Half the seats please

One of my biggest frustrations in the gender equality work I do is with the people who like to say that gender inequality isn’t really an issue anymore, that women and men have equal opportunities now, more or less (and, yes, it’s not just men I hear this from - for a woman I find it a really quite astonishing view to hold).

Anyway, the only positive thing about the recent US-China Summit was that it gave us photographic evidence of exactly where we are today on gender equality: nowhere. There were 24 men in the meeting and zero women. I may need to carry this photo around with me so I have a ready response to the people who think we’re living in an equal world.

This is very simple - if women and their expertise, knowledge and views were truly respected, they would be present in rooms like this. And I mean really present, not a token few for the optics but a genuine, strong representation. What’s interesting here is that clearly nobody was focused on the optics (which usually someone is, so we do see a few women’s faces on these occasions and that makes everyone feel a bit better). But here we got to see how women are really valued beneath the layer of political correctness: not at all.

A few have pointed out the irony of this in the context of the Chinese slogan from the 1960s ‘Women can hold up half the sky”. Yes we can, but not if we are not in the room and at the table. Half of the men in that room should not have been there, because it is simply not possible that 100% of the most talented, expert candidates to be there can be men. So by definition that room was less competent than it could have been if it was drawing on the best people in the US & China, not just the best men.

Women are ready, willing and able to hold up half the sky - but we’re going to need half the seats please.