By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Pyschologist
It has been quite difficult to avoid the US election season this year, even if you do not live in the United States. I have avoided writing about it for many reasons including general fatigue with the whole topic and not wanting to further burden people who want to see some other topic discussed in the media. But, today is election day so how can we avoid it? Today is the day to talk about how it matters and how it should not matter that the potential next President of the USA is female.
Like her or loathe her, Hillary Clinton is doing it. She is determined, smart and driven. You should admire her ambition and her sheer stamina in trying to fulfil it. Equally, we should all understand our immediate blind spot that we have as we would never think about a man’s ambition level. We expect them to be ambitious whether they are or not, just as we expect them to be leader-like in their natural born traits whether they are or not. I have written about this many times and Virginia Schein has pioneered this research for 40 years in her “Think Manager, Think Male” work since the early 1970s.
Many countries including countries that do not have clean drinking water have had female premiers, so again no matter what your politics are or personal sentiments are towards Hillary; she is pioneering and going where no woman has gone before in the USA.
Why does it matter that she is a woman? And why does it matter that you are a woman at work?
Sexism is real. I want to thank Trump for helping us see the real and ugly effects of talk and actions that for too long have been described as innocuous. If he wins today, then we know the road ahead for what it is. The issue is on the table at last, a discussion that can be addressed, as it is most dangerous when subverted and it had lurked under the table pretending that we had already sorted it out when we clearly had not.
If Hillary wins today, then we know that she as one person has a lot of work as President and we should be careful that we do not project all our fears and hopes onto her. One woman in charge does not gender parity make and it will be fascinating to see what happens as research has shown that often a woman in charge is not necessarily great for the talent pipeline.
Asking her to run the free world and change gender inequity without help is a disaster waiting to happen. So, many will relish her being judged about the topic just as so many are questioning why Obama did not fix racism. Sometimes it is easier to not be the identity in question. Asking him to fix racism and asking Hillary to fix sexism is in fact racist and sexist and impossible without everyone doing behavior change yet this is pretty much what we ask diversity managers to do every single day at work.
We have written about assimilation and we have talked about the Queen Bee syndrome. Clinton has been given narrow behavioral parameters during the campaign battles from which she can operate, as all women are. The most encouraging element of this game show competition to be President, is that we can see that women are not going to put up with the sexist nonsense anymore and those who do are exposed for the role they play in what was previously covert collusion with the patriarchical status quo. Equally good men, truly good guys are also going to bat for women in their actions. Discussions can be had and progress can be made, as soon as we get out of the messy middle!