Is gender an issue in Transition? Todays guest post is from Fiona Ward: About 18 months ago, I invited the women of the TN staff and board to an evening meeting to begin to explore our experience of working in the Transition movement. We discovered that our reasons for wanting to get together and our perspectives on gender were many and various. But some common themes emerged and we agreed to explore them. To best do this, we felt it was important that we had a space to talk freely and openly with other women (and this need is understood and supported by the men in our organisation). We have been meeting every 2-3 months or so since then, and it’s a wonderful mix of a lot of great food, fascinating stimulating conversation and a strong sense of mutual support, connection and understanding. We don’t have a set agenda and we don’t aim to produce/do things per se, though usually someone will facilitate a discussion that naturally emerges from the opening check-in. Our group is called Women in Transition (WiT). We wanted to share with you some of the useful things that have emerged so far, and really welcome your comments and reflections. My experience I initiated this group due to a growing interest in gender issues, both within myself and in the world I operate in. Personally, I have been seeing more clearly how my upbringing and wider societal values has led to some over development of my masculine traits, and a disregard for some of the more feminine ones. While I appreciate and value my academic capacity, and ability to get things done which certainly helps in my leadership roles, I am understanding more about how this contributes to a sense of imbalance in both my work life and my personal one. I am also more aware of, and interested in, my unconscious role in perpetuating gender stereotypes and how I bring that into my work. And when I see others doing it, how can I better articulate the issue and challenge it skilfully? For example, I have been raising the issue of gender in our REconomy national hubs group. All of the 5 hubs in this initial REconomy group are represented by men, and I am the only woman. When I have tried to discuss this with the group, somewhat tentatively, I have felt the responses reflected a belief that gender isn’t an issue in this case, it’s coincidental that the lead/strategic role is filled by a man and there’s no need for further discussion or curiosity about the issue and our respective experiences. Now I don’t know anything about the specific gender issues in each of these very different European cultures (Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Netherlands & Latvia) and I’d be interested to hear more from the women involved in the national movements – is this also their experience, that it’s not an issue? Regardless, my hope is that this post will help me better articulate the issues in future conversations, stimulate a curiosity around our various perspectives and experiences and provide a framing for a more satisfying exchange of views. Voices One of the starting points for our WiT group discussion was a desire that a balance of both women’s and men’s voices should be heard speaking publicly for and about the Transition movement. We wanted to understand better what stops many women from taking up leadership/figurehead positions even though they are heavily engaged in the work. How might we support women to develop the confidence and skills they need to volunteer for these roles? And how can we be alert to, and address, the unconscious bias that can prevent women from being chosen as public speakers and representatives of our organisations? However, as we talked we identified a deeper level of enquiry which felt a little more elusive but just as important (perhaps more important) to the health of groups within the Transition movement. Values We discussed the value we place on different qualities, skills, activities and roles and how that influences the way we work together. We know that our culture tends to attach a lesser value to attributes and behaviours which are aligned to the feminine, than to attributes and behaviours which are traditionally viewed as masculine. The higher value attached to ‘masculine’ roles, skills and activities shows itself in many ways – through the status and authority accorded to certain roles, through the extent to which we notice, acknowledge and appreciate particular skills or behaviour, through wages, through the time and resources we allocate to particular activities. And this unconscious process of attaching a value can happen at many levels – within each of us as individuals (which parts of my personality dominates and which parts do I tend to override?), within groups and within society. We’ve started to compile a table which pairs ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ roles, activities, skills and behaviours. At the moment, it looks like this: Feminine Masculine Facilitators Key note speakers Co-ordinators/Suppo... buff.ly/1tbzt…
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:51:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015