Dear evesdropping family. I am sure you have heard all the media frenzy over Gina Rippon’s http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lhs/staff/az-index/rippong/ assertions that we must ‘challenge neuro-nonsense about women’s brains’ ? I felt so strongly about the damage her message might do I wrote her a personal plea. Here it is. Please add your views too in the comments on this blog
Gina Hi
I have been working with Blue Chip organisations who wish to increase senior female representation for 10 years. In that time there has been little or no progress in the numbers of women in power despite all the good policies and research.
In 2003 I began talking about the fact that men and women might be different and approach leadership differently. Not wrong, not right …just different. If they (the City) had had eggs they would have thrown them.
Since that time I have been on a mission to have my message heard. Why? Because I have had 10,000 women go through my programmes and they all tell me the same story – they are different and feel misunderstood.
I have no interest in the nature-nurture debate. Clearly it is both.
What worries me about your recent approach is that we are heading back to the good old days of ‘shhh…don’t talk about it because it causes stereotyping’ and my belief is that unless we accept where we are we cant move forward.
I have just launched this http://www.genderiq.tv/ to help organisations to move forward on this political subject and I encourage debate. I also talk about gender being on a scale of masculine/feminine leadership traits. There is no longer a need for the Thatcher stereotype of ‘bloke in a skirt’ and to avoid women having to go down this road we need to talk about differences and encourage a wider range of acceptable leadership styles.
I hope that we can speak and get on the same page. At the very least we must agree that testosterone causes different behaviour in men and women
Hear Hear! Keep up the good work, Tracey!