Men’s role in investing in an equitable world. Yes, it starts with US
By: Vishal Talreja
Tags: Women, Patriarchy, Feminism, Men, Privilege

Men’s role in investing in an equitable world. Yes, it starts with US

Me, Occupying Spaces

An inspiring new university has recently come up with the generosity and capital of private investors. Most of their founders and board members are men who needed to make hefty contributions to get a seat as a founder / trustee. A lazy criterion considering that the number of wealthy women in India and worldwide are miniscule thus leaving them out from a seat on their table. It’s a university that aims to nurture the next generation of fearless leaders who will solve the tough challenges of the planet and yet, it does not reflect the voice of nearly 50% of our population, thus perpetuating the problem they are claiming to solve.

A state government recently launched a new programme to inspire the next generation of young entrepreneurs by providing them seed capital and giving wings to their dreams and aspirations. I love the bold, radical idea and the gumption of the government to make it happen. At its launch, earlier this week, a bunch of young people (including girls) shared the stage with political, business and social leaders sharing their ideas and experiences of the programme. The young people shared the stage with six men — all very successful and inspiring. But do we not see the irony here? The clear message going out to young men and women is that the face of success is always men. I know most of the men on the stage and know them to be deeply inspiring, sensitive, and self-aware human beings and yet they seem to have missed a critical detail when showing up at this forum; if we want young girls to become entrepreneurs, we need to have successful women business leaders as role-models also at the forum.

A well-known business leader is consistently seen on various all-male panels or manels and proud representative on various corporate boards, invariably most of them all-male boards and the irony again is when one realizes that he also sits on the board of an education charity focused on girls’ education.

A well-known social sector consulting firm hosted a series of manels over the last few months. When a successful leader called them out on social media, instead of acknowledging her point-of-view, they chose to delete the comments.

We have, of course, seen the multitude of manels through the years. We have seen full-page advertisements of global leadership forums that have only or mostly male speakers.

I know I have been guilty of perpetuating this patriarchal narrative for many many years.

I wonder, if we, grown accomplished men, could step back and reflect on the impact this has on young boys and girls? What does it mean for them to grow up in a world dominated by men? A world where you see men and lots of them when you walk the streets, where men occupy public spaces, transport, business and public life, where men own wealth, lead businesses and make up most of the parliament. Can you imagine, just the amount of space that men take up all around us. Well, you don’t have to, you can just see it.

What happens when boys and girls grow up seeing only images of successful men, hear mostly voices of successful men and attend events where only successful men are represented? It depletes the women’s sense of identity and deservability, their presence as they navigate public spaces occupied by men, their creative confidence, and the spaces they choose to occupy or not occupy. And it perpetuates the inflated sense of entitlement, for the next generation of boys, that we adult men are currently suffering from. This ultimately effects how our societies are shaped or rather how it remains unchanged in some respects.

We only must look at some of the startling facts presented at https://inequality.org/facts/gender-inequality/ to know this. While the data is largely from the US and other developed countries, I reckon its equally true for India. The quotes, “The global trend towards extreme wealth and income concentration has dramatically strengthened the economic and political power of those individuals — overwhelmingly male — at the top. In the United States and around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low-paying jobs.” It further states, 1) Women are scarce at the top and overrepresented at the bottom of corporate jobs 2) Women make up a small percentage of Top U.S. earners while men continue to dominate wall street’s upper echelons 3) Peak of Income scale in high-income countries is mostly male 4) Women make up a small percentage of global billionaires. In 2018, only 256 women ranked among the world’s 2208 billionaires and other startling statistics.

I don’t say this from a sense of moral-high-handedness. I know I am as guilty of perpetuating this gender bias, being blind to my own privilege and growing up occupying spaces at home, school and in public, believing that I am smarter than the women around me. I write this, as a plea, to the men I know, admire and am inspired by, that it’s up to us now, to recognize our unearned privilege, know how our presence creates skewed narratives, how our voices leave out other important voices and how it makes an entire gender invisible. If we are truly invested in an equitable world where men and women have an equal shot at success, it is time for us to become aware of how much space we occupy and its impact on young people.

Some of my own exploration in the last decade has helped me.

First, I learnt about diversity; ensuring there are women who have a seat on the table — be it on the Board and in other leadership roles. However, I realized diversity becomes tokenism if there is no inclusion where the women have voice and agency. This was still the bare minimum because I realized the challenge was with me. I didn’t have listening for a women’s perspectives and would often dismiss them as being too impractical or not pragmatic or too emotional…. the list went on. So, I needed to invest in creating an enabling environment for those voices to not just be heard, but for them to belong. This journey has taken me quite a few years and I am still just scratching the surface of unpacking my own biases.

At the level of diversity, inclusion and belonging, I believe we, as men, can begin to take the lead. This means declining to be on manels, refusing to join boards and committees where majority of the members are men, consciously been silent in public forums even though we might have a lot to say, holding back our opinions and views, taking increasingly less space in public, always reflecting on how we are choosing to show up in spaces where young men and women are watching us, and calling out gender-bias when our peers don’t see this.

Let’s also recognize that this is only the first step towards unmasking our patriarchal privilege. The multitude of other voices that are invisible and silenced including those belonging to other minority genders, religions, race, caste, class, sexual orientation, etc. will take a lifetime of men’s investment in their loss of privilege. At the least, let’s begin our journeys where we become self-aware, take certain stands, consciously yield the spaces we occupy and invest in unpacking our biases. Only then can we stop being hypocrites who claim to believe in gender equity, without investing in own our loss to make it happen.

only then can the invisible voices begin to shine.