Why you shouldn’t be an ally

Did you know that ‘Allyship’ is the word of the year, according to Dictionary.com?

This has irritated me, because I really don’t like this word - I get asked about it a lot when I do speaker events and, when I do, I always encourage the audience to not settle for just being an ally, but to go much further than this.

Why do I dislike it so much? Firstly, because it is too passive. Saying you are someone’s ally is like saying to that you will support a cause they feel strongly about, which is not the same as saying you are a champion of a cause yourself. Which leads to my second issue with the concept, that it implies an underlying assumption that the gender equality cause is a women’s cause and that a man chooses (or not!) to be her ally in the fight - rather than seeing it as his fight.

Here’s the thing: we won’t make real progress on gender equality until we stop seeing it as a women’s issue. We need to stop seeing women as the only victims of gender inequality, or as a cause that men need to support and be ‘allies’ to. As long as we see it this way, we will stay stuck where we are: lots of blah blah-ing about ‘allyship’ which is ultimately passive and doesn’t lead to any robust and sustained action.

Gender inequality hurts everyone, everyone loses from it. And everyone wins from gender equality - it makes teams stronger, businesses stronger, relationships stronger, families stronger, societies stronger. So to all the men out there - don’t think of yourself as an ally to women, think of yourself as a gender equality champion.

Let’s retire ‘Allyship’ and make feMANist the word of the year in 2022!