I have been doing this series of dinners and lunches focused on women leaders.
Several different aims, of which one is “learn about the way women prefer to work, and what that means for me”. The future is female, after all. So better get ready.
Other aims include “Given that there does not appear to be a clear leadership and strategic direction (to me) behind the movement for women’s equality, ask about that and invite the assembled women to take a leadership role.”
Virtually all women leaders I have met consider the project of equality to be a frustrating problem, but rarely do they “own the solution”. These women are CEOs and Investors and Board Directors. They are powerful. But rarely do they say “I am working on this problem, with these other allies, using this strategy and here is where we are.”
I find this disappointing. There are few problems I am mad about but do not have some specific agenda on. The last year I ratcheted this up quite a bit with the #resist projects I got involved in, including developing the ideas for new financial markets activism (with Transform Finance, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller), supporting a Good Cambridge Analytica (with some political and Ad tech visionaries), and working on engagement between tech and Red State/tech laggard locales (in collaboration with SparkMicroGrants, WorkAwesome, New America/Shift Commission + Knotel).
What about Women’s Empowerment. Well we work on this a bit at Knotel. Here is what we do: http://tiny.cc/knotelvalues
How about women? Shouldn’t they be teaming up in some explicit fashion, I have ben thinking?
Yesterday’s lunch I heard a persuasive view.
Well, why should they? Why is it a woman’s job to fix a world made by men? If something is broken, should the community that made this system and currently profits most from it be the first port of call for improving it?
Yes, that’s right. Challenge accepted.