Pyramid

What a month March has been on the gender equality front. Along with many others, I spent International Women’s Day and the rest of the week talking about why women still hold less than 10% of the leadership positions in business and society, which was shown to be somewhat of a ‘luxury gender issue’ by the reminder of Sarah Everard’s murder that women still aren’t even safe to walk home at night. I have always been very careful to put what I talk about in the context of a ‘Gender Equality Pyramid’, with the bottom of the pyramid issues of women’s physical and sexual safety and security being the base fundamentals that must be addressed as our number 1 priority. I found myself feeling somewhat embarrassed to have been focusing on why more women aren’t leaders in this context, but then I reminded myself that it’s all connected of course. If we had more women represented at the top tables, issues that affect women would be discussed and addressed. If we saw and got used to seeing more women in leadership roles, instead of images of them in the kitchen or as sex objects, we would be more likely to see them held in equal esteem and treated with equal respect as men. A balanced top of the pyramid would quickly eliminate this horrendous bottom. This alone is reason enough to fight for equality.