YOUR PERSPECTIVE: Working together to achieve gender equality
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As we mark International Women’s Day this week, I think it’s important for men to consider how they can be allies in the fight for gender equity. While this day provides us with the opportunity to reflect on how we can better support women, and achieve equity — quite honestly, it’s something we should be thinking about everyday. Especially when women continue to tell us that change is desperately needed. Perhaps we should feel a bit troubled that they even need to tell us.
Sometimes, men are surprised when a woman shares a negative or unsafe experience — whether it’s in the workplace, in the home, or in the community. But just because we as men have never experienced certain situations or behaviours, it doesn’t make them any less real for the women who do.
One way we can be allies is to listen earnestly, and to avoid going on the defensive when these feelings are shared with us. Instead of taking their words as a personal attack, we can see them as an opportunity for growth. Because things will never get better in the boardrooms, offices, neighbourhoods, or homes that we share with women if they can’t speak freely about their experiences, and if we can’t look inward and reflect on how we can help make things better.
We often celebrate the increasing number of women in political life, in senior management roles, in traditionally-male-dominated industries – as we should – but we also need to think about how we treat women once they get there.
