I don’t mean to spoil your joy of International Women’s Day but let’s be serious. How can you celebrate being squeezed in between International Sex Workers Rights Day and World Kidney Day. If this is the only time that we recognize the contributions that women have and will make, we do a disservice to them.
The reality is that this must be International Century of Women in leadership.
Consider what male leadership has accomplished over the past 100 years. We have a climate that is becoming uninhabitable for many and leading to weather challenges around the globe. We have communication technologies that connect people everywhere but at the expense of intrusive and dangerous breaches of our privacy. We have a rise in autocracies that are governed exclusively by males that are seeking to control populations with an emphasis on controlling women.
I’m not disparaging the abundant positive contributions to health and general welfare. But let’s be candid. The disparity between the haves and have nots has never been greater and it continues to widen. Male leadership has created wars, heightened discrimination and inequality around the world.
Women must be given the opportunity to lead. It’s not that they are not qualified.
Women represent over 50% of all law graduates, up from under 9% in 1970.
Women represent 59% of all graduate school students.
The fact is that in arts and humanities, biology, education, health, public administration and behavioral sciences we graduate significantly more women than men. Not only graduate but women also lead in both masters and PHD candidates. Men dominate in math and engineering and are only slightly ahead in business or earth sciences.
Truthfully, in most areas of society we have more qualified women than we do men. It is time for that to be reflected in our leadership.
Celebrate Womens Day if you like. But mourn the opportunities we have lost because of the lack of diversity in leadership. Use this as a day of commitment to change, because the sooner we see it happen the sooner we come close to achieving the potential for a better world!
