Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves

Happy International Women’s Day y'all! It’s a big one: 100 years ago from today, the Women’s Day was first marked with rallies campaigning for women’s right to work, vote, be trained and hold public office among other things. The first three women had just been elected to Finnish parliament.

We have come a long way since. But not long enough. Women still get paid less than men, are victims of domestic violence, are being discriminated because there is a chance of them getting pregnant and are still being harassed.

The UK government recently, unsurprisingly, rejected the compulsory boardroom quota for women. Instead, the companies were given a meaningless warning to increase the number of women in boardrooms. 

Currently 18 FTSE 100 companies have no female directors at all and nearly half of all FTSE 250 companies do not have a woman in the boardroom. Then again, the government itself is not exactly doing well equality-wise, with only four female members in the cabinet of 23.

Luckily it looks like the EU is planning to force a 20% quota in European boardrooms. At the moment, women make up only 3% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and in Europe, only 12% of positions on boards are occupied by women. As low as 20% sounds like, it’s still an improvement.

And it’s not all bad news. All across the world, women are taking things to their own hands. Hollaback is a movement started in New York, and now also working in London, dedicated to ending street harassment. They are working on abolishing the cultural acceptance of sexual harassment. It's not just a "feminists' attempt to ban the fun". Do a little gallup among your girlfriends, I bet you find more than one case where they have been groped by a stranger, “because, you know, wearing skirt that short means that you’re gagging for it anyway”. And ask them how they felt about it. 

As well-meaning and lovely the men in our lives are, the equality is not going to happen without women demanding it. Nobody is going to do it for us. And sisters, we are doing it for ourselves. 

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Boss?

Today I did a training course, provided by work, about Influencing Skills. I didn’t become a master of manipulator, as you might guess, but instead I did learn how to communicate effectively with different types of people. And hopefully learned what in my style of communication may confuse or annoy people (waving those hands around, get too passionate about things and making up my own procedures to reach the common goals).
In the end of the day we had a look at case studies, fictional, of course. One of them being a case of a highflying negotiator, making a lot of money for the company, closing deals, but failing to communicate with rest of the staff. Sound familiar? I thought so.


We all know these super achievers with zero emotional intelligence. They don’t like to be told what to do. To get them do what you want, you should get them to believe it was all their idea in the first place. You should give them options and let them decide.


Except that I don’t think that is right. I don’t think we need to give in to these egoistical rhinos who don’t care whose feelings they hurt and whose dreams they destroy on their way to another success. Who make workplace unbearable for a dozen of people just so they can get better results.

It’s not rocket science to treat people with respect. I think that rather than understanding their despotic manners, companies should offer them treatment, like they do to alcoholics. When they have reached a sufficient level of personal development, they could be released back to the society, even work environment. Reformed. Humanbeings.