if women ruled the world
i shudder to think that people actually believe this, but a harvard business review article this month talks about the many reasons society at large may believe women lack ambition. for those of you who are subscribers, it's well worth a read. as a 33-year-old woman who has spent her life setting and meeting goals and meeting ambitious personal and work challenges alongside plenty of female friends, i can state definitively that there are women out there who have plenty of ambition. and results to prove it.
take my sister-in-law sarah, who has the guts and drive to own and run a successful small business. anoo, my friend, who started two non-profit businesses to raise money for charity. holly, my mentor, who had a brilliant career as a senior manager and chose to leave the business world to apply her ambition to her children and their schools and other equally important passions.
the bbc is currently running a tv series called "if" that examines societal trends in britain and plays out the implications. their commentary is fascinating, the illustrative docu-dramas less so. one of the programmes a few weeks ago was entitled "if women ruled the world." it explored how the world will be a different place if women continue to excel at university, and increase their presence in management roles. trends indicate that with a couple of decades, women will be the dominant rather than the other. the majority. the rule rather than the exception. bbc claims that one of the expected outcomes of this trend is a violent backlash by men, threatened by their displacement.
this a description of a possible future. today we as women are the displaced. the minority in the workforce and the ones whose roles are changing. how are we lashing out? what is our response? and will we even find equal footing, let alone rule the world.
i wonder.
Cause comments are fun... :)
Yesterday I was speculating that it wasn't "ambition" that was lacking, but "conflict". Even that isn't quite right, but closer than then Harvard article, for sure. I found the reason I was thinking that:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/politically_inc.html
Posted by: Brian | April 23, 2004 at 06:52 PM