Why I know we can reach gender parity by 2025 (and a surprise)
Issue 152 — December 6, 2020
“There are plenty of top-notch people in every demographic group for even the most high-level jobs. You just have to see them and open the barricades that have blocked them from serving.”
— Jodi Enda re Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s diverse choices of top advisors.
Real change is in the air. And it’s happening fast.
It’s the kind of momentum I felt when I was on the frontline of the March for Women’s Lives in 2004. We were scheduled to step off at noon but by 11 o’clock the sheer pressure of over a million people’s common aspiration forced us to start marching. The power of that forward motion was exhilarating.
I feel that same kind of unstoppable momentum now.
Yes in spite of coronavirus, racial reckoning, and daily narratives that say women will be set back 10 years’ worth of progress
Or more accurately, because of these disruptions. They have ripped up old play books. Breached boundaries of antiquated institutions. Laid bare that we can do things differently, like work from home with flexible hours and less travel, and not just survive but innovate and thrive.
As this tweet accurately said, quoting Soledad O’Brien:
When I cofounded Take The Lead in 2013 and declared the audacious mission “to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025,” people said it would be impossible. It belied the popular narratives that said women couldn’t have it all, that women lacked leadership ambition, and that the barriers were too deeply ingrained to overcome.
There’s a famous feminist saying that the impossible just takes a little longer. But in this case, I think that not only did making that bold pronouncement help speed the dial, the strategic inflection moment that had become evident to me when I wrote No Excuses has catalyzed an unstoppable forward energy. Not even a global pandemic can turn it back.
Indeed, the cultural pressure cooker of COVID, and in the U. S., the utter absence of a thoughtful, science-based response helped to explode in its raw form the racism and sexism baked into our systems. The high profile murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked a new mass activism. Injustice, implicit bias, and out and out oppression have been clarified. Laid out in the open for all but the least empathetic to see.
And the change is coming and it is good. Unleashing all sorts of talent and innovation. And just as important, exposing the deficiencies of our current hierarchies and systems, such as Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America.
That’s why I am committed and Take The Lead is focused on putting women in all our diversities and intersectionalities at the center of recovery from the pandemic. Our work in 2021 will have a strong intention to help women whose lives and livelihood have been disrupted to reenter the workforce. In so doing, we will also change the systems that have made it hard for so many women to hold onto their jobs and be caregivers simultaneously.
Every CEO who thinks he/she is committed to #DEI needs to read the Enda article and Jessica Valenti’s takedown of #implicitbias re women’s abilities in reaction to Biden’s and Harris’s all-female communications teams: “But why are people who have never had a problem with mostly white male leadership suddenly aghast about a bit of gender homogeneity…?”
A few more examples :
New Nasdaq rules requiring at least a start at diversity on boards:
More women are deliberately leading like women and supporting each other.
Do you feel the power gathering? The power of change?
Here’s your surprise — late breaking news! This progress didn’t just happen. You can be among the lucky people who will have the rare opportunity to be in conversation with leaders who made it happen: the one and only Gloria Steinem and the Oscar winning actor Julianne Moore who played her in the recent film “The Gloria’s” on December 15 at 8 pm eastern time. Moderated by two of the next generation of leaders author and former Essence senior editor Charreah Jackson and filmmaker Jyoti Sarda. Click this graphic or follow the link below to get all the details. But hurry — tickets are limited and going fast.
Click for all information and to register.
GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of four books, most recently No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University and is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Tweet Gloria Feldt.