often it is mothers who kill their own daughters.
- One American-sponsored abstinence-only approach to controlling the spread of AIDS, consists of handing out heart-shaped lollipops inscribed with the message: DON’T BE A SUCKER! SAVE SEX FOR MARRIAGE. Then the session leader invites girls to suck on the lollipops and explains: “Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker.”
- Approximately 730,000 American teenage girls will get pregnant this year.
- When a group of girls were interviewed on 20/20, ABC’s primetime news magazine, and asked if they’d rather be fat or lose an arm, they unanimously answered that they’d rather lose an arm.
- The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is twelve times as high as the death rate of all causes of death for American females aged fifteen to twenty-four.
- Far more women and girls are sold into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were sold into slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
- Approximately one third of women worldwide face beatings in the home. Women aged fifteen through forty four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.
- A major study by the World Health Organization found that in most countries, between 30% and 60% of women had experienced physical or sexual violence by a husband or boyfriend.
- Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz, a leading religious authority in Saudi Arabia, declared in 2004: “Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe.”
- It is increasingly common for men in South Asia to hurl sulfuric acid into the faces of girls or women who have rejected them. The acid melts the skin and sometimes the bones underneath; when it strikes the eyes, the women are blinded.
- In South Africa, rape has become so endemic, that some women protect themselves by inserting a device called a Rapex. It’s a tube, with barbs inside. The woman inserts it like a tampon and any man who tries to rape her impales himself on the barbs and must go to an emergency room to have the Rapex removed.
- In 2008 the United Nations formally declared rape a “weapon of war.” In one of its reports it claimed that in parts of Liberia during the civil war, 90% of girls and women over the age of three were sexually abused. Major General Patrick Cammaert, a former UN force commander, said: “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.”
- 122 million women around the world want contraception and can’t get it. Up to 40% of all pregnancies globally are unplanned or unwanted – and almost half of those result in induced abortions.
- The equivalent of five jumbo jets’ worth of women die in labor each day. The World Health Organization estimates that 536,000 women perished in pregnancy or childbirth in 2005, a toll that has hardly changed in 30 years.
- It would take an estimated $9 billion a year to provide all effective interventions for maternal and newborn health to 95% of the world’s population. In contrast, the world spends $40 billion per year on dog food.
Stand up and be counted
It’s not sexy to be a feminist; it never has been. You won’t be the most popular girl in the room if you have the courage to use the “F” word.
But Feminism, and what it stands for, is needed as much now as it was a hundred years ago when women fought for the right to vote.
In my work, I have the relative luxury of addressing such inequalities as 88% of all board appointments in the world’s 200 largest companies are still held by men.
From the safe confines of my Montreal office I can rant about the fact that Rwanda has 56.3% women in parliament, but Canada and UK have only 22% and the U.S. only 16.8%.
Of course we must continue to support women who want to lead governments and organizations – we still have our own battles to fight.
But even more important, we need to support our sisters worldwide who are fighting for their lives and their fundamental human rights.
5 things you can do right now:
- Start the discussion – forward this article and argue about it with others (women and men).
- Read “Half The Sky. Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide” by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. When you’ve recovered from the shock of what you’ve read – get angry about it.
- Be inspired by watching Isabel Allende’s passionate TED talk
- Support women survivors of war and help them to rebuild their communities through Women for Women International.
- If you think the term “Feminism” is working against rather than for us – think of a new name and send it to me by commenting on this blog page. Or post comments and suggestions on Unwritten Rules-The Book facebook page.
Information in this blog courtesy of:
Half The Sky. Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
I Am An Emotional Creature. The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World by Eve Ensler
Corporate Women Directors International 2010 Report: Women Board Directors of the 2009 Fortune Global 200.
Women in National Parliaments: World Classification
Are legislated quotas the only way, within our lifetime, to see a balance of women and men leading governments and organizations?
The World Economic Forum has just published its 2010 Corporate Gender Gap Report. 
There have been several recent articles extolling the virtues of women and fantasizing about how great the world would be if only we replaced male leaders with women. 
During a recent speaking engagement at a well-known business school I was proudly informed by a university executive that he had recruited mainly women to his team. He clearly expected a pat on the back. I asked him how many women there were on the university executive committee – the answer was none. I was told not to worry, things were getting better and it was just a matter of time. 
More Women Leaders – Time For A Different Approach
First published in The Glass Hammer July 7, 2010
One definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again and expect a different result.
If we want more women in senior leadership positions we need to take a different approach. The current one isn’t working.
We’ve repeatedly called on Board Directors and C-suite executives to act on the strong business case for appointing more female colleagues, with minimal impact.
The 2009 Catalyst Census of Fortune 500 Women Board Directors revealed that less than one fifth of companies have three or more women on their boards, and more than 40 percent have no women directors whatsoever.
At the last count, women comprised only 15.2 and 13.5 percent of board directors and corporate officers respectively in Fortune 500 companies.
The United States is not alone in its boys club mentality.
Canada’s Financial Post 500 companies have only 14 percent female board directors, and 16.9 percent corporate officers.
Similarly, women hold only 9.7 percent board positions in Europe’s top 300 companies.
Research shows companies with at least three female board members, and more women in senior leadership roles, produce stronger-than average financial and organizational results. But the boys at the top just aren’t buying it.
It’s time to stop banging our heads against the same brick wall and instead, think more broadly about where we might influence change.
Mobilize shareholders
One fairly untapped area of influence is shareholders of publicly quoted companies. These people, whether they be individual investors, or fund managers, have the right to demand the best possible management of the organizations in which they invest.
Are shareholders aware that companies with three or more women on their board have stronger organizational performance and healthier bottom line results?
Do they know that a 2007 Catalyst report, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards, shows companies with more female board members outperform those with the least on:
Might they be interested in research done by Professor Michel Ferrary (CERAM Business School, France) in 2009, showing companies with a higher ratio of women in management coped more successfully with the global financial crisis?
Ferrary’s study looked at 32 major companies in the CAC40, comparing the ranks of female managers to the performance of the company. Firms with high ranks of women managers all performed better than the CAC40 average.
Boards fail to take corrective action
Boards of directors are legally responsible to choose management teams and chief officers, oversee their performance and generally act prudently to increase share value.
If gender-balanced leadership is good for business (and it seems increasingly likely that it is), then directors should recruit more women to the boardroom, and ensure that CEOs have gender diverse senior management teams.
But are they? The short answer is no.
The good news is, we can do something about it.
Forward an open letter to every shareholder you know
I have a vision of shareholders demanding from their directors at least 40% women leaders on their boards and in their senior management teams.
To that end, I have written an Open Letter to Shareholders. It makes a strong case for gender balanced leadership at the top of the companies in which shareholders invest.
Read the letter. If you like it, please forward it to all the shareholders you know (and remember, if you invest in a pension you are a shareholder.)
Let’s join forces, take action, try a different approach and help create better leadership and better organizations.