Vol 003 | March 11 2021

HOPE

ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET?

Right now it feels like we’re all revving our engines. Countries are unveiling their roadmaps out of lockdown. Everyone’s impatient to get out of here. But where exactly are we headed - beyond an early pitstop at a bar where I can wear proper shoes and mascara?

Drowning in statistics on Covid’s damage to women’s careers, I’ve been trying to imagine a more positive workplace at the end of the track. A few years ago, many corporates started programmes to ‘entice’ midlife women back in to the workforce. Hugely qualified talent, they’d realised, had fallen off the career ladder, and while they weren’t all mothers, it was largely put down to parenthood disproportionately landing on female shoulders. Well good news! This time, there’s no need to wait for boardroom epiphanies. Countless articles and reports have already outlined the situation, and solutions - this piece in Time magazine (“These mothers wanted to care for their kids and keep their jobs. Now they’re suing after being fired”) is just the latest. All we need is someone to read the signs and chart a different course. Ok, I’ll read the signs: “The strong message,” says this Mckinsey report “is that the faster policy makers and business leaders act to push for greater gender equality, even as the COVID-19 crisis continues, the bigger the benefits not just for gender equality but also for economic growth.”

If that economic incentive ($13tr to global GDP, appaz) was acted upon, it could even up-end the ageism that’s crept in to recruitment over the last few decades. Rose-tinted glasses required? Maybe. But think about it - if real strides were made towards making work more compatible with family life, how different would the makeup of companies look? Contrast that with this wryly observed report, still painfully relevant four years after it was written. (If you’ve ever gone for a job in a millennial startup - or just laughed particularly hard at that episode of Working Moms, you’ll enjoy it). But then according to this article, maybe we’ll be disrupting things off our own bat anyway. There are, “two types of creative genius” it claims. One of which just happens to peak in midlife. That ‘wasted year’ might just have been your warm up time…

One thing we all have to decide before our journey back to the future though, is how much of it we really want. Just as FOMO represented the old days, I wonder if having a ‘lockdown weekend’ might become our new shorthand when we just can’t muster up the energy. Covid can at least be credited with forcing more honest conversations around self care and mental health. “The expectation that we could cope with whatever was thrown at us, and more, used to be standard,” writes Deborah Frances-White in this highly relatable piece about feeling thrilled and fearful at the thought of 2019 level calendar entries. “It felt like everyone was selling their capability and their cope-ablity.” How great if when we get to wherever we’re going, those days have been left in the dust. Anything less will feel like we’ve just driven round in circles.

EMPOWER

HOW TO WIN AT BOARD GAMES

This week’s news that women make up only 14% of board members at Hong Kong’s top listed companies (the same number as white men, who are 0.5% of HK’s population), is frustrating but not exactly surprising. We’ve all heard this story before - women are woefully under-represented on company boards... think tanks proclaim new targets... companies make grand pledges for a faraway date (that rarely get followed up). What we don't hear so much about is how women can actually get on to boards themselves. You know, using their own agency and experience and talent and stuff. So here's a refreshingly insightful, very practical guide to doing so. You're welcome.

FIRE

“THE RAGE IS REAL”

As I write, my social media is aflame about 33 year old Londoner Sarah Everard. Her disappearance during a short walk home has unleashed a torrent of fury amongst British women, similar to that from Australian women at the government’s handling of a recent rape claim. Nikki Gemmell’s essay starts out about that case, but quickly becomes universal; a seething eruption of outrage at so much violence against women. Her words will bring tears to your eyes and fire to your belly.

EQUALITY

MEGHAN: BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Arguably, many of the thousands of words written on that interview would have been better replaced with just one: empathy. But these three pieces, both related and not, have added something to my reflections on the whole sorry episode.

1) Helen Lewis’ sympathy for Meghan’s experience doesn’t stop her cool analysis of where this leaves the Sussex brand, or adding context to the wider question of how the Windsors treat women.

“While Meghan has undoubtedly suffered from racism, some of the American coverage has presupposed that her overall treatment is a deviation from a norm of civility and respect awarded to royal wives. Anyone who has grown up in Britain will respond with a hollow laugh.”

2) Rachel Ricketts’ raw descriptions of how devastating misogynoir has been to her mental health, specifically as a black queer woman, and the wider ‘burnout epidemic’ amongst black women generally, is a confronting and sobering read for anyone lucky enough not to know it firsthand.

“We are exhausted, not only from navigating…current events, but the constant, daily anti-Blackness and misogyny inflicted on us… From the expectation that we will and should work ourselves to the bone, if not the grave, in order to save the country, and the world, from itself. Without credit or support. If we dare stand up for ourselves, we’re demonized as angry, entitled, or simply killed.”

3) This is such a beautiful memoir, and one I’ve often thought about since it was published a few years ago. Saima Mir’s evocative account of suffocating in-laws, crippling cultural expectations, and leaving not one but two arranged marriages is a dignified but defiant reminder that everyone deserves happiness. (Recognise Saima? She’s author of The Khan, as featured in the first newsletter.)

“I don’t want to have anything more to do with these people,” I said, looking into my father-in-law’s eyes. A stunned expression spread across his face. He had assumed me to be weak, that a woman who was divorced once would be oppressed and beaten into submission, that I would do anything to avoid the shame again. They had taken my kindness for weakness. But I knew what it meant to be happy, and I knew I deserved better.”

THE PERSIST LIST

GRAB YOUR AIR PODS: I always feel better knowing that somewhere on the internet, Kate Bush is expressing herself through the medium of dance and billowing dresses. Today is the 43rd anniversary of Wuthering Heights going to number one, which seems as good a day as any to skip another Insta scroll and watch this instead. PS: I’ve found my first-night-out-post-lockdown look.

I’d love to hear your thoughts - on these stories, the state of the world or just what the hell’s for dinner tonight. Drop me a line below.

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Main photo by Renee Thompson on Unsplash