Esther’s blog: Women ahead – a cause for celebration?

"We have two women here who have got on and had a very constructive discussion. Two women who, if I may say so, get on with the job and want to deliver the best results for the people of the UK and the people of Germany.”  This is what Theresa May is reported as saying of her first meeting with Angela Merkel, having fought her leadership election against another woman widely discredited by the press for suggesting motherhood increased leadership capability. Elsewhere in the UK, Angela Eagel triggered the challenge to Corbyn for the Labour leadership. And across the Atlantic, we have the gladiatorial fight between Trump and Clinton, Boris’s "sadistic nurse in a mental hospital".

Two years ago, if someone had asked me how I might feel if women ran the UK, Germany, America--and of course there are other female premieres out there —my first reaction might have been ‘pretty chuffed’.  But I find the focus on gender in politics now this 'revolution’ seems to be happening (‘seems’ because we can make no assumptions about America, given Brexit), leaves me a bit cold. It is bad enough the press make a fuss about gender, but May herself has taken up the rhetoric.  I do not like the quiet triumphalism of her tone, the subtext of which is “we women are soberly putting right what you men screwed up”.  Of course there are physical gender-associated variations, but men in the City do not club their opponents over the head when negotiating deals.  You may say that metaphorically they do, but that’s my point: men are perfectly capable of managing primitive instincts just as women have the capacity to forge a career in the jungle rather than following an ancient biological imperative to nurse their brood next to the cave fire.

As I’ve blogged before, my greatest learning from working with WorkLife Central has not been to see how women can progress, but how men and women need equal support with parenting. If women imply fathers are less competent as parents,  men will be less likely to take an active role in parenting.  If Theresa May treats male MPs like immature boys (Borris, even), they will have every excuse to carry on behaving that way. I'm sure we could learn more about equal parenting from same-sex parents – if there is a more domestic partner, how was that defined, and does it remain static over time?  But I digress.  One lesson from Brexit is that the intelligentsia press can be horribly smug and horribly wrong and so can the rest of us. It would be helpful if the press could focus their reporting not on the colour of people’s jackets, or even perhaps those people’s gendered gaffs, but on the substance of what they are saying.

Esther is a member of the WorkLife Central Network Committee and runs the WorkLife Central mentoring scheme. She trained and first made her living as a musician and then worked for over two decades in the City, becoming a partner in her law firm. She now combines legal consultancy, executive coaching, performing the piano, teaching and two non-executive Board positions in what seems to have turned into a third, portfolio career.