Whether walking with the world's leaders in U.S. Congressional corridors, along Davos' icy streets or Oxford's cobblestone paths, there has been one constant: I have been one of a handful of women in a crowd of men. Sometimes I have been the only woman in the room. So when I recently received notice that I was selected by the World Economic Forum as a 2012 Young Global Leader it was a strange sensation to see that a remarkable 41 percent of my new community -- 78 of the 192 leaders -- are female.
How unique. And how good for the world.
Given the severity of challenges confronting our global society, we can no longer afford to leave half our brains or half our resources on the sidelines. To use a sailing analogy, we need all hands on deck.
As we observe International Women's Day on March 8, we can and should celebrate some dramatic progress: Women are healthier and more educated than ever before. But as detailed in the World Economic Forum's recent Gender Parity Report, all that healthy, smart 'manpower' is not being deployed -- economically or politically. Women are half of the global population... but hold less than one fifth of positions in national governments, a meager 9.4 percent of board directorships and only 20 percent of senior management positions globally. According to Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, U.S. Department of State, the political and economic realities are intertwined--progress (or lack thereof) in one dimension reinforces progress in the other.
This is to society's detriment. World Bank President Robert Zoellick has emphasized that the empowerment of women is smart economics: Studies reveal that investments in women yield substantial social and economic returns. These global studies and indices make the economic and societal case for parity while McKinsey studies and others document the business case of improved corporate performance. But the common sense argument is just as important: When we have diversity of thought, diversity of leadership styles, we -- all of us -- are better governed and have more sustainable growth. Those lovely twin goals of peace and prosperity that humanity is striving for are much more achievable when all our talent is contributing.
We also need to abandon remnants of imperialist mindsets. Simply put, leaders need to represent those they are leading. As Ambassador Verveer highlights, "[Women] are significantly outnumbered in the chambers of parliaments, provincial councils, and more often than not missing from the negotiating tables where conflicts are to be resolved. All too often decisions that affect women, their families, and societies are made without women having a voice."
Fixing this global handicap will not happen by accident -- policy changes by businesses and governments are necessary for change. Without fail, every time I engage in discussions on how to fix such tremendous inequality, some argue that affirmative action promoting women will completely erode meritocracy, advancing the unqualified over the qualified. For that to be true, there would have to be a dearth of capable, qualified women leaders in the world. I know that to be fundamentally false -- as clearly does the World Economic Forum. Access to leadership roles is not my entitlement as a woman. It is my responsibility as a global citizen to show up, to have a voice, to contribute my time and talents in service to society.
Looking through the lens of the Forum where 41 percent of the next generation of leaders are women, I can glimpse a future walking around Congress, Davos, Oxford among a sea change of faces -- men and women reflecting our beautifully diverse world. The Forum is to be lauded and applauded for being the change they wish to see in the world. Let us hope -- for all our sakes -- that it heralds a world with true diversity of thought where leaders reflect and represent all of humanity.
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The people who clamor for more women leaders are probably not supporters of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Marine Le Pen, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.
Divorce lawyers, like any other professional group, will seek conditions that are good for business. What makes attorneys different from, say, engineers or salespeople, is that a) they know precisely how to lobby for changes to the legal system, bypassing voters and the US constitution, that guarantees more revenue for them, and b) what benefits them is directly harmful to the fabric of society in general, and to children in particular. When they collude with rage-filled 'feminists' who would gladly send innocent men to concentration camps if they could, the outcome is catastrophic.
3) Prior to the invention of contraception, female promiscuity carried the huge risk of pregnancy, and the resultant poverty and low social status. It was virtually impossible for any women to have more than 2-3 sexual partners in her lifetime without being a prostitute, itself an occupation of the lowest social status.
4) Divorce carried both social stigma and financial losses for a woman. Her prospects for remarriage were slim. Religious institutions, extended clans, and broader societal forces were pressures to keep a woman committed to her marriage, and the notion of leaving simply out of boredom was out of the question.
We earlier discussed why marriage was created, but equally important were the factors that sustained the institution and kept it true to its objectives. The reasons that marriage 'worked' not too long ago were :
1) People married at the age of 20, and usually died by the age of 50. People were virgins at marriage, and women spent their 20s tending to 3 or more children. The wife retained her beauty 15 years into the marriage, and the lack of processed junk food kept her slim even after that. This is an entirely different psychological foundation than the present urban feminist norm of a woman marrying at the age of 34 after having had 10 or more prior sexual relationships, who then promptly emerges from her svelte chrysalis in an event that can best be described as a fatocalypse.
2) It was entirely normal for 10-20% of young men to die or be crippled on the battlefield, or in occupational accidents. Hence, there were always significantly more women than able-bodied men in the 20-40 age group, ensuring that not all women could marry. Widows were common and visible, and vulnerable to poverty and crime.
You are in reality a critical thinker! I don't agree with your positions, but at least you articulate them well
....when you want to!
Female entry into the workforce is generally a positive development for society, and I would be the first to praise this, if it were solely on the basis of merit (as old-school feminists had genuinely intended). Unfortunately, too much of this is now due to corrupt political lobbying to forcibly transfer resources from men to women.
4) Female-Centric social engineering : Above and beyond the pro-woman divorce laws, further state interventions include the subsidization of single motherhood, laws that criminalize violence against women (but offer no protection to men who are the victims of violence by women, which happens just as often), and 'sexual harassment' laws with definitions so nebulous that women have the power to accuse men of anything without the man having any rights of his own.
1) Easy contraception (condoms, pills, and abortions): In the past, extremely few women ever had more than one or two sexual partners in their lives, as being an unwed mother led to poverty and social ostracization. Contraception made it possible for females to conduct campaigns to act on their urges of hypergamy. 2) 'No fault' divorce, asset division, and alimony : In the past, a woman who wanted to leave her husband needed to prove misconduct on his part. Now, the law has changed to such a degree that a woman can leave her husband for no stated reason, yet is still entitled to payments from him for years to come. This incentivizes destruction because it enables women to transfer the costs of irresponsible behavior onto men and children.
This is not to deny that genuine atrocities like genital mutilation have been perpetrated against women; they have and still are. But men also experienced atrocities of comparable horror at the same time, which is simply not mentioned. In fact, when a man is genitally mutilated by a woman, other women actually find this humorous, and are proud to say so publicly.
It is already wrong when a contemporary group seeks reparations from an injustice that occurred over a century ago to people who are no longer alive. It is even worse when this oppression itself is a fabrication. The narrative of female oppression by men should be rejected and refuted as the highly selective and historically false narrative that it is. In fact, this myth is evidence not of historical oppression, but of the vastly different propensity to complain between the two genders.
Warfare has been a near constant feature of human society before the modern era, and whenever two tribes or kingdoms went to war with each other, the losing side saw many of its fighting-age men exterminated, while the women were assimilated into the invading society. Now, becoming a concubine or a housekeeper is an unfortunate fate, but not nearly as bad as being slaughtered in battle as the men were. To anyone who disagrees, would you like for the men and women to trade outcomes?Most of this narrative stems from 'feminists' comparing the plight of average women to the topmost men (the monarch and other aristocrats), rather than to the average man. This practice is known as apex fallacy, and whether accidental or deliberate, entirely misrepresents reality. To approximate the conditions of the average woman to the average man () in the Western world of a century ago, simply observe the lives of the poorest peasants in poor countries today.
There is one part of American society clearly dominated by women: public school education. Does anyone think that our public schools are doing a good job? If women have failed there, why should we believe they will be successful in other fields?