Rush to hear powerful women speak may be a watershed moment
Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton find eager audience at board of trade events
Well, it’s a good thing they didn’t invite Oprah!
The high demand for the nearly 2,800 tickets to Michelle Obama’s Feb. 15 speech here nearly crashed the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s website. Within a few hours, board members had snapped up every ticket, leaving no chance for anyone else to purchase one.
Last month, the board’s event featuring Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state and should-have-been president, was also sold out.
Is this a watershed? Is it possible that finally, the most powerful and influential people — still mostly men — are eager to hear what women have to say and are taking their clients and colleagues along with them?
One hopes that this signals a new-found openness to hearing and understanding the lived experiences of women. As Clinton noted during her recent visit, unconscious bias often penalizes women as much as overt discrimination does.
Unconscious bias, overt discrimination, sexual assault, harassment and humiliation are the realities driving the #MeToo movement, which is itself only the most recent iteration of women’s centuries-long struggle for equality.
That movement gathered momentum this week when Hollywood’s black-gowned glitterati spoke out. Oprah Winfrey eloquently and forcefully made the point that time’s up, that for too long women have not dared or been given the space to speak their truth to men.
But she noted that even powerful women can’t do it alone. “When that new day finally dawns,” she said, “it will be because of a lot of magnificent women … and some phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who will take us to the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me, too’ again.”
Obama has been no less outspoken than Winfrey and Clinton on women’s rights. She, too, has given memorable speeches about her hope that her daughters won’t have to deal with some of the obstacles she faced trying to compete in a society dominated by white men.
While Canadians have largely been spared the paroxysms of division fomented by Donald Trump’s campaign and subsequent election, it doesn’t mean divisions don’t exist and aren’t deeply ingrained here. Last month, a survey of Canadian chief executives found that only four per cent believe sexual assault is a problem in their companies and only six per cent believe sexual harassment is. Fewer than 20 per cent said gender discrimination occurs in their workplaces.
Of the 153 participants in the Gandalf survey, 95 per cent were men.
“That needs to change,” says Janet Austin, CEO of the Metro Vancouver YWCA and a former chair of the board of trade. “We need leadership in those positions and we need to take steps to make those changes.”
But as she notes, it’s not only about having more women in those roles.
The #MeToo movement has highlighted the pervasiveness of the problems. What has yet to be proven is whether the current wave of support for change will translate into long-term commitments to better policies and a recognition of the professional harms caused to women who have been subjected to sexual harassment or have been assaulted.
“We need to institutionalize those things within the cultures of organizations and ensure that they’re not just being done at this discrete point in time,” says Austin.
That means that men need to step up as well, particularly those in leadership positions. They need to challenge their male colleagues if they encounter inappropriate, locker-room type behaviour.
Nowhere is it appropriate to harass, belittle and demean women — neither in the private sector nor in the public sector.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna shouldn’t have had to confront Rebel media’s B.C. bureau chief in November and demand that Christopher Wilson stop calling her “climate Barbie.”
Like Obama, like Clinton, like Winfrey, McKenna said she was doing it for her two daughters and other girls who might want to get into politics, but were dissuaded by the way women are treated.
We’ve had high-profile cases where judges acquitted rapists after suggesting that their victims should have kept their knees together or fought harder.
Canadian women earned just 87 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2015, according to Statistics Canada’s latest figures.
They remain the primary caregivers for both children and for the elderly.
They account for just one out of every four senior managers.
Only a quarter of all members of Parliament are women. Canada has had only one female prime minister and that was 23 years ago, and Kim Campbell’s tenure was less than a year.
And it bears pointing out that Vancouver has yet to have a female mayor.
All of this is, no doubt, evident to the women who make up a majority of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s directors and hold the top four positions on the board. And it’s almost certain that both Clinton and Obama were invited to speak here as catalysts to help create the critical mass needed for substantive and lasting change.
We need to institutionalize those things within the cultures of organizations.