Storyteller Chimamanda Ngozi Adhichie talks about Gender Equality and feminism in her TED x Euston talk, have a listen.
In her engaging talk Chimamanda recounts her childhood stories of school where the teachers would announce that the student with highest marks in test will be made a class monitor. A class monitor is one who patrols the class and keeps a cane in his/her hand to discipline noise makers. Chimamanda scored highest in class but a young boy scored second highest. And so, he was chosen as class monitor because he was more suited to the role (obviously according to the teacher). Much later in life on her visits to Lagos in Nigeria, Chimamanda observed a similar attitude of society in general towards women. She goes on to say that in our modern world there are more men in positions of power than women. In words of a Kenyan noble prize winner Wangari Mathaai, “the higher you go the fewer women they are.”
So that is Nigeria. How about in our own backyard? Here in North America we see that too. Between a man and a woman both equally qualified for the same job, the man is paid more. We have evolved but it seems that our ideas of gender have not evolved.
She challenges conventional wisdom and raises many questions such as “What if while raising our children we focus on ability and not their gender?” And that culture does not make people, people make culture by focussing on people’s ability and not gender. In her words, feminist is a man or a woman who says, “Yes there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.”
While we may say that much of this stuff happens in developing nation, here’s a study that reveals our own state of affairs: According to a study and report compiled by Deloitte Canada and Carleton University women held only 29 per cent of senior management positions in Canada in 2011, although they constituted 47 per cent of the workforce, just a six per cent increase since 1987. And there is significant variation across industries, with energy, retail and wholesale and manufacturing well below average levels. If the rate of change remained constant, just 37 per cent of senior management positions will be held by women in 2035.