The Night Owl Session at the Bled Strategic Forum on Monday focused on how to achieve true gender equality and what measures are needed to speed up the process and effect change. The vigorous debate indicated the gender equality movement has momentum but still faces headwinds. It also showed that change at the individual level is not enough, systemic measures are needed.
Entitled More Seats at the Table: Achieving Gender Equality Today, the debate looked at business and politics in particular as the focal points of the struggle for equality, but also other segments of society.
Ms Melanie Seier Larsen, Partner and Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group, opened the floor by recounting how her experience changed her mind about gender quotas.
“Twenty years ago, I was super loud when it came to quotas. I was always saying ‘We don’t need quotas, if a woman is good she will rise to the top.’ Today, I changed my mind,” she said.
While she suffered pay discrimination before, Ms Seier Larsen said she now worked for a company that actively supports women with a variety of policies in place to ensure gender equality not just at lower rungs of the ladder but also in higher echelons, in middle and upper management.
Such policies include flexible forms of work for parents including part-time work. Ms Larsen stressed that these were now established practices, but her company sometimes still struggles to explain to clients why some employees cannot be reached at all times.
Ms Susana Malcorra, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentine Republic, also highlighted the need for systemic change.
One of the issues women must recognize is that it is not enough to be good. You have to be very good, she said. ”I tell women not to think about gender questions through their own personal lense,” she said, noting that a friend once told her gender parity will be achieved when a stupid woman is at the helm of a corporation, because there are so many stupid men in that role now.
Ms Seier Larsen quoted a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) study as showing that at current pace, gender-balanced society will be a reality in 80-100 years. While she said this warranted a systemic approach to this issue, she still believes that “each of us needs to shape the environment around us.”
The moderator Ms Chi Nguyen, a gender equity consultant from Canada, also quizzed the panelists what they thought was the tipping point in the global women’s movement.
Ms Malcorra said she was “very hesitant to talk about a tipping point, because that would mean a radical change has taken place. “We have seen many points that looked like turning the tide, but then time has proven us wrong.”
She said she had seen this issue from many different angles, including during the feminist movements of the 60s and 70s, but in fact things are changing slowly or not at all.
Ms Steph Guthrie, a Canadian activist who creates multimedia resources that help people have constructive conversations about difficult topics and was among others an Impact Producer for the film A Better Man, highlighted the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the ensuing #MeToo movement as a point that stood out for her, but she also cautioned about the notion of tipping points.
Ms Tanja Fajon, Member of European Parliament from Slovenia, was cautious as well, noting that there was still a lot to do. “We are in a process in which we can learn from each other,” she said.
Asked what was holding gender equality back, Ms Gurthie said nobody wanted to believe or admit they had done anything wrong, noting that people should be more willing to reflect on their actions. “There are actual humans participating in these harms, I understand the hesitancy,” she said.
Ms Fajon noted that this was a transformation process than required time, adding that it goes back to the education process.
Ms Seier Larsen attributed the slowness to fear and the well-studied psychological concept of people being more at ease when they surround themselves with people like them. She said that women themselves were often an obstacle as well, in that they can be quite tough against each other in the workplace.
In the ensuing Q&A debate, one male participant mentioned the need for political leaders to be gender sensitive when it comes to putting women on the ballot, which Ms Fajon said was still a difficult proposition in many parts of the world, in particular for more conservative parties.
But Canadian Ambassador to Slovenia Ms Isabelle Poupart noted that Canada offered an example how this was possible, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has established a gender-neutral cabinet. She did note, however, that Trudeau started planning for this immediately when he became the leader of his party, which shows that this is a long process.
The debate heated up when two male members of the audience said whenever gender issues are discussed men should be on the panel since it affects men as well, but that elicited opposition from the female part of the audience.
One participant, who mentioned being told by a court in 2014 two women equaled one men as a witness, opposed their argument by saying that women were entitled to debating this issue without men considering how many millennia they have suffered oppression and had their rights violated.
