In 2023, I had had enough of hearing tech bros blaming unconscious bias for all the ways in which AI was weaponised against women. Decided to demonstrate intent, I wrote Techno-Patriarchy: How AI is Misogyny’s New Clothes, originally published in The Mint.
In the article, I detailed 12 ways this technology is used against women, from reinforcing stereotypes to pregnancy surveillance. One shocked me to my core: Non-consensual sexual synthetic imagery (aka “deepfake porn”).
It was completely horrifying, dehumanizing, degrading, violating to just see yourself being misrepresented and being misappropriated in that way.
It robs you of opportunities, and it robs you of your career, and your hopes and your dreams.
Noelle Martin, “deepfake porn” victim, award-winning activist, and law reform campaigner.
So I continued to write about the dire consequences of this technology for victims and the legal vacuum, as well as denounced the powerful ecosystem (tech, payment processors, marketplaces) that fostered and profited from them.
I also made a point to bring awareness about how this technology is harming women and girls in spaces where the topic of “deepfakes” was explored broadly. I organised events, appeared on podcasts, and participated in panels, such as “The Rise of Deepfake AI” at the University of Oxford; all opportunities were fair game to bring “deepfake porn” to the forefront.
This week, I had 30 minutes to convince over 80 women in tech – and allies – to become advocates against non-consensual sexual synthetic imagery. The feedback I received from the keynote was very positive, so I’m sharing my talking points with you below.
I hope that by the end of the article, (a) you are convinced that we need to act now, and (b) you have decided how you will help to advocate against this pandemic.
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The State of Play
All that’s wrong with using the term “deepfake porn”
I had an aha moment when I realised the disservice the term “deepfake porn” was doing to addressing this issue.
“Deepfake” honours the name of the Reddit user who shared on the platform the first synthetic intimate media of actresses. When paired with the label “porn”, it may wrongly convey the idea that it’s consensual. Overall, the term lacks gravitas, disregarding harms.
From a legal perspective, the use of the term “deepfake” may also hinder the pursuit of justice. There have been cases where filing a lawsuit using the term deepfakes when referring to a “cheapfake” — which consists of a fake piece of media created with conventional methods of doctoring images rather than AI — has blocked prosecution.
“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” — American Psychological Association
About a month ago, I started listening to Soraya Chemaly’s book The Resilience Myth. I stopped after 20 minutes.
Not because I didn’t like it, but because that was enough to convince me of her thesis that “our modern version of resilience is a bill of goods sold to us by capitalism, colonialism, and ideologies that embrace supremacy over others” and that in reality “resilience is always relational.”
It made me realise how deeply the “resilience” myth — the delusion that resilience is only an individual skill — has been running through my veins, and even how I contributed to its propagation.
The reason? Individual resilience has served me to a point. During times of adversity, I would tell myself that I “just” had to build more resilience because, at some point, things would improve “somehow.” My mission was not to crack until that moment.
But then I realised that’s not serving us well in these turbulent moments. Individual resilience is becoming very close to resignation.
“We “just” need to wait four years for the next election.”
“We “just” need more male allies.”
“We “just” need more diverse leadership.”
And in the interim, we’re asked to “hang in there,” “understand that’s tough for everybody,” and “think that others are worse off than us.” In summary, we’re told to be “resilient.”
Can you imagine somebody asking Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos to be resilient?
Neither can I.
The people we tell to be resilient are those who have been laid off, are disabled and have had their benefits stripped, or have lost their house because they cannot pay their mortgage anymore.
Individual resilience is a weapon against those who suffer, have been disenfranchised, or whom we’re not willing to help. It’s a beautification of “shut up and keep your head down.”
Let’s examine who benefits from the “individual resilience industrial complex,” why it doesn’t serve us well, and what we should do instead.
One of the core beliefs that makes extreme capitalism successful is individualism, aka “survival of the fittest.” Nobody will care for us but ourselves, so pillaging, stepping on others’ rights, and limitless profiteering are to be revered rather than chastised.
And if you happen to be bearing the brunt of this power imbalance? Be prepared to be shamed for not being “resilient” enough if you dare to complain.
But don’t fret. The business of building individual resilience is there to help you.
Every year, I have mixed feelings about International Women’s Day. Should I be celebrating or protesting? Acknowledging progress or complaining that it’s too slow?
This year I didn’t have a doubt. #IWD2025 was a mourning day for me. In addition to the grief for the lost women’s rights around the world, an overwhelming feeling of impending doom hovered over me.
My public advocacy about gender issues was triggered in 2015 because I didn’t want to die in a world that was seeing me as a second-class citizen because of my gender.
Today, I’m worried about dying in a world where I’ll have less rights than when I was born.
The drama is that while we throw buckets of money to artificial intelligence initiatives, the answer to massively improving productivity whilst boosting sustainability is not AI but improving outcomes for women.
Global life expectancy increased from 30 years to 73 years between 1800 and 2018.1 But this is not the full picture. Women spend more of their lives in poor health and with degrees of disability (the “health span” rather than the “life span”).
A woman will spend an average of nine years in poor health, which affects her ability to be present and/or productive at home, in the workforce, and in the community and reduces her earning potential.”
Addressing the 25 percent more time that women spend in “poor health” relative to men not only would improve the health and lives of millions of women but also could boost the global economy by at least $1 trillion annually by 2040.
We’d rather invest in generative AI — which so far nobody has been able to monetise directly — than in 4 billion who have demonstrated for millennia that they overdeliver and reinvest in society
When women work, they invest 90 percent of their income back into their families, compared with 35 percent for men.
By focusing on girls and women, innovative businesses and organizations can spur economic progress, expand markets, and improve health and education outcomes for everyone.
Project Drawdown is a cross-functional non-profit organization whose mission is to “map, measure, model, and communicate” practical solutions to global warming.
It has compared more than 100 solutions based on current availability, scaling, economic viability, potential to reduce greenhouse gases, negative secondary effects, and feasibility of simulating their impact globally for 2020–2050.
Their research found that jointly educating girls and enabling family planning are the most powerful solutions to reduce carbon emissions. In other words, the modeling predicts that empowering women could prevent 102.96 billion tons of emissions over the next 30 years.
The equivalent of 722 million cars!
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens. Michelle Obama
We not only don’t support women’s health and education outcomes but we’re doing our best to undermine them.
For example, we severely restrict funding for studying female medical conditions.
Nature published an infographic about how underfunded women’s health is in the US. For example
In a selection of 19 cancers, ovarian cancer ranks 5th for lethality, but 12th in terms of its funding-to-lethality ratio. Cervical cancer followed a similar pattern. For many gynaecological cancers, the ratio of funding to mortality dropped during the 11-year period.
But let’s not take it personally. We’re told that this is not a human problem but a “female” problem
The infographic also provides insights on what would happen if funding for women’s health increased. I’ll share with you a peek
The study also looked at the return on investment from a boost in funding. For rheumatoid arthritis, for instance, the study assumed a 0.1% health improvement, which had huge impacts on quality of life and productivity that together reduced the costs of the disease by around $10.5 billion over 30 years, equating to a staggering 174,000% return on investment.
Closer to home, breast cancer is the most common cancer for women in the UK, accounting for 30% of new cancer cases. Recently, I attended TEDxManchester, where Professor Simona Francese presented a revolutionary non-invasive method she’s developing to detect breast cancer from fingertip smears. Can you imagine swamping a mammography for a fingertip swab? Unfortunately, she also shared that it took her 6 years to get the £45,000 to fund the proof-of-concept study.
In addition to all of the above, as I mentioned in a recent article, disaggregated clinical trials by gender and sex are the exception, not the norm.
And that’s not all.
We continuously try to erode women’s control over their bodies and fertility.
Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO) and Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) have advocated disregarding concerns about AI’s sustainability — including its voracious datacentres — claiming that in the future, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will solve all our problems, from healthcare to economic growth.
The reality? Tech companies have yet to find a business model to make money from generative AI, and definitely AI tools won’t fix the systemic oppression of 4 billion women.
All the opposite. Those in power have consistently weaponised AI against women. Think non-consexual sexual deepfakes, tech-enabled partner surveillance, and policing of female bodies, to mention a few.
Techno-solutionism — the belief that technology is the solution to everything — doesn’t work. Look at the COVID-19 pandemic.
We were told that the “solution” was the vaccine. And we managed to develop three within a year — an impressive achievement. Did that fully solve the problem? No, because it was not only about cracking the vaccine formulation. Enough vaccines had to be produced, transported, and refrigerated to supply the demand around the world. Then, companies decided to patent them — hindering the access to millions of people. Finally, there was the people factor, forgotten by most leaders. Not only was it impossible to vaccinate all the planet at once, but some people didn’t want the vaccine while others wanted it but couldn’t have it.
We must face it: there is no techno-cure for our entrenched systemic socio-economic-political issues.
Thoughts, feelings, actions, and results are intrinsically related.
Thinking that somebody else — allies, AI, and even governments — are going to solve gender oppression may elicit feelings of comfort — or powerlessness — that often may make us focus on keeping our head down and “count our blessings”.
The result? Reinforcing we’re victims of our second-class citizen status.
Instead, I invite you to think that allies, technology, and government have historically let women down for millennia, which in my case provokes feelings of anger, betrayal, and defiance.
And those feelings are powerful. They prompt me to rebel against the loss of rights, participate in communities that foster care and respect, and explore equitable and sustainable futures.
The result? At worst
The pride of standing up for what’s right.
Stopping the world gaslighting our suffering and exploitation.
Offer real hope in the face of techno-optimism.
At best, all of the above and a world where increasingly more people reap the benefits of social, economic, technological progress in harmony with the rest of the planet.
The time for bystanders and “weekend” allies is over. We need warriors.
If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
It’s again that time of year when I get requests to discuss my career in tech and share my insights on gender equality in the workplace as part of International Women’s Day activities.
This year was no exception. I’ve already received three requests, and there is still one week to go!
I’m sharing my answers to one of them, an interview with the DEI team from my corporate job at Dassault Systemes. It made me reflect on my past achievements, my advice to younger women aspiring to be leaders, and the role of men and organisations leading gender equality.
About Me
Can you share your journey so far? What were the pivotal moments or key achievements most important to you?
I can categorise them into five buckets.
Discovering computer simulation: My background is Chemical Engineering, and when I started my master’s, I had to decide on a topic for my thesis. I loved research, but I hated the lab, so when a professor mentioned the possibility of using computers to study enhanced oil recovery using computer simulation, I thought I could have the best of both worlds—and I did. I haven’t looked back.
Joining Accelrys/BIOVIA: Twenty years ago, I joined Accelrys—which later became BIOVIA—as a training scientist. It has been one of my best professional decisions. It has opened innumerable professional doors and given me the opportunity to meet extraordinary people worldwide, both as colleagues and customers.
Daring to say yes to new opportunities: Although I started as a trainer, I’ve worn many hats in the last 20 years. I’ve been Head of Contract Research and Head of Training, and also been part of the team leading the BIOVIA and COSMOlogic integrations to Dassault Systemes. Today, I’m BIOVIA Support Director for BIOVIA Modeling Solutions and also the manager of the Global BIOVIA Call Center. I could have said “no” to each of those opportunities. Instead, I trusted myself and embraced the opportunity of a new challenge.
Diversity and inclusion advocacy: In 2015, I started to talk about diversity and inclusion in 3DS. I remember colleagues asking me, “Patricia, is DEI an American thing?”. The following year, with the support of our Geo management team, I founded the EuroNorth LeanIn Circles to have a forum to discuss gender equity and that, throughout the years, has expanded to a variety of DEI topics such as unconscious bias, menopause, ethical AI, caregiving, and lookism. I publish a biweekly newsletter called The Bottom Line about DEI on the Dassault Systemes community focused on gender in the workplace. I also have my website focused on the intersection of tech and DEI.
Ethical and inclusive AI leadership: In 2019, I created the Ethics and Inclusion Framework to help designers identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for the actual and potential harm of the products and services they developed. The tool has been featured in peer-reviewed papers and on the University of Cambridge website. The next year, I started my work towards championing ethical and inclusive artificial intelligence by collaborating with NGOs focused on AI literacy and critical thinking about AI, participating in the developement of e-learning course of the Scottish AI Alliance and the Race and AI Toolkit, and writing and delivering keynotes and workshops on topics such as AI colonialism, AI hype, sustainable AI, deepfakes, and how to design more diverse images of AI.
Who has been your greatest mentor or source of inspiration and why?
At a couple of points in my life, I craved “the” mentor or “the” role model to follow. However, given my unique background and goals, I realised that this was exhausting and counterproductive.
I’ve been an immigrant my entire life – I’m Spanish, and I’m now in the UK, but I’ve also lived in Venezuela, Canada, Greece, and France – and I’m also used to being the “odd” one. For example, I liked all subjects in the school – from literature to chemistry. I was one of the few women engineers during my undergraduate degree. Then, I was the only engineer pursuing a PhD in Chemistry in the whole department, and the only one using modelling – everybody else was an experimentalist. During my post-doc, I was the only foreigner in the lab. And for many years, I’ve combined my corporate work at 3DS with my DEI advocacy and writing.
I prefer the idea of a “board” of coaches, mentors, and sponsors who evolve with me rather than a unique person, real or imaginary.
If you could go back and tell your younger self anything, what would you say?
First, I’d thank her for her courage, persistence, ambition, and boldness. She made choices aligned with her values and was always eager to learn. Her decisions were crucial to my success today.
Then, I’d tell her that the problem with her not fitting into a mould was not her but with the mould.
Finally, I’d exhort her to invest in a coach and find sponsors. A coach to help remove the limiting beliefs I had for many years about what I could and couldn’t do and maximise my potential. Sponsors to advocate for me in the rooms where decisions were made about my career.
About Others
What advice would you give to younger women aspiring to be leaders?
Don’t waste time trying to convince people who disregard the value you bring to the table. Instead, find those who support your ambitions and challenge you to go beyond any feelings of self-doubt that block your career progression.
Following on the advice to my younger self above, get a coach and find career sponsors.
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
The issues that span across countries, sectors, and departments are benevolent sexism (e.g. not offering a leadership role to a woman because it involves travelling and she has a baby, instead of giving her the opportunity to decide), tech bro culture (behaviours such as mansplaining, hepeating, maninterrupting, manels), lack of an intersectional approach to work and workplaces (e.g. ignoring the experiences of carers, women with disabilities, LBTQIA+ groups), and for women in business, lack of funding.
This year’s global theme for IWD 2025 is #AccelerateAction. What actions can teams and organisations take to achieve gender parity and equality?
There are four key actions
Mindset overhaul: Moving from playing a supporting role in gender equality to being transformation agents.
Leadership accountability: Teams and organisations’ leaders need to be accountable for gender equality initiatives as they are for other business objectives. Change begins at the top, and that’s where the buck stops.
Transparency: Equality cannot thrive when data and objectives are hidden. For example, I’m a big fan of transparency in pay and promotion criteria.
Embracing intersectionality: We need to move from designing workplaces for the “average” worker—following Henry Ford and scientific management—to appreciating the distinctive value of a diverse and empowered workforce.
What role do you see male allies playing in advancing gender equality?
Gender equity is not a zero-sum game or a favour for women. All genders benefit from equality, and everybody should see it as a duty to advocate for gender equity, no different than everyone should be anti-racist and anti-ableist. Those who do not actively challenge inequality contribute to strengthening it.
Back to You
What are your answers to the questions above? Let me know in the comments.
WORK WITH ME
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
Last year, at a women’s conference in London, I was disappointed to see that digital inclusion — and AI in particular — was missing from the agenda. I remember telling the NGO’s CEO about my concerns, even mentioning my articles on AI as a techno-patriarchal tool.
Her receptive response had given me hope. That hope was reignited this year when I eagerly reviewed the program and discovered a panel on AI.
The evening before the event, an unexpected sense of dread began to settle in. When I asked myself why, the answer struck me like a lightning bolt.
I dreaded hearing the “we need more women in tech” mantra once more – another example of how we deflect the solution of a systemic problem to those bearing the brunt of it.
Let me tell you what I mean.
Women as Human Fixers
For millennia, women had been assigned the duty to give birth and care for children, rooted in the fact that most of them can carry human fetuses for 9 months. That duty to be a womb endures today, where ownership of our bodies is being taken away through coercive anti-abortion laws.
Our “duty” of care has been broadened to the workplace, where we’ve been assigned the unwritten rule of “fixing” all that’s dysfunctional.
Doing the glue work — being appointed the shoulder where all team members can cry and find an “empathetic ear”.
Do the office work — we’re the ones that are “organised”, so dull tasks pile up on our desks whilst “less” organised peers do the promotable work.
And that “fixer” stereotype now includes “our” duties as women in tech. When the sector was in its infancy, women were doing the supposedly boring stuff (programming) while men were doing the hardware (the “cool” stuff). When computers took off, we trained men in programming so they could become our managers. Then, we were pushed out of those jobs in the 1980s. The only constant has been doing the job but not getting the accolades (see women’s role in Bletchley Park, Hidden Figures).
Moreover, whilst statistics tell us that 50% of women leave tech by age 35, young girls and women are supposed to brush off that “inconvenient” truth and rest assured that tech is an excellent place for a career. Moreover, that they are anointed to make tech work for everybody.
What’s not to like, right?
Then, let me show the to-do list of 21 tasks and expectations the world imposes on each woman in tech.
I didn’t know who Cindy was. Later, I discovered she’s a brand and business innovator, consultant, coach, and keynote speaker who participated in the UK Apprentice. She’s been building a business out of teaching sex and she’s also a women’s entrepreneur advocate.
Still, that one-minute video in my feedback was so powerful that I didn’t care who was speaking.
“F*ck data. Data does f*ck all.
We have literally for decades had the data you reference that says female founders exit faster, female founders burn less cash, female founders get to profitability quicker, female founders build better business cultures, but none of that data makes any difference.
[…] Information goes through the heart, not the head. It’s not about rationality. It’s about emotion.
The reason women don’t get funded is due to plain old-fashioned sexism and misogyny.”
My background is in engineering and computer simulation and I’m Director of Scientific Support and Customer Operations for a tech corporation. I’m also a diversity and inclusion advocate. I’ve been using data for 30 years for everything I’ve done.
Using simulation to guide the development of new materials, leading the migration of all our customer support data after an acquisition, monitoring customer satisfaction KPIs, supporting the business case for enhanced maternity leave in the company I work for, and surveying professional women about the impact of COVID-19 on their unpaid work are only a few examples.
Still, Cindy’s post triggered an epiphany.
I began to recall all the ways data — or its absence — has been manipulated to foster gender inequality. From entrenching the status quo to promoting “busy work”, wearing out activists, or even benefiting those who profit from inequality.
Data has been heralded as the key to innovation, solving systemic issues, and exponential growth (Big Data anyone?). We “just” need data, don’t we?
In theory, women have accounted for half of the population throughout humanity. We should have collected millions of data points over millennia. How come we haven’t solved gender inequality yet?
Because we’ve been using data against women.
At a time when we abide by the creed “data is the new oil”, it cannot be a coincidence that we’re solving this “data problem”
Here are the 7 ways data is weaponised against gender equity.
Lack of data
In the absence of data, we will always make up stories.
Recorded historical contributions to science and humanities — medicine, literature, chemistry, philosophy, politics, or engineering — have XY chromosomes.
From that “data”, the world feels very comfortable making up stories about the reasons why “progress” has been driven by men. If we have data, we must have a story about it.
The story we’re told about the lack of data on women’s contributions is that women haven’t contributed. Yes, for millennia, women were just in the background waiting for men to learn about fire, cure their children, or bring money home.
“A lot of men say to me they’re getting increasingly nervous about working with women, mentoring women.”
The silver lining of the high visibility of Allan’s misconduct allegations and subsequent remarks was that it brought to the surface a long-overdue discussion about how women get less mentoring and sponsorship from men. In particular, men in power.
But to me, the highlight was the article Men, are you nervous working with women? written by three men reflecting on Allan’s assertion that working with women is “complicated.”
More specifically, I had an aha moment reading journalist Nick Curtis’s remark
“I’m happy to admit that I’m a beta male, in a world where men such as Andrew Tate and Boris Johnson — and probably captains of industry like Allan — consider themselves alpha dogs.”
It has been bubbling under my consciousness since I read it and, when recently we discussed the merits of beta software releases at work, two questions formed in my mind
What could leadership learn from the beta release process?
How would workplaces — and the world — change if we had “beta” leaders?
But first, let’s recap where the term “alpha leadership” comes from and what it means.
Alpha Animals
A dominance hierarchy is a type of social hierarchy that arises when members of animal social groups interact, creating a ranking system.
A dominant higher-ranking individual is sometimes called an alpha, and a submissive lower-ranking individual is called a beta.
Second, the idea that wolf packs are led by “alpha” males came from studies of captive wolves in the mid-20th century. New studies of wolves in the wild have found that most wolf packs are families, led by the breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.
Moreover, Frans de Waal, the primatologist and ethologist who popularised the term “alpha male” in his book “Chimpanzee Politics,” was keen on dispelling the misunderstanding that alpha males are not synonymous with bullies.
In his TEDx talk The surprising science of alpha males, de Waal explained that in chimpanzee societies, the smallest male in the group can be the alpha male if he has the right friends and keeps them happy or has female support.
It’s very stressful to be an alpha male because you have to defend your position.
They have the obligation to keep the peace in the group and be the most empathic member. Interestingly, alpha male chimpanzees provide security for the lowest-ranking members of the group and comfort for all members. That makes them extremely popular and stabilises their position.
The group is usually very supportive of males who are good leaders, and it’s not supportive at all of bullies.
In summary, in the animal kingdom, alpha males benefit from preferential access to females and food and, in primates, and they’re accountable for keeping the peace and comforting their group in times of distress.
Alpha Human Leadership
However, that message has not been transferred to the concept of being an “alpha leader” when talking about humans. Instead, many of us equate the term to being all at once “successful-overachiever-bully-workaholic-male-egocentric-boss”.
Whilst dictators are automatically labelled as “alpha leaders,” we have many “democratic” leaders that fit the description too. From the tech perspective, figures like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, and Peter Thiel come to my mind when I think about “alpha male leaders”.
However, given those connotations, we may think most leaders don’t want to be classified as “alpha.” Wrong.
Throughout my career, I’ve met many people proud of claiming their “alpha” status — male and female. The reason? Because the term is so ill-defined it enables leaders to “pick and choose” attributes as they see fit.
And scanning Google doesn’t help clarify matters.
The misogynist Andrew Tate has dubbed himself “high status” and an “alpha male”. He has co-opted this term as his brand to mean “strong and successful men who believe in male supremacy and violence against women.” And it sells.
When “transferring” the alpha animal concept to humans, leadership management and consultancies put the accent on dominance, priority access to essential resources, hierarchy, aggressiveness, and protection from external threats.
The results? Those traits get “beautified” — alpha leaders are perceived as decisive, self-confident, assertive, charismatic, risk-taking, good networkers, and high-achievers.
The social and behavioural rules of animals can be clearly transferred to leaders in the business world.
“Alpha animals” in the business world is a metaphor used to describe dominant, influential, and highly successful individuals or companies that lead their industry.
The statistic that “70% of all senior executives are alpha male” is pervasive throughout the internet.
From coaching services to Harvard Business Review (HBR), everybody appears to quote the number and idolise those “super-humans.” Often, being “alpha” is presented as a “natural” or “inherent” trait.
Highly intelligent, confident, and successful, alpha males represent about 70% of all senior executives. Natural leaders, they willingly take on levels of responsibility most rational people would find overwhelming.
[…] it’s hard to imagine the modern corporation without alpha leaders.
What’s the problem with alpha leaders then? Their teams!
many of their quintessential strengths can also make alphas difficult to work with. Their self-confidence can appear domineering. Their high expectations can make them excessively critical. Their unemotional style can keep them from inspiring their teams.
In our work with senior executives, we’ve encountered many women who possess some of the traits of the alpha male, but none who possess all of them.
The reasons?
Women can be just as data driven and opinionated as alpha males and can cope with stress equally well, but the vast majority of women place more value on interpersonal relationships and pay closer attention to people’s feelings.
Women at the top are generally comfortable with control and being in charge, but they don’t seek to dominate people and situations as alpha males do. Although equally talented, ambitious, and hardheaded, they often rise to positions of authority by excelling at collaboration, and they are less inclined to resort to intimidation to get what they want.
As we can see, valuing interpersonal relationships, collaboration, and avoiding resorting to intimidation excludes women from that selective club of natural-born alpha leaders.
Alpha Leaders Bottom Line
Coaches and consultants are happy to both venerate and offer help to alpha male leaders to perform even better.
Admit vulnerability, accept accountability not just for his own work but for others’, connect with his underlying emotions, learn to motivate through a balance of criticism and validation, and become aware of unproductive behavior patterns.
Following that rationale, this implies that 70% of senior executives
Don’t admit vulnerability
Don’t accept accountability for their team’s work
Don’t connect with their emotions
Don’t balance criticism and validation
And are unaware of their unproductive behaviour patterns
What could go wrong?
Other Leadership Styles
As for the alternatives to alpha male leadership, there have been two main approaches.
For example, using coercive leadership when handling a crisis but adopting a coaching style when developing people for the future.
In theory, it sounds reasonable and many leadership consultancies are making money with it.
In practice, it’s extremely tough to implement. Why?
Leaders are human beings and they tend to fall into their most comfortable style.
Behavioural science experiments have shown us that having many options may trigger analysis-paralysis rather than better choices. For example, being presented with choosing one among 100 different jam flavours often results in no choice at all. Same with leadership styles.
The Virtuous Leader
The other take has been to develop new leadership models that aim to be more team-focused and where the leaders play a role more akin to facilitators than guides and decision-makers.
That’s the case of servant leadership, “based on the idea that leaders prioritize serving the greater good. Leaders with this style serve their team and organization first. They don’t prioritize their own objectives.”
The problem?
Those aspirational leadership models are geared towards idealised selfless superheroes. Why?
Leaders need incentives like anybody else — asking them to always prioritise the group over themselves can only lead to dissatisfaction and burnout.
We don’t like authenticity in leaders—indeed, we may appreciate that our CEO remembers our name and role and shows care when they announce layoffs. But the truth is that if our CEO lost a child and kept bringing it up in meetings for a year, we’d deem them not fit for work and search for a replacement.
Democracy serves to a point — when COVID-19 hit, many people looked up to government leaders for guidance. In those uncertain times, “alpha male leaders” used simple messages and authoritarian decisions to feed that need. The fact that former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s three-word slogans about Brexit and the pandemic — duly tested by focus groups — epitomised leadership for many people tells us a lot about how democracy is divorced from leadership in our minds.
* * *
What if instead of trying to imperfectly replicate the animal kingdom, we’d look at software development for clues into leadership?
After all, didn’t the “agile” software development methodology take organisations by storm almost a decade ago?
Software Development: Alpha and Beta Versions
For over 20 years, I’ve worked for companies that develop software for scientists, researchers, and engineers, both on-premise and Saas (software-as-a-service).
As in many other software companies, our applications follow a release lifecycle with several distinct stages such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the final version, or “gold”, is released to the public.
Pre-alpha refers to the early stages of development, when the software is still being designed and built.
Alpha testing is the first phase of formal testing, during which the software is tested internally.
Beta testing is the next phase, in which the software is tested by a larger group of users, typically outside of the organization that developed it. The beta phase is focused on reducing impacts on users and may include usability testing.
After beta testing, the software may [be] refined and tested further, before the final version is released.
There are critical differences between alpha and beta releases
Alpha software may contain serious errors, and any resulting instability could cause crashes or data loss [and] may not contain all of the features planned for the final version.
A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete but likely to contain several known or unknown bugs.
The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts on users, often incorporating usability testing. [It] is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it.
So unlike a beta release, an alpha version is not “good enough” to get feedback from users. And that’s crucial difference.
I’ve been part of software releases with and without external beta testing and, invariably, those with external beta releases have produced applications of higher quality.
Moreover, even an “internal” beta release has delivered valuable insights, providing feedback from the field teams — pre-sales, services, and support.
Whilst this may look like a no-brainer, it’s all the opposite.
Running a beta testing takes time, effort, and resources. It also requires vulnerability, commitment, collaboration, and belief in the value of the end goal because
It takes courage and humility for R&D and product management to put their “baby” — aka buggy application — out there for feedback instead of simply considering that they know what’s best for users.
Beta users understand that they’ll spend time performing tests on a non-production application — so they likely won’t be able to use the results — and that even while their input is appreciated, some of their suggestions won’t make it into the final product.
R&D has limited resources so they know they’ll have to make tough decisions about the feedback they receive — what will be fixed and implemented versus what will not. And they’ll be accountable for those choices even if they disappoint users.
Not bad for a piece of code, is it?
Beta Leadership
What can leaders learn about what it takes to run a successful software “beta” testing? A lot.
Willingness to admit that there are opportunities for improvement.
Seeking and valuing external and internal stakeholders’ opinions about key decisions.
Learning from feedback.
Communicating clearly their expectations about how their teams should contribute to the success of the organisations’ objectives.
Transparency about balancing resources, time, and results.
Prioritising competing demands to maximise overall benefit.
Taking responsibility for the final decisions and — more importantly — the outcome.
What would the world be like if we embraced “beta leadership”?
Beta Societies
I posit that beta leadership would make patriarchy lose ground.
Men and young boys would find less appealing toxic stereotypes that equate leadership to achieving female submission and degrading others.
Women would expect leaders to show they value them by finally addressing gender violence, gender pay gap, unpaid care, and bodily autonomy.
With beta leadership, traits such as collaboration and empathy that today are considered “female” and regarded as weaknesses would be embraced as attributes of good leadership.
Teams would trust leaders who seek their opinions to make decisions knowing that those leaders may decide against their recommendations as they take responsibility for the outcomes and communicate clearly in their decision-making process.
The reasons? Men rank higher than women in two key areas that lead to their lower performance: overconfidence and overactivity. The former, Barber and Odean posit, leads to the latter.
What would beta investing look like? More prudent and thoughtful.
Which in turn would result in
Less volatile markets
Less focus on hype assets
More long-term investing
What’s not to like?
Let’s Be More Beta
We’ve been sold lies about leadership:
“Evolutionary” arguments defending alpha leadership as the permission to bully, control, and destroy others.
Empathy and collaboration disregarded as top leadership skills.
Leadership seen as a “natural” trait.
That has given us the government and tech leaders we have:
Philipp Schmitt & AT&T Laboratories Cambridge / Better Images of AI / Data flock (faces) / CC-BY 4.0
Have you ever thought what happens to your photos circulating on social media? I have and that’s the topic of in my second short story in English in which I used speculative fiction to question the interplay between humans and technology, specifically AI.
In a nutshell, I imagined what the data from the digital portrait of a Black schoolgirl would say about how it moves inside our phones, computers, and networks if it were invited to speak on a podcast.
In a nutshell, I imagined what the data from the digital portrait of a Black schoolgirl would share about how it moves inside our phones, computers, and networks if it was invited to speak on a podcast.
The name of the piece is “The Life of Data Podcast” and it appeared in The Lark Publication, an e-magazine focused on fictional short stories and poetry, in October 2022.
This weekend I realised that I never shared it on my website.
Let’s rectify that.
The Life of Data Podcast
Episode #205: The School Award Portrait
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Life of Data Podcast, the place where we get the hottest data stars to spill the beans about their success in under 10 minutes. This is episode #205 and you’re in for a treat!
We’re with the one and only IMG_364245.jpg; otherwise known as Jackie Johnson’s school award portrait. IMG_364245g.jpg became famous about a month ago when it was featured in the news as the most used image to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls. As you all may remember, Jackie’s parents claimed that they never gave consent explicitly and Jackie is now suing their parents for lost revenue.
Let’s get cracking!
The Life of Data Podcast (TLDP): Thanks so much IMG_364245.jpg for joining us today.
IMG_364245g.jpg (IMG): Thanks for inviting me. I’m a fan of the podcast!
TLDP: You’ve been a lot in the news over the last month. Still, we always start our interviews with the same question: How were you born and who’s your creator?
IMG: Let’s start with my creator, Norman Buckley, a photograph for the Monday Star newspaper. I was born when he captured the image of the beautiful 9-year-old Jackie Johnson after winning the spelling bee contest at Burckerney School, classifying her for the National Spelling Bee Competition.
Norman created me with a Canon EOS R5 digital camera on a SanDisk’s 512GB Extreme PRO card — today a beautiful collectible!
I appeared on the online and paper versions of the Monday Star culture section on the 15th of May, five years ago.
TLDP: Wow, that’s a great birth and jump to stardom! Tell us more about the first days of your life as an image.
IMG: Sure. As you can imagine, the school had the signed authorization from Jackie’s parents to publish the photo with her name in the journal. No name, no publishing. You know how these things are… (chuckle)
Once the newspaper was published, Jackie’s mother, Betty, shared a link to the online article on the Johnson family WhatsApp group. Everybody was delighted to see Jackie on the news and complimented the girl on her appearance.
It was aunt Rose that asked if she could have a copy of the image — that’s me — to print and frame. When Jackie’s father, Harvey, acknowledged that they didn’t have a copy, uncle Richard suggested reaching out to the photographer, Norman, for a copy. His reasoning was that, anyway, it was not like the journal had paid for it… sharing a copy shouldn’t be big deal.
So, Harvey called Norman who kindly emailed him a copy himself. And then, my second life started! Harvey uploaded me to the family WhatsApp group and I was a total success! All members gave me hearts and I got plenty of compliments: “Beautiful”, “Pretty”, “We’re so proud of you”… And that was how it all started!
IMG: Uncle Joe, aunt Rose’s husband, created a beautiful post on his Facebook wall where he uploaded me with a lovely message “So proud of our beautiful Jackie Johnson. She won the Burckerney School Spelling Bee Contest. I cannot wait to see her competing at a national level.” He shared the post publicly so tens, hundreds, and then thousands of people viewed me and reshared me. I felt so loved!
TLDP: Only loved?
IMG: Good point. I guess I focus on the positives, I’m that kind of data. Of course, there were those that mocked me, soiled me with unflattering filters, and cut out parts of me — yes, actually mutilated me — to make disgusting collages.
TLDP: That sounds awful! How did you cope?
IMG: By telling myself that the important thing was to propagate and hopefully become viral. I would have preferred to do it with all my pixels intact but it’s not always something one can control.
TLDP: Can you share some of your proudest moments?
IMG: Sure. I’ll share three. First, reaching 1 million likes on Instagram. Cousin Carol’s Insta account totally exploded when she shared me.
Second, every time I got perks for Jackie. For example, when she and her friends were standing in the endless queue to enter the Dynamic Boys Band concert at the National Stadium. One of the girls in the group approached a security guard and said, “She’s the famous Jackie Johnson! She was in the newspaper!” And then, with one hand proceeded to show him on her mobile the webpage of the Monday Star that showcased me and with her other hand pointed at Jackie. After moving his eyes from me to Jackie’s face several times, the security guard made a sign to the group and led them to the VIP entrance. What’s not to like?
And obviously, when I was named the top most wanted photo to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls by e-Synthetic, the biggest generator of images from text inputs.
TLDP: Now that we know more about you, let’s go back to my intro. So far, it looks like a success story. Where did all go wrong to end up in the tribunals and with a family destroyed?
IMG: I said I had managed to cope with the mockery, the collages, and the insults. It was much harder for Jackie. She was only 9 at the time and although she was happy to get some perks — like the speedy access to the concert — she was not prepared for the downsides.
For example, some children at the school would make fun of her hairstyle, her posture, or how she was dressed that day.
Some parents complained to the school that kids were getting too much attention from the press.
Also, attendees of the Spelling Bee Contest that had taken their own photos of the award ceremony started sharing their sloppy images on social media… Some of those were really hideous and had nothing to do with me, who looked polished and professional.
In the middle of that shambles, the school called Jackie’s parents to ask them to keep her away from the school for a while, until things would go back to normal. Both Betty and Harvey pushed back, blaming the school for bringing the photographer in to gain exposure at the expense of a little girl. The school replied that if there was someone to blame, it was them. They have not only given their consent in writing but also shared the photo on social media.
When Jackie learned that the school didn’t want her back, she refused to leave home altogether. She didn’t want any more attention. It was not fun anymore.
Her parents recriminated all the family members. Aunt Rose who had asked for me on WhatsApp because she wanted to frame me; uncle Richard that prompted Harvey to ask for me to the photographer; uncle Joe that shared me on Facebook; cousin Carol that made me viral on Instagram … And everybody else, including those that had created videos and shared them on TikTok and YouTube.
All family members apologized and even deleted their posts but they had been reshared so many times that it was an impossible task to eliminate them all.
And that’s where e-Synthetic comes. As all of us know, e-Synthetic is the largest subscription platform to generate images from text prompts. You can create amazing images by only adding as few as 4 words to the prompt on their webpage.
I’ll explain how this works for the newbies. They use artificial intelligence to generate new images that satisfy the conditions of the text prompt using a mix of images from their database.
And their database is huge! It contains millions of images of all the things you can imagine: Art, people, buildings, cities, nature… Most of the images have been scrapped from the web. For example, any photo on social media is fair game.
So, of course, I also got scrapped by e-Synthetic! And I’ve been used profusely every time that “Black girl” or any of its synonyms has been used in the text prompt.
Unfortunately, Jackie, who’s now a little bit older, feels that the whole situation is detrimental to her.
For example, when she learned that I was among the most used photos to generate synthetic images of Black schoolgirls, she realized e-Synthetic was doing tons of money from using me — her image — without her receiving a cent.
And money was not the only problem. Understandably, neither did she like that parts of me appeared in images with degrading content, like pornography, created with e-Synthetic.
She cannot sue e-Synthetic — they downloaded me from social media — but she’s suing her parents for failing to protect her image. That’s me.
TLDP: A really tough situation. From the ethical point of view, don’t you think is somehow questionable that Jackie herself was never asked to give consent to publish or share her digital image, that is, you? Or that e-Synthetic didn’t contact her parents to seek their approval? She’s a minor, after all.
IMG: First, let me tell you that I empathize with Jackie. I exist because of her. And I also feel bad for her parents.
On the flip side, Jackie is a minor and their parents shared me on social media because I look like her. Now, they claim that they didn’t know about the drawbacks of the image becoming public… Come on! They should have known better.
There are detailed terms and conditions on social media platforms. Don’t tick the box “I have read the terms and conditions” if you haven’t done it or if you don’t understand them. Jackie’s parents are adults and it’s on them to master her personal data privacy.
I say: Their child, their responsibility.
TLDP: Many thanks for being candid about where you stand on social media platforms’ accountability for the content they host. It’s a very polarizing topic and we’ve had guests on the podcast with opposite views.
I remember episode #176, where web cookie STpqRHSRaiPbh shared a thought experiment comparing our different attitudes toward social media and food. For example, social media companies use their Terms & Conditions to waive their responsibility for the content shared on their platforms. And we appear to be fine with it.
Then, let’s consider food. STpqRHSRaiPbh posits that we wouldn’t accept that if a supermarket is selling rotten meat, they tell their customers that they are only a “meat platform” and cannot control what their suppliers sell to them…
Anyway, it’s a controversial issue and part of a broader conversation. Let’s now return the focus to you.
What false accusation has hurt you the most in this whole affair?
IMG: To be honest, the most painful has been when they say that it’s my responsibility that algorithms classify Jackie as an angry child or categorize her as a boy and not a girl. Let me say it again: It’s not my fault.
It’s well known that it’s not us, digital images, who are in charge of deciding on somebody’s gender or mood. We are going on with our lives and then an annotator — a tech worker that adds descriptions to data — or an algorithm decides that we’re the image of a girl, a man, or a baby boy based on their own biases and assumptions. And we know that current image algorithms are worse at predicting the gender of Black women compared to that of men or White women.
Same with emotions. Annotators and algorithms decide if the subjects in the images are sad, happy, or fearful based on pseudo-science. Again, it’s been demonstrated that they predict that subjects with darker skin are angrier compared with those with lighter skin even if they show the same facial expressions in the photos.
With all this evidence, why do I still have to put up with all that nonsense that those mistakes are my fault? Blame artificial intelligence, machine learning, and annotators, not us!
Ok, my rant is over.
TLDP: Thanks again for sharing these gems of wisdom, IMG_364245.jpg. This is so important for our younger audience. They’re hearing all the time that the problem with bias in artificial intelligence is the lack of diversity in data. You have done a great job at demonstrating to them that they are not the problem and that data is unfairly blamed for algorithms and people’s biases.
Next question. Can you point out the key to your success?
IMG: Definitively the Johnson’s WhatsApp group. All those digital interactions were instrumental to get me the exposure I needed to go global.
TLDP: What would you have liked to know at the beginning?
IMG: When they started sharing me on social media, I was very angry about the whole photoshop thing. I was perfect already! Why did some people have to make a mess of me and lighten my skin pixels? At the time, my self-esteem suffered a lot.
And then, one day, I realized that I’d never be able to end the world’s obsession with lighter skin anyway.
After that breakthrough moment, I was able to savor my success, even at the expense of digital bleaching.
TLDP: There are so many images of White people on the internet. What would you say to recent digital images of Non-White people that feel a lack of opportunity to go viral?
IMG: The opportunity is huge! With brands undergoing a massive DEIwashing…
TLDP: Wait, DEIwashing? Can you explain?
IMG: Thanks for asking. Actually, I coined the term myself.
DEIwashing is when organizations resort to performative diversity, inclusion, and equity tactics. For example, peppering their marketing — websites, brochures, videos — with images of Non-White people to convey a sense of diversity that doesn’t match that of their organization.
As I was saying before, with the pressure on organizations to DEIwash their images, there’s never been a better time to be an image of Non-White people. This is our time!
TLDP: Any final words for our audience?
IMG: Catch me if you can! Social media and e-Synthetic have made me indestructible. (guffaw)
TLDP: Thanks so much IMG_364245.jpg for this thought-provoking conversation. We wish you all the best in your professional career.
If you liked this episode, please consider leaving a review, sharing it with other data, and subscribing to the podcast.
We’ll be back next month with another data rockstar giving us a peek into their life.
Until then, take care!
END OF THE EPISODE
Before”The Life of Data Podcast,” I wrote The Graduation, where I also used speculative fiction. I won’t tell you the plot, only that the story was written in August 2020, well before ChatGPT was launched!
Recently, I had a thinking partnership session with an amazing female professional. These are sessions where two people take turns thinking and listening and through generative attention and questioning they aim to uncover assumptions and produce breakthrough, independent thinking.
My thinking partner was rightly tired because of all her work and family demands. Still, she kept denying herself the pleasure of simple things like reading a couple of pages from a novel or going to a Pilates class.
The reason? She felt guilty for doing so. Like she was “stealing” time she owed to her family.
About halfway into the session, she attempted to persuade herself of the perks of taking some minutes for self-care by repeating the legendary wellness mantra “Put the oxygen mask on before helping others” — that ingrained belief that even when women take time for themselves, it needs to be in preparation to benefit someone else.
However, the trope wasn’t working. Each time she’d try to convince herself that her loved ones would reap the perks of her self-care, guilt crept up and she would go back to her initial thinking that it was impossible to integrate self-care, work, and family.
That involuntary and repetitive act of self-harm in a person otherwise resilient and brave made me realize that her brain was not in the driving seat.
Who then? Patriarchy.
Patriarchy and Self-care
Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Rest and leisure are human rights, still, often are marketed as a luxury.
To counter the guilt associated with the patriarchal oxymoron “women’s recreation,” the female self-care industry has adopted the slogan “Put your mask on so you help others” as a rallying cry under the pretense that it’s “empowering” and “feminist”.
Believe me, it’s all the opposite — a reboot of old patriarchy.
Under the hood,this mantra is yet another way to objectify women, telling them that they must be healthy as they are a conduit for others’ well-being. In other words, they are cogs that need to be oiled so that the machine — society — can run.
Going back to my thinking partner, instead of reassuring her that going to Pilates would result in better outcomes for her family or exploring how she could feel more comfortable with her “self-care” guilt, I challenged her assumptions
“What if instead of ‘I need to take care of myself because I can help others,’ you’d think ‘I need to take care of myself because I deserve it?’”
She looked at me blankly and then told me that she couldn’t even think of that possibility.
Another International Women’s Day has passed but how much have women’s rights progressed since last year?
If my social media posts last week were an indication, there have been some important wins but at the core, we’re still living under patriarchy.
More precisely
Abortion became a constitutional right in France
Femicide alarming UK statistics
The feminisation of hybrid work
The unnecessary male context in framing women’s achievements
Let me share my take.
France makes abortion a constitutional right
I love and hate International Women’s Day.
I love #IWD because it tells the world that we won’t close our eyes to gender violence, gender health disparities, gender pay gap, and other gender inequalities.
I hate it because it “reminds” me that I’m still a second-class citizen. For example, I don’t have the same rights about my body that a man has.
Moreover, unlike when I was a young woman when I could see barriers coming down, I now see barriers been purposely built to prevent women from being prosperous, educated, and healthy.
This is not a bug but a feature.
Women keep spending their energy re-fighting their basic rights instead of innovating, creating products that serve us, or investing their money to ensure we have enough wealth to enable us to get a dignified retirement.
Amid these conflicting emotions, an unexpected gift arrived:
This week France became the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution.
Of course, there is no free meal in the universe, so reading this BBC article, my heart skipped a beat — or 2 — when I read
1.- “Before the vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told parliament that the right to abortion remained “in danger” and “at the mercy of decision makers”.”
In summary, decision-makers are not on the side of women.
2.- “In a 2001 ruling, the council based its approval of abortion on the notion of liberty enshrined in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is technically part of the constitution.”
We have a Declaration of the Rights of “Man” dated almost 250 years ago that “decision makers” haven’t updated to the Rights of “human being” or “people“.
Until when will we need to keep fighting for laws and regulations that treat women as human beings with the same rights as men rather than Adam’s rib?
(Note: More on the Adam’s rib below)
Femicide alarming UK statistics
The European Institute of Gender Equality defines femicide as the killing of women and girls because of their gender, among other things, which can take the form of
The murder of women as a result of intimate partner violence
The torture and misogynist slaying of women
Killing of women and girls in the name of “honour”
Targeted killing of women and girls in the context of armed conflict
Dowry-related killings of women
Killing of women and girls because of their sexual orientation and gender identity
Killing of aboriginal and indigenous women and girls because of their gender
Female infanticide and gender-based sex selection foeticide
Genital mutilation-related deaths
Accusations of witchcraft
Other femicides connected with gangs, organised crime, drug dealers, human trafficking, and the proliferation of small arms.
When we talk about femicide we may think about Latino America, Asia, or Africa.
But we’re wrong.
A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK on average.
I have reproduced below the key insights about hybrid work
“Now, LinkedIn data shows that women in the UK are more likely to have a job offering hybrid work than other types of work. More women had a hybrid role in 2023 than a fully remote or onsite role. Across a majority of industries, women are also more likely than men to have a hybrid role. In finance, consumer services, retail and even accommodation and food services, where remote and hybrid roles are less common, women are more likely than men to split their working week between home and the physical workplace.”
My take? I challenge how many men reporting “office” jobs are not doing “hybrid” jobs in disguise.
In my experience, women need to be very clear about the terms and conditions of their place of work because of their caregiving obligations, hence the preference for jobs clearly articulated as such.
For example, my company advertises jobs as office-based but in practice, employees can work up to 2 days a week from home.
Another point: Uneven transparency. Whilst typically women announce that they’ll be late, have been late, or won’t be able to make a meeting because of childcare responsibilities, men simply say that they are “double-booked” or that they cannot make it.
Whilst definitively there are gendered patterns, it’s paramount to recognise that men have the luxury to disguise hybrid work as office work whilst many women don’t.
The Adam’s Rib effect
Why can’t the media highlight a woman without “attaching” her to a man?
It happened again this Sunday.
I’m reading an article in The Guardian and the Headline reads
“ ‘I could have written three plays about her’: Jennie Lee, MP and wife of Nye Bevan, is celebrated on stage
Then, the subtitle says
“The coal miner’s daughter who set up the Open University and the Arts Council and was Britain’s youngest MP is the subject of two new shows”
And then, the first paragraph continues
“ ‘Behind every great man stands a great woman,’ the dated old saying goes. In the case of the celebrated Labour politician Aneurin Bevan, honoured in a new play at the National Theatre in London, the woman is his largely forgotten wife, Jennie Lee, who earned her own independent “greatness” on the public stage, not a domestic one.”
If that was not enough, even the article’s URL mentions her husband
But in the first 4 sentences of the article — title, subtitle, and first paragraph — The Guardian feels is important to to let us know that
She was the wife of Nye Bevan
A coal miner’s daughter
And then repeat that she’s the largely forgotten wife of the celebrated Labour politician Aneurin Bevan
We need to wait until the second paragraph to actually learn about this woman.
“Lee, who was Britain’s first arts minister and established the Open University and the Arts Council, as well as backing the building of the National Theatre itself”
As the article continues, we learn more about a play about his husband and it’s not until the fourth paragraph that we learn more about Ms. Lee.
“she became an MP aged just 24 and had a big influence on British postwar culture.”
Can somebody explain to me why we cannot have a headline highlighting a brilliant woman without “sprinkling” a man — or two — on it?
Why does the media believe that we need to know first about her husband, father, son, brother, and teachers as a preamble to showcasing a woman’s merits?
I’m naming this the “Adam’s rib” effect — providing unnecessary “male” context when highlighting the achievements of a woman.
This is utterly ridiculous and it’s a contemporary version of a not so distant past when women needed their husbands’ signatures to open a bank account.
Two weeks ago, deepfake pornographic images of Taylor Swift spread like fire through X. It took the platform 19 hours to suspend the account that posted the content after they amassed over 27 million views and more than 260,000 likes.
That gave me pause. 260,000 people watched the content, knew it was fake, and felt no shame in sharing their delight publicly. Wow…
I’ve written before about our misconceptions regarding deepfake technology. For example, we’re told that most deepfakes target politicians but the reality is that 96% of deepfakes are of non-consensual sexual nature and 99% of them are from women. I’ve also talked about the legal vacuum regulating the use of this technology.
However, until now I hadn’t delved into the ecosystem underpinning the porn deepfakes: the industry and the viewers themselves.
Let’s rectify this gap and get to know the key players.
Why is so easy to access porn deepfakes?
We may be led to believe that porn deepfakes are hard to create or find.
False and false.
It takes less than 25 minutes and costs $0 to create a 60-second deepfake pornographic video. You only need one clear face image.
I can confirm that when searching on Google “deepfakes porn,” the first hit was MrDeepFake’s website — one of the most famous websites in the world of deepfake porn.
Moreover, the risk of hosting the content is minimal.
Section 230, which passed in 1996, is a part of the US Communications Decency Act. It was meant to serve as protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material.
However, it has become an ally of porn deepfakes as it provides immunity to online platforms from civil liability on third-party content — they are not responsible for the content they host and they can remove it in certain circumstances, e.g. material that the provider or user considers being obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.
So whilst Section 230 does not protect platforms that create illegal or harmful content, it exempts them from any responsibility for third-party content.
Who’s making money from porn deepfakes?
Many are profiting from this nascent industry: Creators, deepfake porn websites, software manufacturers, infrastructure providers, marketplaces, and payment processors.
It bills itself on Instagram as “the highest paying adult content creator platform.”
Paywalled.
Clients may be redirected from sites such as MrDeepFakes afters clicking on the deepfake creators’ profiles. Once in Fan-Topia, they can pay for access to libraries of deepfake videos with their credit cards.
Pornhub
In 2018, the internet pornography giant Pornhub banned deepfake porn from their site. However, that’s not the whole truth
When Pornhub removes deepfake porn videos from their site, they leave the inactive links as breadcrumbs that act as clickbait to drive traffic to the site.
Users can advertise the creation and monetisation of porn deepfakes on the site.
They advertise deepfakes through TrafficJunky, the advertising portal through which Pornhub makes all their ad revenue.
Pornhub provides a database of abusive content that facilitates the creation of porn deepfakes.
Software manufacturers
A couple of examples
Stability AI has made their model Stable Diffusion — a deep learning, text-to-image model— open-source, so any developer can modify it for purposes such as creating porn deepfakes. And there are plenty of tips about how to use the models in forums where deepfake porn creators swarm.
Taylor Swift’s porn deepfake was created using Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s graphic design app that leverages DALLE-3 — another text-to-image model— to generate realistic images. Users found loopholes in the guardrails that prevented inappropriate prompts that explicitly mentioned nudity or public figures.
Infraestructure providers
Repositories
GitHub is a Microsoft-owned developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It’s also
A host of guides and hyperlinks to (a) sexual deepfake community forums dedicated to the creation, collaboration, and commodification of synthetic media technologies, and (b) AI-leveraged ‘nudifiying’ websites and applications that take women’s images and “strip them” of clothing.
A repository of the source code of the software used to create 95% of deepfakes, DeepFaceLab, as well as other similar codes such as DeepNude and Unstable Diffusion.
According to a Bloomberg review, 13 of the top 20 deepfake websites are currently using web hosting servicesfrom Cloudflare Inc. Amazon.com Inc. provides web hosting services for three popular deepfaking tools listed on several websites, including Deepswap.ai.
Marketplaces
Etsy
As of December 2023, AI-generated pornographic images of at least 55 well-known celebrities were available for purchase on Etsy, an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies.
Moreover, a search for “deepfake porn” on the website returned about 1,500 results. Some of these results were porn and others offers non-explicit services to “make your own deepfake video.”
On the Fan-Topia payment page, the logos for Visa and Mastercard appear alongside the fields where users can enter credit card information. The purchases are made through an internet payment service provider called Verotel, which is based in the Netherlands and advertises to what it calls “high-risk” webmasters running adult services.
The MakeNude.ai web app — which lets users “view any girl without clothing” in “just a single click” — has partnered with Ukraine-based Monobank and Dublin’s Beta Transfer Kassa which operates in “high-risk markets”.
Deepfake creators also use PayPal and crypto wallets to accept payments. Until Bloomberg reached out to Patreon last August, they supported payment for one of the largest nudifying tools, which accepted over $12,500 per month.
Other enablers
Search engines
Between 50 to 80 percent of people searching for porn deepfakes find their way to the websites and tools to create the videos or images via search. For example, in July 2023, around 44% of visits to Mrdeepfakes.com were via Google.
NBC News searched the combination of a name and the word “deepfakes” with 36 popular female celebrities on Google and Bing. A review of the results found nonconsensual deepfake images and links to deepfake videos in the top Google results for 34 of those searches and the top Bing results for 35 of them.
As for the victims, both Google and Microsoft services require in their content removal requests that people manually submit the URLs.
Social media
More than 230 sexual deepfake ads using Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson’s faces ran on Facebook and Instagram in March 2023. It took 2 days for Meta to remove the ads, once they were contacted by NBC.
Users of X, formerly known as Twitter, regularly circulate deepfaked content. Whilst the platform has policies that prohibit manipulated media, between the first and second quarter of 2023, the number of tweets from eight hashtags associated with this content increased by 25% to 31,400 tweets.
There were a total of 95,820 deepfake videos online in 2023.
The ten-leading dedicated deepfake porn sites had monthly traffic of 35 million in 2023.
What about the deepfake porn consumers?
They surveyed 1522 American males who had viewed pornography at least once in the past six months. Some highlights:
48% of respondents reported having viewed deepfake pornography at least once.
74% of deepfake pornography users didn’t feel guilty about it. Top reasons they didn’t feel remorse? 36% didn’t know the person, 30% didn’t think it hurt anybody, 29% thought of it as a realistic version of imagination, and 28% thought that it’s not much different than regular porn.
That may lead us to believe that indeed those “watchers” felt porn deepfakes were innocuous. That’s until we learn that
73% of survey participants would want to report to the authorities if someone close to them became a victim of deepfake porn.
68% indicated that they would feel shocked and outraged by the violation of someone’s privacy and consent in the creation of deepfake pornographic content.
In summary, non-consensual deepfakes are harmless until your mother and daughter are starring on them.
if they don’t portray your loved ones.
What’s next?
As with other forms of misogynistic behaviour — rape, gender violence, sexual discrimination — when we talk about deepfake pornography, we focus on the aftermath: the victims and the punishment.
What if we instead focused on the bottom of the pyramid — the consumers?
Can we imagine a society where the deepfake porn videos from Taylor Swift would have had 0 views and no likes?
What will take to raise boys that feel outrage — rather than unhealthy curiosity, lust, and desire for revenge — at the opportunity to watch and purchase deepfake porn?
How about believing that porn deepfakes are harmful even if they don’t portray your sister, mum, or wife?
As with physical goods, consumers have the power to transform the offer. Can we collectively lead the way towards a responsible digital future?
PS. You and AI
Are you worried about the impact of AI impact on your job, your organisation, and the future of the planet but you feel it’d take you years to ramp up your AI literacy?
Do you want to explore how to responsibly leverage AI in your organisation to boost innovation, productivity, and revenue but feel overwhelmed by the quantity and breadth of information available?
Are you concerned because your clients are prioritising AI but you keep procrastinating on learning about it because you think you’re not “smart enough”?
The title referred to the weird ways in which women have tried to lose weight. The subtitle pointed out that the culprit was our quest for beauty.
That stopped me in my tracks. A flood of memories of nonstop dieting and judgment — from myself and others — came back.
I repeated to myself, “Our quest for beauty”.
This time, my brain consciously rebelled. I was not buying that argument.
Still, I was intrigued because I know and respect the author, so I decided to keep reading.
The theory
The piece discussed how companies had advertised to women dieting methods such as eating tapeworms, smoking, and even wiring their jaws shut. All with the promise of losing weight.
The writer also shared her journey with diets and weight. A lot of themes resonated with me. The judgment of others about my weight when I was a child, the crazy dieting when I was a teenager, and the feeling of letting the scale become the supreme ruler of whether it was going to be a good or a bad day.
However, the article didn’t manage to convince me that it’s the quest for beauty that sends women to that rollercoaster.
The reality
What does make women embark on this perennial self-improvement project?
It’s the quest for acceptance and appreciation.
We’ve been educated that our worth is in the eye of the beholder. And depending on the year and context, this can be as thin as Twiggy, athletic as Cindy Naomi Campbell, or super-curvy as Kim Kardashian, to mention a handful of the many beauty standards we’re bombarded with.
And whilst we get depressed, feel shame, and spend tons of money trying to fit in the ever-changing cannons of beauty, many others get rich in the process.
I call it the industrial complex of “fixing women”.
And it’s not only about our weight. It’s the same industry that
Shames our wrinkles and white hair and wants to fix us with “anti-aging” products.
Finds disgusting our body hair and pledges to make us “hairless” like babies.
Execrates our stretching marks and promises to erase them.
And the list goes on…
Blame it on the algorithm
I’d love to believe that this obsession with fixing women stems from social media, that it’s the fault of Instagram’ and TikTok.
But it isn’t.
Unfortunately, the algorithm only automates and amplifies what’s already there — patriarchy and its contempt for female human beings.
However, that doesn’t mean that social media is harmless or innocent. All the opposite. It’s a constant reminder of how “inadequate” girls and women are and how urgent is for them to fix themselves. All for a profit.
Beyond fixing the body
If “fixing” women’s bodies is so profitable, why should we stop there? Let’s profit from fixing all aspects of women’s lives
Women leadership workshops and courses that “teach” us how to “sound strategic” and display overconfidence.
“Experts” promise to help us find the elusive — but somehow 100% attainable — work-life balance.
And of course, there is motherhood. Being the “perfect” mother is at our reach provided that we buy every book, workshop, course, and gadget about parenthood.
The alternative
Women are a neverending work-in-progress because “fixing” them is the gift that keeps on giving. Simply put, there is no incentive to stop it.
It’s also embedded in every aspect of our lives.
What would the world look like if we dared to extricate it?
That would be a world where
I’ve unlearned the reflex of comparing myself to other women.
I believe that my worth is independent of how I look.
I’m not penalised for getting older.
Moreover, a world where
The term “beauty standards” is considered an oxymoron because it’s impossible to set “standards” if we’re all considered unique and valuable.
We talk about women from a place of abundance — she has, she is, she possesses — rather than scarcity — she lacks, she should, she needs.
We expect women to prioritise themselves — their body, their mental wellbeing, their dreams, and their callings.
BACK TO YOU: How do you imagine a world where we don’t feel compelled to “fix” women anymore?
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In the discussions around gender bias in artificial intelligence (AI), intentionality is left out of the conversation.
We talk about discriminatory datasets and algorithms but avoid mentioning that humans — software developers — select those databases or code the algorithms. Any attempts to demand accountability are crushed under exculpating narratives such as programmers’ “unconscious bias” or the “unavoidable” opacity of AI tools, often referred to as “black boxes”.
Patriarchy is much older than capitalism; hence, it has shaped our beliefs about those who have purchasing power and how they use it. So patriarchy wants us to believe that women don’t have money or power, and that if they do, they’ll spend it on make-up and babies and put up with services and products designed for men. Moreover, that women are expendable in the name of profits. All this while in 2009 women controlled $20tr in annual consumer spending and in 2023 they owned 42% of all US businesses.
Tech, where testosterone runs rampant, has completely bought into this mantra and is using artificial intelligence to implement it at scale and help others to do the same. That’s the reason it disregards women’s needs and experiences when developing AI solutions, deflects its accountability on automating and increasing online harassment, purposely reinforces gender stereotypes, operationalises menstrual surveillance, and sabotages women’s businesses and activism.
Techno-optimism
Tech solutionism is predicated on the conviction that there is no problem tough enough that digital technology cannot solve and, when you plan to save the world, AI is the ultimate godsend.
It’s only through understanding the pervasiveness of patriarchy, meritocracy, and exceptionalism in tech that we can explain that the sector dares to brag about its limitless ability to tackle complex issues at a planetary scale with an extremely homogenous workforce, mainly comprising white able wealthy heterosexual cisgender men.
For instance, recruiting AI tools have been regularly portrayed as the end of biased human hiring. The results say otherwise. Notably, Amazon had to scrap their AI recruiting tool because it consistently ranked male candidates over women. The application had been trained on the company’s 10-year hiring history, which was a reflection of the male prevalence across the tech sector.
Another example is the assumption of manufacturers of smart, internet-connected devices that the danger typically comes from the outside; hence, the need to use cameras, VPNs, and passwords to preserve the integrity of the households. But if you’re a woman, the enemy may be indoors.
Tech is also a master at deflecting their responsibility on how AI enables bullying and aggression towards women. For example, we’re told that we must worry about deepfakes threatening democracies around the world based on their ability to reproduce voices and images from politicians and world leaders. The reality is that women bear the brunt of this form of AI.
How do machines know what a woman looks like? The Gender Shades study showed that face recognition algorithms used to predict race and gender were biased against darker females, which showed up to a 35% error compared to 1% for lighter-skinned males. Whilst Microsoft and IBM acknowledged the problem and improved the algorithms subsequently, Amazon blamed the auditor’s methodology.
Tech has a long tradition of capitalising on women and gender stereotypes to anthropomorphise its chatbots. The first one was created in 1966 and played the role of a psychotherapist. Its name was not that of a famous psychotherapist such as Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung, but Eliza, after Eliza Doolittle in the play Pygmalion. The rationale was that through changing how she spoke, the fictional character created the illusion that she was a duchess.
Tech actively sabotages women in areas such as self-expression, healthcare, business, finances, and activism.
AI tools developed by Google, Amazon, and Microsoft rate images of women’s bodies as more sexually suggestive than those of men. Medical pictures of women, photos of pregnant bellies, and images depicting breastfeeding are all at high risk of being classified as representing “explicit nudity” and removed from social media platforms.
It can escalate too. It’s not uncommon that women’s businesses relying on portraying women’s bodies report being shadow-banned — their content is either hidden or made less prominent by social media platforms without their knowledge. This practice decimates female businesses and promotes self-censoring to avoid demotion on the platforms.
While AI is naturally associated with the virtual world, it is rooted in material objects. Moreover, most tech software and platform giants — Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta (aka Facebook) — are hardware providers as well. Datacentres, smartphones, laptops, and batteries rely heavily on metals such as cobalt and women often play a key role in their extraction and recycling.
For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo supplies 60% of the world’s cobalt. The mineral is extracted via artisanal and industrial mines. Some sectors welcome the integration of women into the artisanal mines as a means to empower them financially and as a substitute for children’s labour.
What tech has done about this? Software-only companies continue to look the other way while those manufacturing hardware avoided their responsibility as much as they could.
There is also a gendered division of labour in electronic waste, a €55 billion business. Women frequently have the lowest-tier jobs in the e-waste sector. They are exposed to harmful materials, chemicals, and acids as they pick and separate the electronic equipment into their components, which in turn negatively affect their morbidity, mortality, and fertility.
Again, the focus of the efforts goes to reducing child labour and women’s work conditions are lumped with those of “adult” workers. An additional challenge compared to mining work, it’s that hardware manufacturers control the narrative, highlighting their commitment to recycling materials across their products for PR purposes.
AI-powered misogyny beyond tech
Last but not least, not only tech companies use AI as a misogyny tool. Organisations and individuals around the world are ramping up quickly.
The baby-on-board market is a goldmine and technology is instrumental in helping vendors to exploit it. It has become habitual that retailers use AI algorithms to uncover and target pregnant girls and women.
Then, there is sexual exploitation. According to the United Nations, for every 10 victims of human trafficking detected globally, five are adult women and two are girls. Overall, 50 per cent of victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation (72% in the case of girls). Traffickers use online advertisements, social media platforms, and dating apps — all powered by AI — to facilitate the recruitment, exploitation, and exertion of control and pressure over the victims.
And thanks to generative AI, it has never been easier for individuals to create misogynistic content, even accidentally. Examples include:
ChatGPT replicating gender stereotypes when writing professional profiles, stressing communal skills for women while highlighting financial achievements for men.
Tech has embraced the patriarchal playbook in its adoption and deployment of artificial intelligence tools. Hoping to reap massive financial returns, the sector is unapologetically fostering gender inequity and stereotypes.
As Black feminist Audre Lorde wrote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Whilst tech continues to be run by wealthy white men who see themselves as the next Messiah, misogyny and patriarchy will be a feature and not a bug of artificial intelligence applications.
We need a diverse leadership in tech that sees women as an underserved market with growing purchasing and executive power. Tech also needs investors to understand that outdated patriarchal beliefs about women being a “niche” don’t serve them well.
Finally, Tech needs to assume responsibility for the tools it creates and that goes beyond monitoring apps performance. It starts at the ideation stage by asking uncomfortable ethical questions such as “Should we build that?”
Because not all speed is progress.
NOTE: This article is based on a piece that I wrote previously for The Mint.
PS. You and AI
Are you worried about the impact of AI impact on your job, your organisation, and the future of the planet but you feel it’d take you years to ramp up your AI literacy?
Do you want to explore how to responsibly leverage AI in your organisation to boost innovation, productivity, and revenue but feel overwhelmed by the quantity and breadth of information available?
Are you concerned because your clients are prioritising AI but you keep procrastinating on learning about it because you think you’re not “smart enough”?
More than 20 years ago, I negotiated my first salary. I could have done much better.
At the time, my future employer asked for my previous salary and offered exactly the same amount. Their bargaining chip was that they knew I was without a job and that I was obviously quite inexperienced in negotiating my compensation package.
My gut feeling was they were taking advantage of me, but I didn’t have proof. I asked my friends for advice, but none of them had much more experience than I did. Still, I negotiated a £3,000 increase, which I got.
To make a long story short, I learned I was severely underpaid a year later. That had three consequences
Feeling betrayed by the organization, I decided to search for another job, which I landed about a year later.
As bonuses, promotions, and pension schemes depended on my salary, that initial negotiation mishap penalized my earnings — and retirement “pot” — for many years.
Given the pervasive practice of asking candidates for their previous salaries several times, it compromised any leverage I may have when negotiating a new role.
Unfortunately, I’m not alone.
In this article, I share why we must keep talking about the effect of gender on compensation. I also dispel some of the most damaging myths surrounding
The impact of gender on workers’ salaries — including those about differences between how men and women approach salary discussions.
How policies may help to bridge the gender pay gap.
What leverage is available during salary negotiations.
Why addressing the impact of gender on salaries is both urgent and important
I’ve been talking about women and money extensively since I started blogging. For example, I’ve discussed
The UN findings showing that women invest 90 percent of their income back into their families, compared with 35 percent of men.
How society profits from women’s unpaid work and how we should rethink it for a better tomorrow.
The way salary increases are one of the ways my clients reap the benefits of my coaching and mentoring program.
Three reasons made me decide to revisit the topic
Not long ago, a client — a woman in tech — shared that she was expecting a job offer from her dream employer — her first job outside academia. After telling her I was “removing my coaching hat and putting my mentoring hat on,” I exhorted her to negotiate her salary. I offered my availability to provide feedback on the compensation package. Her reply clearly showed me that she wasn’t aware salaries were negotiable.
I read the article from Ronke Babajide, “The Sad Truth Is That the Bigger Your Pay Check, the Bigger the Pay Gap.” In the piece, she shares a personal story about how she was paid substantially less than her male counterparts. I was surprised by how many comments she got from women sharing similar heartbreaking stories. It also made me realize that when we talk about how gender influences salaries, often many things get conflated — for example, equal salary and the gender pay gap.
Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her work towards the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries. Her research reveals the causes of change and the main sources of the remaining gender gap.
And now, let’s debunk the myths.
Myth #1: Equal pay is the same as the gender pay gap
Equal pay
Equal pay is being paid the same salary for the same work. The right to equal pay has been recognized by EU law since 1957. More precisely, Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) states
Each Member State shall ensure that the principle of equal pay for male and female workers for equal work or work of equal value is applied.
2.For the purpose of this Article, ‘pay’ means the ordinary basic or minimum wage or salary and any other consideration, whether in cash or in kind, which the worker receives directly or indirectly, in respect of his employment, from his employer.
Equal pay without discrimination based on sex means:
(a)that pay for the same work at piece rates shall be calculated on the basis of the same unit of measurement;
(b)that pay for work at time rates shall be the same for the same job.
Although the UK is not a member of the EU anymore, the Equal Pay Act 1970 established that
(a)for men and women employed on like work the terms and conditions of one sex are not in any respect less favourable than those of the other; and
(b)for men and women employed on work rated as equivalent the terms and conditions of one sex are not less favourable than those of the other in any respect in which the terms and conditions of both are determined by the rating of their work.
(1)If an occupational pension scheme does not include a sex equality rule, it is to be treated as including one.
(2)A sex equality rule is a provision that has the following effect —
(a)if a relevant term is less favourable to A than it is to B, the term is modified so as not to be less favourable;
(b)if a term confers a relevant discretion capable of being exercised in a way that would be less favourable to A than to B, the term is modified so as to prevent the exercise of the discretion in that way.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there are employers that break the law upfront — pay women less than men for the same work — or use subterfuges to pay them less. Two examples:
In 2020, the Guardian reported that since the 2007–08 financial year, employment tribunals in England and Wales had received an average of almost 29,000 complaints a year.
Across the whole period, equal pay claims made up 12% of all cases, which include other complaints such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, and unlawful deductions from pay. Equal pay claims made up 21% of all cases in 2017–18, 14% in 2018–19 and 14% in the first three quarters of 2019–20.
Shop floor Tesco staff, who are predominantly female, launched a claim in 2018 on the basis that “Tesco breached its duty under section 66 of the Equality Act 2010 to pay them equally to men in comparable roles, namely warehouse staff who are predominantly male. The claimants argue that they have been paid up to £3 an hour less than a warehouse and distribution centre staff.” Through the years, several similar claims at other UK supermarkets including Asda, Sainsbury’s Morrisons, and the Co-op have been working their way through the courts.
In the US, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 protects against wage discrimination based on sex. However, as in Europe, that doesn’t mean that discrimination is eradicated. For example
By 1969, the median salary for female computer specialists was $7,763. In contrast, men earned a median of $11,193 as computer specialists and $13,149 as engineers.
Gender pay gap
The gender pay gap measures the difference in the average hourly wage of all men and women in work. Unlike unequal gender pay, the gender gap pay is not unlawful although countries such as the UK have regulations and laws making its reporting recommended or even mandatory.
In 2016, the Women and Equalities Committee published a report outlining some of the main causes of the gender pay gap:
The part-time pay penalty — Women are more likely to work part-time, and part-time workers are paid less.
Occupation segregation — Women tend to work in lower-paid occupations and sectors.
I’ll add two more:
Women are assessed on performance and men on potential. As a result, they are seen as less “promotable material”.
Managers holding “benevolent sexism” beliefs may block women’s professional progression under the premise that they are “protecting” them. For example, not offering a more senior role that involves traveling to a woman with small children under the assumption that she won’t be interested.
Finally, it’s very important to highlight that the gender pay gap is an intersectional issue.
As this report from the Fawcett Society showed, the ethnic gender pay gap is extremely complex. For example, it can range from a reversed gender pay gap of -5.6% for Chinese women in Great Britain to 19.6% for Black African women.
The UK Trades Union Congress published a new analysis in November showing that non-disabled men are paid on average 30% more than disabled women.
Myth #2: Transparency in salaries will eliminate the gender pay gap
I’ve been an advocate of salary transparency since in 2018 I attended a talk by Åsa Nyström, at the time Director of Customer Advocacy at Buffer. She discussed Buffer’s value of “Default to Transparency” which consisted of sharing via their website all their employees’ salaries as well as the formula used to calculate them.
The benefits of salary transparency are multiple
For companies— It increases performance as it promotes trust between employees and employers. A study showed that people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 40% less burnout.
For women — Research has shown that women are more prone to negotiate the compensation package when the job description includes the salary ranges.
For governments – Salary transparency makes it less likely for unequal pay to occur, increase wages among women and other low-power groups which in turn will reduce their demands for state benefits.
However, it’s not the magic bullet for the gender pay gap. We need to remember that the gender pay gap is about career progression and gendered careers, so transparency won’t eliminate entrenched conscious and unconscious biases.
Still, transparency is a step in the right direction and there is some good news to celebrate.
help workers or jobseekers better understand their position in the wider pay structure of a company or industry. It also includes collective measures to ensure employers share aggregated pay data broken down by gender, both internally and publicly.
Some of its key points are:
The right for workers to obtain pay information about other workers doing equal work from an employer.
During recruitment, job candidates also have a right to be informed about the pay levels they can expect at the position they are applying for.
Candidates have the right not to be asked about their pay history.
Organisations with more than 100 employees will have to publish their gender gaps regarding total pay and variable pay (such as bonuses), including their internal gender pay gap by job category.
EU Member States are required to implement legislation giving effect to it by 7 June 2026, the date on which the general obligations in relation to pay transparency and information provision come into force. The gender pay gap reporting obligations will come into effect on a phased basis starting on 7 June 2027.
Myth #3: Women earn less because they don’t negotiate
Year after year, I keep hearing that the gender pay gap is due to women not asking for raises or underselling their skills.
Whilst some women may indeed be reluctant to negotiate, either because they don’t know that salaries are negotiable or they don’t know how to negotiate them, there are also other four important reasons:
Many women are actively discouraged by their entourage to have salary negotiations. Over and over, women tell me that they’ve been advised by their mentors and network to “not rock the boat”.
Some studies show that when women negotiate their salaries, they receive backlash: They are seen as greedy whilst men who do the same are deemed assertive. Women know that they need to be perceived as “likable” so they don’t negotiate.
Society tells women how important is their work as family “pillars”. But does society monetarily recognize the kind of work women typically perform in that role — household chores, breastfeeding, child rearing, family caregiving? No. Hence, we’re used to our work being simultaneously praised and not recognized monetarily.
Women have been trained by society that our judgment is not trustworthy and that we need external validation before making decisions. Hence, we’re expected to talk ourselves out of our gut feeling that we’re underpaid and trust the organisations we work for about the monetary value of our work.
Finally, some studies show that women are more likely to negotiate salaries than men. However, while women are more likely to ask for higher salaries, men still receive greater compensation.
Myth #4: I will negotiate my salary once I prove my value to the organisation
You’ll never be in a better position to negotiate your salary than when you join an organisation. Please don’t count on being able to renegotiate your salary later on or at the next promotion — it’s extremely unlikely you have that leverage.
Moreover, by not negotiating your salary, you risk
Feeling regret when thinking about how much you could have asked for.
Fostering resentment against the organisation — if you learn others with similar background and skills are been paid more.
Myth #5: I may lose the job offer if I negotiate the salary
Scoop: You’re expected to negotiate your compensation package. So do it!
Research demonstrates that it’s extremely unlikely that a company withdraws a job offer only because you want to negotiate the salary. Worst case scenario? You get what you got offered in the first place, but at least you know you reached the maximum on the table.
And if you don’t know how much you should negotiate for, ask mentors, sponsors, professional communities, and friends.
Myth #6: I need to be mindful of the ongoing economic situation and settle for less
If you still feel reluctant to negotiate your salary, think about your future self.
For example, an increase of £2,000 in 2024 will translate into £40,000 in 20 years. Moreover, promotions, bonuses, and contributions to your pension scheme are typically calculated as a percentage of your salary, so they’ll increase as your base salary increases.
In summary, those £2,000 will be the gift that keeps on giving!
Call to action
I have two asks for you
1.- Share this article with a woman who will benefit from negotiating her salary in 2025.
2.- Set a salary increase goal for 2025.
WORK WITH ME
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
The period between Christmas and New Year is supposed to be a moment for families to reunite, share traditions, and celebrate.
Under that benevolent facade, patriarchy and its ally misogyny are plotting in plain sight.
Let’s revisit three patriarchy’s ghosts of Christmas past and discover three strategies to break free from their grip in time for New Year’s celebration.
Three patriarchal principles that underpin this holiday season
There are many ways this time of the year enforces patriarchal norms and processes.
Note that I’m not talking only about sexism — the division of labour based on gender, e.g. women shop, cook, and care for others whilst men converse with the visits — but it’s how we do it.
It’s in the “how” that patriarchy has a field party. Three of its principles particularly shine during this time of the year. Each of them reinforces the others.
Let’s get cracking!
Principle #1: Women are responsible for the “perfect” holiday season
As I discussed before in this article about the patriarchal value of time and women’s unpaid work, women are perceived as “human doings”, not human beings. That means that our worth is correlated with what we “produce” for others.
And what does that mean during this time of the year? That somehow the Powers that Be have bestowed upon women the duty of creating the perfect holiday season for those around us.
BTW, no need to worry about what perfection looks like— leave it to social media, magazines, TV shows, and even ChatGPT to give us their “feedback” on
Cooking the perfect Christmas dinner
Choosing the perfect wine
Setting the perfect New Year’s Eve table
Decorating the perfect Christmas tree
Picking the perfect gift for everybody else
And the list goes on, personalised for each family member, friend, and acquaintance.
Of course, women don’t escape either to this quest for perfection. The perfect body, hairstyle, shoes, and skin complexion are dictated by our always-evolving patriarchal standards and are now reinforced by AI, as the research by The Bulimia Project has surfaced.
As that to-do list is not enough, women are also required to care for everybody else’s emotions.
And how do they achieve that? Go to the next principle.
Principle #2: Women’s job is to make others happy
Patriarchy wants us to believe that everybody depends on women for their emotions. We can magically make them happy, sad, frustrated, appreciated… and so on.
The underlying theory is that people around us are emotional children and whatever women do/don’t say or do will impact their emotional wellbeing.
As the Christmas to New Year period is marketed as “the happiest time of the year” in most of the Western world, women bear the brunt of not “screwing this up” for everybody.
As a result, we should deploy our “innate” social skills and guess when to act as
The cheerleader
The listening ear
The supporter
The clown
The role model
The confidant
The graceful host
The helpful guest
And even the self-deprecating joker.
Failure to cater to everybody’s mood and needs indicates a “lack of empathy” — a capital sin for women — and, more importantly, selfishness.
Speaking of which, let’s check the last principle.
Principle #3: Women are selfless
What happens when making other people happy conflicts with women’s happiness? That’s easy. By default, our own happiness is at the bottom of the list, buried under others’ needs.
This manifests as
Demands on women’s time and attention — who said that Christmas was a period of relaxation for everybody? The reality is that for some to be able to rest and enjoy the holiday, others — women — need to do the work.
Opinions on women — This time of the year women are supposed to shut up and stoically endure jokes and opinions about how we live our lives. Why we don’t have children, have too many children, or not enough children. Why do we have a paid job, work part-time, or don’t have paid employment. Why we’re divorced, lesbian, single, or bisexual… and the list goes on. There is no question intimate enough that’s off-limits provided that the setting involves enough people that can be “upset” if we fight back. And if in doubt, watch or read Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Entitlement to voice entrenched stereotypes and discriminatory beliefs — somehow this season appears to foster the perfect conditions for people to feel emboldened to express racist, sexist, and ableist remarks — as well as any other prejudiced statements against underrepresented groups like immigrants and trans people — expecting to get reassurance from the audience or at least no pushback. And knowing that their host or a female guest is specially engaged in DEI activities is far from a deterrent. Instead, the person should expect to be publicly named and warned that resistance is futile, e.g. “Mary, I know you’re [feminist, defendant of gay rights, DEI activist, etc..] BUT you should agree that [prejudice, stereotype, bias]”.
Women are expected to accept these additional burdens gratefully, as setting any kind of boundaries somehow will destroy the illusion of harmless banter and festive spirit.
Three strategies to fight back against a patriarchal holiday
But not all is lost. Three coaching tools can help you minimise the impact of patriarchy on your enjoyment of this holiday season.
Strategy #1: Embrace emotional adulthood
What if people’s emotions didn’t depend on you? For good or bad, others’ emotions depend on them. More precisely, on their thoughts about circumstances.
Don’t believe me? Then, remember the expression ”Is the glass half empty or half full?” The premise of this famous question is that the same fact can be framed as a positive or a negative, depending on how you look at it.
In contrast to emotional childhood explained above, emotional adulthood is when we believe that people’s emotions are dependent on them and not on us. The reality is that if Aunt Maud is sad because you didn’t invite Uncle Sam to the dinner, it’s not you that causes her sadness but it’s what she’s making it mean.
Next time you’re put on the spot as “causing” somebody’s negative feelings, I invite you to hold tight and resist the emotional blackmail from those around you and instead believe in their power to manage their own emotions.
Strategy #2: Aim for B- work
This is what I’ve learned about perfection
It’s ill-defined — what’s perfect one day, can be a mess later on.
It’s overvalued — when you look back on your life and reflect on the moments that have brought you joy, chances are that by no means they were “perfect”. For example, last summer my mother broke her hip and I remember my joy at seeing her walking after the surgery. Would the moment have been better if we both had perfect hair and makeup? The answer is no.
Makes people feel inadequate —we’re taught that perfection is a gift to others and ourselves. I disagree. It’s often poisoned candy as it leverages comparison to make some people feel like winners at the expense of others feeling like losers.
Our worth doesn’t depend on “producing” perfection — We’re already worthy as we are.
My solution to perfectionism? Aiming for B- Work.
Just to be clear, not only I’m telling you not to go for perfection or even excellence, but I’m recommending you aim for good going down to satisfactory.
If in doubt, imagine how planning for good — instead of perfect — could give you back
Time
Energy
Peace of mind
Isn’t worth a try?
Strategy #3: Decide ahead of time
I’ve talked about this strategy before in this post where I discussed the power of integrating quitting your job into your career success strategy.
Deciding ahead of time is to plan how you’ll think, feel, and act in advance of certain triggers appearing.
For example, how will you react when
Cousin Alex treats you like their personal bartender and waitress during the dinner you’re hosting.
Uncle John asks you — like every Christmas — why are you still single.
Niece Jenny complains — again — about how immigrants steal “all jobs” and also claim “all benefits” somehow forgetting to notice that you’re an immigrant too.
Note that when I say “deciding ahead of time” this includes choosing not to do anything at all, including smiling or leaving the table to make it look like you forgot something in the kitchen. Moreover, you can even come up with a list of things you won’t do!
In the end, the goal exercise is about allowing yourself to choose in advance what works for you.
Conclusion
The Christmas to New Year period is full of patriarchal dos and don’ts. It’s also ripe for disruption.
Let’s start right now.
BACK TO YOU: What patriarchal principle makes it harder for you to enjoy this holiday season?
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
Each time you’re confronted with a choice, what you do depends on how you think and feel about that decision. Let me show you what I mean with an example:
If you see a job advertised and you think “I already have 60% of the requirements”, that may make you feel energised and prompt you to apply.
On the other hand, if you think “I only have 60% of the requirements”, you may feel discouragement and, as a result, you won’t apply for the job.
Is not amazing how your brain works?
And I have more news for you. Your brain has not made that decision randomly. Instead, it has been “educated” on the “right” choices for you based on your lived experience and the interaction with your environment (other people, your workplace, society, nature…).
This has created a vault of “beliefs”
Your beliefs about yourself (I’m a genius/I’m disorganised).
Your beliefs about other people (people are only interested in money/the rich don’t care about the planet).
Your beliefs about the way the world is organised (I need to go to university to get a good job, promotions go to those that work hard).
Of course, all the patriarchal rules embedded in your socialisation contribute to your beliefs and choices. Some of them appear in more prominent ways than others and I wanted to which ones impacted you more…
So I asked you 🙂
Early this year, I ran a quiz called “How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?” It had 20 statements that respondents had to ask either as “mostly true” or “mostly false”.
What did you tell me?
By a huge margin, you told me that you believe that “You should be able to achieve a work-life balance.”
Before you start recriminating yourself or wondering if you “got it wrong”, I want to reassure you that my aim is not to shame you for what you believe in — this is a love letter, after all. Instead, it’s to have a conversation about this belief and see how it serves you.
The patriarchal myth of work-life balance
You may now be thinking “Patricia, you have it all wrong, we all should aspire to a work-life balance” or “Patricia, this is not patriarchal at all, it’s not about men and women”.
Let’s start by examining each word in the construct “work-life balance”
First, let’s notice that we say “work-life” and not “life-work” balance. Is it a coincidence that the word “work” comes first?
What does the binary life vs work tell you? Maybe your work is not part of your life? Or perhaps that your work exists in a different universe isolated from your personal life?
And what about balance? Does that mean that you have always to strive for 50% allocation for work and 50% for personal life? Does your “unpaid” work count towards “work” or “life”? What about volunteering? And what about sleeping and eating?
My thoughts about why “life-work balance” is not serving you
You bear the mental and physical brunt of seamlessly making your life look as if it were a scripted musical.
You dismiss the huge impact your personal and professional lives have on each other, which makes you feel overwhelmed.
You shame yourself because you’re unable to achieve “the balance”.
You don’t say “no” to projects, activities, and tasks that don’t serve you well because you tell yourself that you “should” be able to make it all fit in.
You blame your lack of “time management skills” when you don’t manage to cross out all the items in your ever-growing to-do lists (yes, I wrote the word list in plural on purpose).
And my thoughts on how the “work-life balance” trope serves the patriarchy
As a “productive” female employee, society shifts the onus to you alone about handling your personal challenges (caregiving, chronic illnesses).
Your employer is right to assume that you’re committed to your career only if you accept all the projects and tasks thrown at you.
There is for sure a “work-life balance” somewhere and you should be able to find it if you are “smart enough”.
You don’t have too many things on your plate — you only must try harder at time management.
You’re rightly patronised about the choices you make — others know better what you should do to achieve “work-life balance”.
You may be “fixed” through expensive and gruelling programs that promise to teach you the “ultimate time management tools”.
What would happen if you dared to replace the thought “You should be able to achieve a work-life balance” with “Work-life balance is a patriarchal construct and I don’t need to abide by it”?
My answer
You’d congratulate yourself for being able to prioritise accordingly all the hats you wear (paid worker, unpaid worker, partner, student, parent, daughter, sister, activist…).
You’d drop the ball “kindly” for activities that don’t need to be perfect (scoop — 99% of tasks aren’t!).
You’d say “no” without remorse to projects and tasks that don’t serve you well.
You’d know that the patriarchal system plays a role in your thoughts and beliefs so you’d learn how to recognise them for what they are — “thoughts” — and not facts.
You’d step into your wisdom — embracing that you’re an expert in your own life.
Your mission would be to get clarity on what serves you well rather than crowdsourcing “advice”.
You’d be kind to yourself as if you were your best friend.
What about you? What do you think would be the worst thing that could happen if you’d allow yourself to debunk the myth that you should achieve work-life balance”? And the best thing?
I cannot wait to read your answers.
A big hug,
Patricia
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
Generative AI — and more precisely ChatGPT and text-to-image tools like Midjourney — have prompted a flurry of strikes and pushback from visual and writing professionals. And rightly so.
The reason? Book authors, painters, and screenwriters feel that’s unfair that tech companies earn money by creating tools based on scrapping their work result of many years spent learning their craft. All that without acknowledging intellectual property or providing financial compensation.
They say that this is “the first time in history” this has happened.
I dissent. This has been happening for centuries — to women. Let me explain.
There are three reasons that typically come up to explain why there haven’t been more women artists and scientists through the centuries:
Women have been too busy with children and house chores to dedicate time — and have the space — to scientific and artistic pursuits.
In many cultures, men have been priorised to go to school and university over women.
To avoid bias against their work, some women decided to publish their work under a male pen name or to disguise themselves as men
But there is a fourth cause. When women’s outstanding work has been credited to a man. So although the work itself may have won a Nobel prize or be showcased in museums, libraries, and galleries, it has been attributed to a man instead of the rightful female author.
Hepeating: When a man takes credit for what a woman already said
Let’s review some unsung sheroes of science and art.
Science and art — a land with no women?
Let’s start with science
One of the most famous cases is that of Rosalind Frankin. Her “work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)” but her contribution was erased by the academic community that awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins — who used part of her research — for the discovery of the DNA double helix.
Candace Pert discovered the brain’s opiate receptor during her time as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. The discovery led to an award for her professor, Dr. Solomon Snyder. When she protested the fact that her contribution had been neglected, he replied, “That’s how the game is played.”
In the 12th century, “Trota of Salerno” authors a gynecology handbook, On the Sufferings of Women. However, until the end of the last century, sholars falsely assumed Trota was a man.
In 1818, “Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously. Her husband pens the preface and people assume he was behind it.”
In 1859, “after 10 years working with engineers to design signal flares, Martha Coston is listed as “administratrix” on the patent. Her long-dead husband is listed as the inventor.”
In 1970, “forty-six female researchers sued the magazine Newsweek, alleging that male writers and editors took all the credit for their efforts”.
And the uncredited others
Healers and midwives — Women were the original healers, using herbs and remedies to cure alignments and help with deliveries, contraception, and abortion. As no good deed goes unpunished, a lot of them would end up burning at the stake. How much of our current medicine is based on those uncredited healers?
Above I shared some examples of women’s extraordinary work stolen by others (or conveniently forgotten).
But the problem runs deeper because we’re educated to consider men’s contributions extraordinary whilst than of women’s ordinary.
Let’s take parenthood. A woman takes her children to school — it’s her job. A man takes his children to school — he’s a dedicated father and a beacon for other parents.
A woman leads a project — she’s organised. A man leads a project — he’s a project manager.
Women are “cooks” and men are “chefs”.
And the list goes on…
What to do differently?
Let’s start acknowledging good work by women — and I’m very intentional when I say “good” and not “stellar” work.
At the same time, let’s stop glorifying each little thing a man does. Is really setting up the washing machine such a big accomplishment?
But how to overcome millennia of indoctrination?
Five years ago, I published a post showcasing a 6-min TED talk from Kristen Pressner where she explained a practical technique to double-check our gender biases. It’s called “Flip it to test it!”
It’s a very simple method: When in doubt, flip the gender and see how it lands.
In practice
Would you praise John for taking his children to school if instead was their mother, Jane?
Would you diminish the role of Rita leading a project as simply being “a good team player” if Mike had led the project instead?
In summary, let’s purposely acknowledge the good work of women around us. We cannot overdo it — we have centuries to catch up on.
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
In the last two weeks, I’ve had the privilege to attend four different conferences focused on women and I’ve presented at two of them.
The topics discussed were as complex and rich as women’s lives: neurodiversity in the workplace, women in politics, childcare, artificial intelligence and the future of the female workforce, child labour, impossible goals and ambition, postpartum depression at work, career myths, women in tech, accessibility, quotas… and so many more.
The idea for this article came from my numerous “aha” moments during talks, panels, and conversations at those events. I wanted to share them broadly so others could benefit as well.
I hope you find those insights as inspiring, stimulating, and actionable as I did.
The keynote speakers and panels were excellent. The discussions were thought-provoking and space was held for people to voice their dissent. I especially appreciated listening to women politicians discuss feminist issues.
Below are some of my highlights
The need to find a space for feminist men.
It’s time for us to go outside our comfort zone.
“If men had the menopause, Trafalgar Square Fountain would be pouring oestrogen gel.”
If we want to talk about averages, the average voter is a woman. There are slightly more women than men (51% women) and they live longer.
Men-only decision-making is not legitimate, i.e. not democratic. Women make up the majority of individuals in the UK but the minority in decision-making. Overall, diversity is an issue of legitimacy.
The prison system for women forgets their children.
Challenging that anti-blackness/racism is not seen as a topic at the top of the agenda for the next election.
We believe “tradition matters” so things have gone backwards from the pandemic for women.
In Australia, the Labour Party enforced gender quotas within the party. That led to increasing women’s representation to 50%. The Conservative Party went for mentoring women — no quotas — and that only increased women’s participation to 30%.
There is a growing toxicity in X/Twitter against women. Toxic men’s content gets promoted. We need better regulation of social media.
More women vote but decide later in the game.
We cannot afford not to be bold with childcare. The ROI is one of the highest.
We need to treat childcare as infrastructure.
There are more portraits of horses in parliament than of women.
Empowered to Lead Conference 2023
On Saturday 28th October, I attended the “Empowered to Lead” Conference 2023 organised by She leads for legacy — a community of individuals and organisations working together to reduce the barriers faced by Black female professionals aspiring for senior leadership and board level positions.
It was an amazing day! I didn’t stop all day: listening to inspiring role models, taking notes, and meeting great women.
We ask people what they want to do only when they are children — that’s wrong. We need to learn and unlearn to take up the space we deserve.
Three nuggets of wisdom: Audacity/confidence, ambition, and creativity/curiosity.
Audacity— Every day we give permission to others to define us. Audacity is about being bold. Overconsultation kills your dream. It’s about going for it even if you feel fear.
Creativity & curiosity — takes discipline not to focus on the things that are already there. Embrace diverse thinking.
Question 1: What if you were the most audacious, the most ambitious, and the most creative?
Question 2: May you die empty? Would you have used all your internal resources?
Baroness Floella Benjamin DBE
Childhood lasts a lifetime. We need to tell children that they are worth it.
Over 250 children die from suicide a year.
When she arrived in the UK, there were signs with the text “No Irish, no dogs, no coloureds”.
After Brexit, a man pushed his trolley onto her and told her, “What are you still doing here?” She replied, “I’m here changing the world, what are you doing here?”
She was the first anchor-woman to appear pregnant on TV in the world.
“I pushed the ladder down for others.”
“The wise man forgives but doesn’t forget. If you don’t forgive you become a victim.”
‘Every disappointment is an appointment with something better’.
Jenny Garrett OBE
Rather than talking about “underrepresentation”, let’s talk about “underestimation”.
Nadine Benjamin MBE
What do you think you sound? Does how you sound support who you want to be?
You’re a queen. Show up for yourself.
Additionally, Sue Lightup shared details about the partnership between Queen Bee Coaching (QBC) — an organisation for which I volunteer as a coach — and She Leads for Legacy (SLL).
Last year, QBC successfully worked with SLL as an ally, providing a cohort of 8 black women from the SLL network with individual coaching from QBC plus motivational leadership from SLL.
At the conference, the application process for the second cohort was launched!
Women in Tech Festival
I delivered a keynote at this event on Tuesday 31st October. The topic was the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the future of the female workforce.
When I asked the 200+ attendees if they felt that the usage of AI would create or destroy jobs for them, I was surprised to see that the audience was overwhelmingly positive about the adoption of this technology.
Through my talk, I shared the myths we have about technology (our all-or-nothing mindset), what we know about the impact of AI on the workforce from workers whose experience is orchestrated by algorithms, and four different ways in which we can use AI to progress in our careers.
The talk was very well received and people approached me afterwards sharing how much the keynote had made them reflect on the impact of AI on the labour market. I also volunteered for mentoring sessions during the festival and all my on-the-fly mentees told me that the talk had provided them with a blueprint for how to make AI work for them.
I also collected gems of wisdom from other women’s interventions
Our workplaces worship the mythical “uber-productive” employee.
We must be willing to set boundaries around what we’re willing to do and what not.
It may be difficult to attract women to tech startups. One reason is that it’s riskier, so women may prefer to go to more established companies.
Workforce diversity is paramount to mitigate biases in generative AI tools.
I found the panel about quotas for women in leadership especially insightful
Targets vs quotas: “A target is an aspiration whilst a quota must be met”.
“Quotas shock the system but they work”.
Panelists shared evidence of how a more diverse leadership led to a more diverse offering and benefits for customers.
For quotas to work is crucial to look at the data. Depending on the category, it may be difficult to get those data. You need to build trust — show that’s for a good purpose.
In law firms, you can have 60% of solicitors that are women but when you look at the partners is a different story — they are mostly men.
A culture of presenteeism hurts women in the workplace.
Organisations lose a lot of women through perimenopause and menopause because they don’t feel supported.
There was a very interesting panel on neurodiversity in the workplace
Neurodivergent criteria have been developed using neurodivergent men as the standard so often they miss women.
The stereotype is that if you have ADHD, you should do badly in your studies. For example, a woman struggled to get an ADHD diagnosis because she had completed a PhD.
Women mask neurodivergent behaviours better than men. Masking requires a lot of effort and it’s very taxing.
We need more openness about neurodiversity in the workplace.
The title of my talk was “Seven Counterintuitive Secrets to a Thriving Career in Tech” and the purpose was to share with the audience key learnings from my career in tech across 3 continents, spearheading several DEI initiatives in tech, coaching and mentoring women and people from underrepresented communities in tech, as well as writing a book about how women succeed in tech worldwide.
First, I debunked common beliefs such as that there is a simple solution to the lack of women in leadership positions in tech or that you need to be fixed to get to the top. Then, I presented 7 proven strategies to help the audience build a successful, resilient, and sustainable career in tech.
I got very positive feedback about the talk during the day and many women have reached out on social media since to share how they’ve already started applying some of the strategies.
Some takeaways from other talks:
I loved Becki Howarth’s interactive talk about allyship at work where she shared how you can be an ally in four different aspects:
Communication and decision-making — think about power dynamics, amplify others, don’t interrupt, and create a system that enables equal participation.
Calling out (everyday) sexism — use gender-neutral language, you don’t need to challenge directly, support the recipient (corridor conversations).
Stuff around the edges of work — create space for people to connect organically, don’t pressure people to share, and rotate social responsibilities so everyone pulls their weight.
Taking on new opportunities — some people need more encouragement than others, and ask — don’t assume.
The talk of Lydia Hawthorn about postpartum depression in the workplace was both heartbreaking and inspiring. She provided true gems of wisdom:
Up to 15% of women will experience postpartum depression.
Talk about the possibility of postpartum depression before it happens.
Talk to your employer about flexible options.
Consider a parent-buddy scheme at work.
Coaching and therapy can be lifesaving.
Amelia Caffrey gave a very dynamic talk about how to use ChatGPT for coding. One of the most interesting aspects she brought up for me is that there is no more excuse to write inaccessible code. For example, you can add in the prompt the requisite that the code must be accessible for people using screen readers.
Finally, one of the most touching talks was from Eleanor Harry, Founder and CEO of HACE: Data Changing Child Labour. Their mission is to eradicate child labour in company supply chains.
There are 160 million children in child labour as of 2020. HACE is launching the Child Labour Index; the only quantitative metric in the world for child labour performance at a company level. Their scoring methodology is based on cutting-edge AI technologies, combined with HACE’s subject matter expertise. The expectation is the index provides the investor community with quantitative leverage to push for stronger company performance on child labour.
Eleanor’s talk was an inspiring example of what tech and AI for good look like.
Back to you
With so many men competing in the news, social media, and bookstores for your attention, how are you making sure you give other women’s wisdom the consideration it deserves?
Work with me — My special offer
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This is the final article in a trilogy based on my summer holiday. Each piece marks an important milestone in my evolution as an activist for women’s rights and also as a person. The first one was about the invisibility of women in public spaces (Monumental Inequity: The Missing Women). The second one was about the visibility of harassment in the workplace.
This one comes full circle. It’s about the invisibility of a very specific kind of work: caregiving.
The invisibility of carework
On August 25th my family and I traveled from Malta, where we had spent one week of holiday, to Vigo, in the Northwest of Spain. My plan was to spend 10 additional vacation days with my parents and brother before coming back to the UK.
We had a fluid plan for the remaining days: Going to Porto one day, visiting my grandmother on her farm, going to Santiago de Compostela for shopping, celebrating my mother and sister-in-law birthday’s, and visiting some cool restaurants.
The next day, August 26th, my mother broke her hip whilst walking to Vigo downtown.
From there, it was all a roller-coaster. All comes in flashbacks
Going in the ambulance with my mother.
Waiting in the emergency ward for the doctors to confirm what my mother had sensed, she had a broken hip.
Learning how to help my mother whilst minimising hurting her.
Sleeping in a hospital care chair.
Trying to guess went my mother was suffering because of her tendency to put up with pain.
Going to the hospital cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Unfortunately, I was not surprised by the amount of work involved.
My current research for the book How Women Succeed in Tech has confirmed the huge penalty imposed by eldercare on women. It’s typically not recognised in the workplace leave entitlements — like parental leave — or by the state, so women are left to shoulder the brunt of the care to reduce the financial burden even to the extent, in some cases, of being pushed to make the hard decision to not have children.
All my life, I’ve seen the women in my family – my grandmother and aunts – assume the care of their elders and sick husbands on top of their work. Without transition and, as expected, without retribution.
What did surprise me was the mental load of my conflicting emotions. Feeling
Guilty when thinking that I was not doing enough in my role as caregiver.
Selfish the nights I shifted turns with my father and I went to sleep at my brother’s house whilst he slept at the hospital.
Resentful and angry because after so many months and years of waiting for this reunion, I felt we didn’t deserve to spend it in the hospital.
Sad when my mother would blame herself for “ruining” the holidays for everybody.
Inadequate for not knowing off the bat how to move the hospital bed or make work the pay-as-you-go TV.
What helped? Remembering my training as a life coach. Through self-coaching techniques.
I limited useless rumination. Early in the ordeal, I was able to pause and ask myself, “What is the true purpose of this holiday?”. I answered, “To be with my family”. From that moment, I decided that the whole incident had not detracted from the purpose of the trip and that from that point of view, the holiday was a success.
It also helped to reduce the tendency to give advice to others about what to think or feel. Instead, I was often able to shift into curiosity and spend more time listening and asking about their thoughts and feelings.
I put things into context. I asked myself, “If my mother were to break her hip anyway and I could be anywhere in the world, what would have been my choice?”. The answer was straightforward. It would be exactly as it happened.
I gave myself permission to name and process my emotions. Not only anger, disappointment, or sadness but also relief when my mother came back from the successful surgery and joy when I saw her walking the next day.
Coming back to the UK
I was not prepared for the exhaustion and mental fatigue that I experienced once back in Manchester. I guess that I thought that as soon as I’d be home, I’d resume my normal life.
Nothing farther from the truth. I felt depleted mentally and physically. I had plenty of deadlines but my brain and body wanted to rest.
Then, I did something unusual for me, I pushed back on agreed deadlines.
I consider myself very dependable, so it was hard to share with people what happened and ask for more time to send an article, prepare a presentation, or record a video.
The good news was that everybody was very understanding. Deadlines were extended and I delivered the work.
I felt relieved and thankful.
Still, I thought, “What if this was a common occurrence?”, “Would the people around me have been so understanding?“
My learnings
Reading a book teaching how to drive a car is not the same as driving it. Watching a video about unconscious bias doesn’t mean that we stop being affected by stereotypes.
My research into unpaid caregiving opened my eyes to this invisible sink of women’s work. Through the data and the stories of women, I was able to quantify the effort not recognised, the time invested, the unearned money, and the lost career opportunities.
But this experience made it personal and urgent. Because in a world that still grapples with recognizing childcare as an infrastructure, eldercare is invisible, even if our societies get older and older.
Recently, I was at the feminist Fawcett Conference 2023 with the theme Women Win Elections! Of course, support for mothers was at the top of the agenda from the early morning. And rightly so.
What concerned me it’s that it was presented as “the” item to tackle, even if during the event it became clear that eldercare — among other challenges — needs to be addressed for women to present themselves as political candidates.
Then, why do we only focus on childcare? Because we continue to think of women as second-class citizens who have only the right to one “ask” at a time. And that is “childcare”.
However, this is not a contest. Chances are that as a woman you may become a “sandwich carer” at some point — those who care for both sick, disabled, or older relatives and dependent children.
In 2019, the UK Office for National Statistics reported that sandwich carers (about 3% of the UK general population) were more likely to report symptoms of mental ill-health, feel less satisfied with life, and struggle financially compared with the general population. Moreover, the prevalence of mental ill-health increases with the amount of care given per week.
In summary, asking our societies to recognise the multiple identities women can embody beyond motherhood is “too much”, so we keep invisibilizing and minimising our efforts. We think that by patiently staying in line and asking for one “favour” at a time we’ll get to the finish line of gender equality.
I don’t want to die feeling that I’m the child of a lesser god. Do you?
We women need to stop conforming ourselves with less and demand much more from our partners, our families, our workplaces, our society, and our governments.
We need to stop “being mindful” of the inflation, the NHS crisis, the strikes, the wars…
We need to stop believing that we need to be the adults in the room, the ones that are ready to make sacrifices for the common good, the half of the humanity that is expected to “shut up and do the work”.
Let’s be bold and put ourselves first. Because when women win, 8 billion people win.
Thanks for your support
When I started writing these three articles, I thought of them as three distinct episodes with the common thread of my holidays and women. I was surprised how “visibility” weaved into each of them naturally.
Allowing myself the time for this exploration has been liberating and, at the same time, constraining. Liberating because of the format but constraining because of my self-imposed commitment to both exploring the uncomfortable aspects of the topics as well as reflecting on the alternatives.
Thanks again for accompanying me along this trilogy.
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What if you could master your mind so you could take your life and career to a whole new level?
What if you could learn how not to depend on others’ praise and criticism so you could feel worthy of love and success from the insight?
What if you could stop the habits that don’t serve you well and have a better work-life balance?
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This week my article comes with a little delay because I spent the weekend in London attending the Fawcett Conference 2023 with the theme Women win elections! and celebrating my birthday.
And now, back to the post.
As I mentioned last week, this is the second of a series of three articles based on my summer holiday. Each marks an important milestone in my evolution as an activist for women’s rights and also as a person. The first one was about the invisibility of women in public spaces (Monumental Inequity: The Missing Women). The focus of this one is on the visibility of harassment.
Visibility
On August 20th I was on holiday in Malta with my family. I’m not a football fan but it was impossible to visit the webpage of a Spanish or English journal and ignore that the Women’s World Cup final was scheduled for that day between the two countries.
I didn’t watch the match but I kept checking the results as I was walking through the streets of La Valetta, Malta’s capital. And I was happy when I learned they had won. (To be honest, I would only have been mildly disappointed if England had won instead, after all, I’ve been living in the UK for 19 years).
On 25th August, the president addressed the RFEF in an in-person event. Instead of resigning, he complained of being the object of a manhunt and confirmed he’d continue in his role. The attendees applauded, including other top bosses of the RFEF and the coach of the female football team.
Hardly any male football teams denounced the issue and only a few male players supported the female footballer.
The UEFA, the FIFA, and many other federations closed their eyes as much as they could.
Even after the RFEF president resigned, the female players had to continue to exert pressure to get the reforms that they’d been asking for years.
Harassment has a long tradition
Is sexual harassment in the workplace new? And is it really hidden?
Before #MeToo, there was the American attorney and educator Anita Hill. In 1991, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Clarence Thomas’s sexual harassment when he was appointed to the US Supreme Court. Her testimony has been credited with raising awareness of workplace sexual harassment.
Before the 20th century, women were seen as “property” so rather than complaining about sexual harassment, their “owners” (fathers, husbands) asked compensation for “damaging goods”. Historian Ed Ayers shares an example in this interview: “There’s an 1858 case … the father sues his daughter’s employer — she’s 14 — for getting her pregnant, and thus losing her income when she has to quit and have the baby.”
In her book Ain’t I a Woman, bell hooks opens our eyes to the sexual assault Black women underwent during slavery. It was either comply or be punished.
Would you be surprised if I told you that we have records of sexual harassment in the workplace happening 3,000 years ago? The Book of Ruth in the Bible is dated around 1160 and 1100 BC. One of the pivotal moments in the Book is when Ruth becomes a gleaner in Boaz’s field. He instructs his workers not to molest her (Ruth 2: 7–9, 15–16). And whilst the Catholic Bible in English may leave doubts about what “molesting” means, the text was originally written in Hebrew and many Bible scholars have found sexual overtones in it.
Basically, Boaz knew his workers were predators and he decided to spare Ruth by explicitly telling them not to molest her. How kind of him! What about other women? What about instead firing them?
Boys will be boys…
Willful blindness
Back to the football drama.
This was not the first time the now ex-president of the RFEP was involved in a story of sex at work. In 2020, there was money expensed towards an off-site work event run in a cottage that he later referred to as a “ paella with girlfriends” and his uncle and ex-cabinet manager as an orgy.
Sounds familiar. When we look at #MeToo or the sexual harassment lawsuits at “tech bro” companies (Tesla, Uber, Google) they want us to believe that those things were happening behind doors, that only a few knew, that there was no evidence.
The reality is that in all cases
Evidence was there for everybody to see it all along but nobody cared.
That having visual evidence didn’t result in automatic sanctions to the perpetrators and restitution for the victim. Abusers were still given the benefit of the doubt and victims were badmouthed.
We have in Spanish the saying “No hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver.” There is a similar saying in English, “There’s none so blind as he who will not see.” There is a legal term for this
In law, willful blindness is when a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated.
Stopping willful blindness towards sexual harassment in the workplace
I was in Malta when the story started. I went to Spain with my family where the drama was played on TV 24–7. I came back to the UK from holidays and it’s still ongoing.
Although the RFEF president finally resigned, the story is far from finished for the female player who endured the harassment. There are several lawsuits underway.
Once again we have proof that whilst women continue to be seen as second-class humans, no evidence would be enough to finish sexual harassment and gender violence. We’ll continue to excuse perpetrators and find a rationale to blame victims.
Whilst I like to believe that indeed #SeAcabo (the hashtag they used to protest and means “It’s finished”), the reality is that it isn’t. It’s not a matter of “visibility” or “awareness”.
So, what’s the cure for wilful blindness to sexual harassment in the workplace? Forceful accountability.
How does that look in practice?
First and foremost, let’s look at the evidence.
Let’s stop finding comfort in justifying a 3,000-year status quo where sexual predators take advantage of the asymmetry of power in hierarchical work relationships.
Let’s stop finding exculpating rationales for the perpetrators.
Let’s stop placing the onus on the victims to shatter our biases about who’s credible and who isn’t.
It’s a lie that eradicating sexual harassment at work is about the perpetrators and the victims. It’s about the workplace’s culture we all contribute to — what we decide to see, what we choose to ignore, and who we believe.
Which workplace culture are you supporting right now? Is it one of difficult conversations and zero-tolerance? Or is it one of being forgiving and forgetful?
Thanks for accompanying me on this journey. The final installment of this trilogy will focus on caregiving.
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You have 75 days to the end of 2023. You can continue to do what you’re doing if that’s serving you well.
But if you’re not reaching your goals in spite of overworking and overdelivering, there is a different way.
What if you could master your mind so you could take your life and career to a whole new level?
What if you could learn how not to depend on others’ praise and criticism so you could feel worthy of love and success from the inside?
What if you could stop the habits that don’t serve you well and have a better work-life balance?
If that resonates with you, my 3-month 1:1 coaching program “Upwards and Onwards” is for you.
For £875.00, we’ll dive into where you are now and the results you want to create; we’ll uncover the obstacles in your way and explore strategies to overcome them; and we’ll implement a plan to help you become your own version of success.
Monument to Daphne Caruana Galizia. Photo by Patricia Gestoso.
I went on holiday in August with the very clear objective of spending time with my brother — who lives in Spain — and my parents — who live in Venezuela.
From that point of view, I’m happy to report that it was mission accomplished.
I also wanted to rest. So I thought I’d put my women’s rights activism aside during the vacation and have a lighthearted summer break.
That was a total failure.
I had little rest and it couldn’t park my activism. However, I learned a lot about myself, what’s important to me, and how central is my advocacy for women to the way I perceive the world and the legacy I want to leave behind. The fact that these events happened during my holiday allowed me to slow down enough to recognise why they triggered such intense emotions in me and give me time to process them.
Here is the first installment of three articles capturing three intense experiencesrelated to women during my vacation. The first one is about the absence of real women from those symbols of power, remembrance, and cultural identity that we call monuments.
Invisibility
The holiday started when I met with my mother, brother, and sister-in-law in Malta to spend a week on the island.
Of course, that was until my family thought it was a good place for the holidays and, rather than pushing back, I decided to “park” my activism for a week.
But I couldn’t.
Very quickly, walking through the capital, Valetta, and visiting multiple towns in the islands of Malta and Gozo, I realised what to expect
Churches.
Nice streets and houses in yellowish bricks.
Statues of men, especially politicians.
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical, political, technical or architectural importance.
Examples of monuments include statues, (war) memorials, historical buildings, archaeological sites, and cultural assets.
The word “monument” comes the Latin “monumentum“, derived from the word moneo, monere (comparable to the Greek mnemosynon) which means ‘to remind’, ‘to advise’ or ‘to warn’.
Of course, with two notable — and expected — exceptions
Religion — Statues of the Virgin Mary, female saints and mystics…
Embodiment of an idea — e.g. Statues of women personifying independence.
It hit me especially hard when I saw the monument to Daphne Caruana Galizia in Silema, journalist and anti-corruption activist, assassinated by a car bomb. It’s a bay laurel tree to “remind us of her wisdom, victory and triumph over darkness” (see image illustrating this article).
Again, women as the embodiment of ideas. I wanted so hard to see a statue of her.
Unfortunately, the lack of statues of real women is not only a problem in Malta
Only around 10% of streets and public spaces worldwide are named after women. The project only 8% brings awareness to the fact that in Barcelona (Spain) women-named streets only account for 8% of all public spaces, with most located outside the city center. On their interactive website, they also highlight that streets named after women are typically about 62 meters shorter than streets named after men.
As all the information was sinking in my head, I remembered watching a film as a child about the neutron bomb. Its premise was that those bombs could “kill people and spare buildings”. I can still see the black and white scenes portraying perfectly clean streets and buildings — no life at all.
I thought, if life was erased and only “infrastructure” remained and some aliens visited the planet Earth, what would they make out of our statues, streets, buildings, history books, museums, and banknotes?
Monuments also play an important role in shaping our collective memory. They serve as tangible reminders of historical events and figures, helping to preserve our cultural heritage for future generations.
Here comes my guess: Those aliens would conclude that female human beings never existed. That we were merely an imaginary artifact for men to get inspired, illustrate concepts, and express their ideas about beauty.
The remedy? To strive for being too much – we have so many centuries to catch up on! When in doubt, let’s remember bell hook’s words of wisdom and apply them to all domains
No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much”. Indeed, no woman writer can write “too much”…No woman has ever written enough.
CALL TO ACTION:Let’s inundate the world with our ideas and our work. Because even if they are
Unfinished – we can decide that they’re finished for today.
Unpopular – what’s criticised one day can be a success the next.
Ignored – if we hide them, we’ll never know.
Let’s ensure we leave proof that we existed.
PS
Dear Reader,
This is the first time I’m delivering an article in three installments. It was not planned but today feels like the right thing to do. Thank you for your kindness, patience, and support as I make this experiment. The next one is on harassment.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on the topics of empowering women and underrepresented groups in tech, artificial intelligence sustainability and bias, inclusive workplaces and products, and future thinking.
How many times have we heard “No pain, no gain”? And variations such as “There is no free meal in the universe”? Or “Work is paid because, otherwise, you won’t do it”?
Patriarchy, many religions, and fathers of capitalism such as Adam Smith have inculcated in us that we’re here to suffer, that we’re inherently lazy, and that if we didn’t have pain, we would work.
When we believe we’re lazy without pain
I discovered how much the culture of pain had negatively impacted my life when I stumbled upon the words of the author Marian Keyes
“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. […] horrible things damage you. They don’t make you better, or wiser and stronger. Most of the time they hobble you a bit.”
I realised that, indeed, bad things hadn’t made me stronger. Moreover, I also became aware that none of those “lessons” had made me a better person, employee, or friend. We have created a mythology around “pain” that doesn’t serve us well as human beings. Instead, it entrenches the powers of oppression. When we believe we deserve pain:
We don’t ask for help: I coach, mentor, and sponsor women. Countless times, my suggestion of making a warm introduction to somebody that could help them — or suggesting that they reach out to somebody that could open doors for them — has been met with pushback such as “I don’t want to bother” or “I should be able to figure it out this by myself”.
We’re forced to look for “silver linings”: In Venezuela, we have a saying that conveys a similar meaning to silver linings — “When God closes a door, somewhere else opens a window”.
Fired from your job? In an abusive relationship? Lost a family member? Patriarchy doesn’t want us to dwell on it — it wants us to “suck it up” and continue producing as working bees. If you’re in pain because of tragedy around you, you’re simply not making enough effort to “find the silver lining”.
We believe that we deserve pain when we don’t conform to the stereotype. Recently, the UN published the Gender Social Norms Index 2023. 25% of respondents thought it is justified for a man to beat his wife. Society is also biased against women’s pain. We either neglect it — “It’s in your head”, we’re told — or we identify it as a mark of “sainthood” — when we worship “natural” births and shame women that opt for alternatives such as C-sections or pain relief.
The reality is that pain becomes handy to keep a tight rein on low-power groups. It indoctrinates us in the belief that being mistreated at work, gaslighted by our doctors, or deprived of control over our bodies is unchangeable — that we deserve it. We’re here to suffer, after all.
From shoulds to letting be easy
How does patriarchy enforce “Pain makes you stronger” or “No pain, no gain”? Through “shoulds”.
You should work until the work is finished.
You should be a perfect mother.
You shouldn’t let your personal life interfere with your professional career.
You should go to work even if you experience period pain.
You should prioritise motherhood.
You should…
What if we’d change a culture of systemic oppression that reinforces “shoulds” for a regenerative alternative of “letting be easy”?
We shouldn’t have “exponential growth” but make it easy to distribute the wealth we already have.
We shouldn’t have to conform to inflexible work norms but make it easy for employees to work in the way that suits them better.
We shouldn’t police women about what they can do with their bodies but make it easy for them to manage their sexual and reproductive health as they see fit.
BACK TO YOU: What “should” can you drop this week?
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I cannot recall how many times I’ve heard women saying that their problem is “time management”. They want to get coached on how they can finally can tick all the items off their to-do list and “don’t feel behind” anymore.
I’d love to tell you that I fix them, that I have a magic wand that makes them “less lazy”, “more focused”, and “better at prioritisation” — their words, not mine. But they’re not the ones that need fixing.
The reality is that when we look in detail, the problem is somewhere else.
Patriarchal brainwashing
Our brains are rotten by patriarchal conditioning:
Women have been trained to people-please — As women, we’re “human doings” not “human bodies”, so our value resides on what we do for others. How does that work in practice? We’re taught that “good girls” don’t say no. In the end, the happiness of 4 billion on this planet depends on us making their lives easier.
We’ve been indoctrinated in the idea that “women are innate multitaskers” — which we often showcase with pride as an advantage over men. Really? And all that in spite of scientific evidence that our brain is made for processing tasks one after the other and not in parallel. Often, when we think we’re “multitasking”, we’re simply task-switching: spending 1 minute on one task, 1 on another, coming back to the first one, and so on. This is extremely taxing — and takes longer than performing the tasks sequentially — as task-switching has a cost for the brain that each time has to stop, remember where it was previously, and restart.
The mental model that our body shouldn’t be a hindrance — It’s up to us to catch up. Do you have menstrual cramps? Hot flashes? Excruciating pain from endometriosis? Heavy bleeding from fibroids? Or are you breastfeeding? Keep working and ensure you make up for the lost time so nobody can say that you’re not as reliable, hardworking, and valuable as your male colleagues.
The “give back” tasks — If you’re a professional woman, you’ll be expected to give uncountable hours of your time towards free mentoring, coaching, and inspirational speaking to younger women. The more successful you are, the more hours. In the meantime, the men around you will focus on their careers.
Women are the joker for any unexpected task — A child gets sick? You’re the mum. Catering didn’t arrive for the company happy hour? You’re the one to go to the supermarket and save the day. Your manager doesn’t have the time to onboard the new trainee? You’ll take one for the team.
The tasks inherent to being “seen” as a professional woman — It’s a job in itself to dress professionally — get the perfect sartorial choice that exudes confidence, “good” taste, and feminity — and look professionally — makeup, nails, and hairdressing. However, not all women have the same experience… for some, it’s even worse. For example, Black women “professional” hairdressing is especially taxing. Countless number of hours and money towards straightening their hair to mitigate the discrimination they suffer against Eurocentric stereotypes around what “professional” looks like.
Living in a world that is not made for women
Our own resignation at the fact that some tasks will take us more time because we’re women:
Toilet queues — I bet that if I add up all the time I’ve spent queueing on public toilets during my life, it’d amount to at least half a year of my existence. And that’s even worse if you have children — it goes without saying that the burden is on you to take them to the toilet/changing room with you.
The duty of moving as fast as the slowest person in the room — Welcome to the misery of public transport: underground and train stations without lifts for when you take your old mother to the doctor, buses that require folding pushchairs, and toddlers with a mind of their own.
Getting the same pension as a White man — because of the gender pay gap and unequal pay, women should work longer if they want to cumulate the same pension pot that White men. Again, not all women are created equal. Ethnicity, disability, and LGBTQUIA+ identities have a compounding negative effect on the gender pay gap.
Maternity leave — no need to expand on the well-documented harm of the #MommyTrack to women’s career prospects.
Male medicine — Women are at the mercy of a healthcare system that doesn’t want them. The 4 billion women in the world are extremely inconvenient with their hormones. The solution so far has been to ignore women’s pain altogether, perpetually underfunding research on their illnesses and how the same health conditions affect them differently than men. As a consequence, when we go to the doctor, we never know if our symptoms will be addressed or will be diminished with an “it’s probably in your head” or if the medicines that we consume will come with terrible secondary effects — and even life risks — because they haven’t tested in women.
Because whilst we’re blaming ourselves for our lack of time management skills and spiralling towards burnout, our writing, painting, sculpting, researching, volunteering, and leading go to the back burner.
That’s the true reason that most best-selling authors, CEOs, artists, and researchers are White men. They are not smarter. They simply have more time to focus and work on their areas of interest. They also have a room of their own.
This week, I invite you to commit an outrageous act — or an everyday rebellion — against patriarchy. Some ideas
Intentionally dropping the ball on any of the gendered tasks mentioned above.
Taking a paid sick day because you feel unwell — even if you’re not dying.
Resting as a form of self-care.
Reading a book for pleasure whilst there is a pile of dishes in the sink or the laundry pile is looking at you.
Shutting up when your brain screams at you that you should volunteer to bring a birthday cake to the office, take the meeting’s minutes, or carpool the neighbours’ children to a party.
Ignoring the emails of that colleague that’s trying to make you do that non-promotable work for him.
BACK TO YOU:Email me — or comment below — about your plan to impose your own agenda on the patriarchy this week.
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I don’t have children. That has always appeared to be a problem for many people around me. They have
Tried to justify it: For example, indirectly trying to get a reason out of me or make one up by throwing at me versions of “Not everybody can have children”, “There are so many IVF treatments that fail”, “Adoption is not for everyone”.
Judged me: I still remember the father of a colleague at work that after a brief intro directly asked me if I had children. When I said no, he announced that I was the “kind of woman” that prioritised her career.
Kept track of my fertility timeline: As I was getting older, countless times I received reminders from those around me that “I was running out of time” to have children.
Reminded me that it’s my duty: For years, I was told/suggested/demanded that I should provide continuity to our bloodline.
Called me selfish: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been told that women that don’t have children “only think about themselves”.
Diminished my pain: As I wrote in the article Levels of pain, often doctors have disregarded my pain because they judged that either it was not comparable to birth pain or I should endure it because it was somehow related to not having children.
Assumed that I don’t have other responsibilities: Others have thrown at me pearls of wisdom such as “it should be great to be so carefree” or “you must have plenty of free time”.
But that’s not only people, it’s also how I was socialised:
The Bible — I was raised Catholic — is a constant reminder that pious women’s obligation is to breed more souls.
Typically, wicked female characters in children’s stories — like witches and stepmothers- don’t have children.
We are indoctrinated in the belief that motherhood is selfless and birthing is the experience that makes you “a real woman”.
When we assume women should have children, we imply there is something wrong with women without children and we should fix them through advice and coercion.
We believe that women need a reason to not have children. We play with terms such as childless and childfree that are centred on the word “child” to categorise those women.
Abortion bans are easy to justify.
We believe that “no children” means no caring duties. For society, family caregivers don’t exist and therefore often they are not supported financially or otherwise by governments.
We sugarcoat motherhood, so we don’t create the space to discuss issues like post-partum depression, miscarriage, lack of childcare support, or the professional penalty to have children.
What if instead, we thought that women that don’t have children
Have reflected on the fact that we’re already 8 billion on the planet and that not having children is a good remedy for overpopulation.
Have exerted their rights over their bodies.
Know what they want.
Don’t need your or anybody’s permission, blessing, or pity.
Have caregiving and financial duties that — although may not involve children – involve parents, siblings, and other family members that have physical or mental disabilities, cannot live on their own, or don’t have the financial means to support themselves.
They may still like children, just they don’t want to have their own.
Bottom line
My challenge to you is that the next time you learn a woman doesn’t have children instead of feeling pity, disdain, or empathy, you shift to respect.
Let’s change the patriarchal chip about women’s “usefulness” and challenge the status quo
The work begins in our brains.
Who would you be if:
Sexism wasn’t wearing you down with guilt and shame?
She also mentions how that’s been the case for centuries: “The routine diminishing of pain in pregnancy and childbirth has a long history. For centuries, reproduction was seen as women’s divine and natural purpose. As the theologian Martin Luther said in the 16th century: ‘If women become tired, even die, it does not matter. Let them die in childbirth. That’s what they are there for.'”
I posit that there are also other two complementary angles that make the pain during pregnancy and childbirth such an explosive issue to address: Reverence and deservingness.
Last year, I wrote the article Levels of Pain about the world’s contempt for women’s pain. In it, I highlighted how – unlike other kinds of female pain – childbirth pain is often revered. Society sees it as yet another painful rite of passage for women, who are expected to embrace it and feel proud of it.
As an example, I shared the case of a relative of mine who, after enduring an exhausting and painful 23 hours of labour with her first baby, she decided to be sedated during the childbirth of the second. The carers at the hospital didn’t miss the opportunity to reprimand her whilst breastfeeding her newborn for “being selfish and only thinking about herself” for choosing anaesthesia over “natural” birth even if she delivered a healthy 4.35 kg baby boy.
In the article, I also draw attention to the fact not all groups of women have the same experiences. Notably, pregnant Black women and women with disabilities. Their pain and needs are often diminished with negative repercussions for their physical and mental wellbeing.
As Stephanie H. Murray points out in her article describing her epidural ordeal, nobody questions a woman getting anesthesia to get a tooth extracted but everybody has an opinion if that same woman decides to get pain relief during labour: ” these conversations made me wonder why society treats labor pains with such reverence. The questions of whether and how to relieve them are subject to deliberation and scrutiny that would seem absurd under any other circumstances. I certainly didn’t consider forgoing anesthesia when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. And no one asked me about it either.”
And then, there is deservingness.
For more than 2 millennia, the book of Genesis has taught billions of Christians and Jews that women deserve childbirth pain because of Eve’s disobedience (Genesis 3:16): ‘To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”’
Moreover, for some religions like Catholicism, this punishment through labour pain is so central to women’s experience that they have explicitly asserted that the Virgin Mary was spared of it as a consequence of her immaculate conception.
No wonder medicine prefers to stay away and let pregnant women suffer.
Personal invitation
We often read that there are no more women in leadership because women are less confident.
But what’s confidence? Why does it matter? And what can we do something about it?
Common myths about how to “cure” our insecurities.
How we can leverage our inner wisdom to achieve our professional and personal goals feeling lighter, supported, and proud of ourselves.
Join me on Wednesday April 26th at 10.30 am PDT 1.30pm EDT18.30 BST 19.30 CEST to learn how to develop a healthy relationship with your feeling of confidence.
By now, the term mansplaining – to explain something to a woman in a condescending manner that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic – has become mainstream. It was even incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018.
It’s also a kind of “inside joke” among women. Our bosses, peers, and even direct reports “mansplain us”. Our family and friends too…
Sometimes we just sigh.
Sometimes we try to “kindly” point out to the mansplainer that we know better than them.
Sometimes we fight back, like the time that during an evaluation of scholarships for funding, I had a disagreement with another juror regarding a research proposal to develop new tools for materials molecular simulation.
I found the proposal weak, partly because not enough details were given about the methodology that was to be implemented. One of the other evaluators countered that he had found the proposal outstanding. When I pointed to him the list of “holes” in the proposal, he retorted that although he was no expert in modelling he insisted the proposal was excellent. I replied that – unlike him – I was an expert on that kind of materials modelling so that my feedback should prevail.
And even last week, I was mansplained when I shared among colleagues that I was writing a book about how women succeed in tech. I mentioned that I was collecting answers to my short survey asking those women what has made them stay and what they need to thrive in the next 5 years. One of them – whom I’d never met before – volunteered that this was not the right focus for the book. He shared that instead I should write about how STEM is taught in the schools…
Even The Economist has found use for the word in their article The battle for internet search: “ChatGPT often gets things wrong. It has been likened to a mansplainer: supremely confident in its answers, regardless of their accuracy”.
But mansplaining can be life-threatening too, as Rebecca Solnit – who inspired the word with her essay Men explain things to me – wrote in The Guardian last week.
Mansplaining occurs too when
The police explain to us that the partner violence we experience is not rape.
When we denounce sexist, ageist, racist, or ableist practices in the workplace and we’re told that it’s only banter.
Mansplaining and epistemic injustice
At the root of mansplaining there is a bigger issue: Who we believe is credible.
In the end, what we believe is conditioned by who’s the messenger. Is it a White male in a coat or a Black trans woman? A Venezuelan immigrant single mother or a wealthy Indian man that studied at Oxford?
Dr. Miranda Fricker – a Professor of Philosophy at New York University – coined the term epistemic injustice, the concept of an injustice done against someone “specifically in their capacity as a knower”.
There are two kinds of epistemic injustice.
Testimonial injustice is when somebody is not believed because of their identity. Like when women are mansplained about their pain being imaginary because they are women.
Hermeneutical injustice is when somebody’s experiences are not understood so they are minimised or diminished. For example, before the term was introduced, the experience of being mansplained had already existed for centuries. However, as there wasn’t a word for it, it was difficult to recognise it as a particular form of patronising women and even for women to discuss the experience among themselves.
How to counter epistemic justice?
We need to get bolder at sharing our experiences of injustice, even we don’t have a name.
And that also includes creating words to describe our experiences. For example,
The constant state of alert that we immigrants experience because the laws of the countries we live in can unexpectedly change affecting our right to work and live in the country.
The sense of dread people from older generations experience when they go to a job interview and they feel they need to reassure the prospective hiring manager that they won’t steal their job.
When your boss boasts about being a female ally because he has a daughter but doesn’t do anything to advance gender equity in the workplace.
BACK TO YOU: How has mansplaining impacted your life? Let me know in the comments.
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Happy New Year! I wish 2022 brings all of you tons of professional and personal success.
For me, 2022 started with a bang! I got an article published on Certain Age, an e-magazine that showcases a wide array of ideas from modern women. Topics range from big ideas to small wonders with a sense of voice and an uncompromising commitment to factual accuracy.
This piece (8-min read) is my answer to a question that I’ve been pondering for 40+ years: Does contempt for women’s pain justify substandard healthcare for half of humanity? Asking for a friend…
I’d love to read in the comments how the article resonates with you!
“No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’…No woman has ever written enough.”
bell hooks
Ensure your ideas and experiences get exposure in 2022!
Instructions to submit your contributions to Certain Age can be found here. The editor, Jean Shields Fleming, provides thoughtful advice and she’s very respectful of the author’s voice. She’s been an absolute joy to work with.
Close up of a field of blossomed orange tulips. Image from pixabay by anujatilj.
(3 min read)
2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the Global 16 Days Campaign. According to UN Women, the global theme for this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which will run from 25 November to 10 December 2021, is “Orange the world: End violence against women now!”
Violence against women is messy. Year after year, reports, statistics, and think tanks remind us how bad the situation is and how to address it.
Still, we fail to make this planet safe for half of the population. Moreover, some groups of women are especially let down by our society.
Figure adapted by Patricia Gestoso from this image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay .
(7 min read)
Imagine you go into a one-week change management training with the expectation is that when you are back to work you’ll reassure everybody that there is no need to change. How does that sound?
Actually, this is what’s happening right now. We’ve been in a change management boot camp for 3 months now, at the cost of $2-4 trillion US$ (UNCTAD, Asian Development Bank), but most leaders keep using sentences such as “back to normal” and “resume”, or simply they have gone hiding. Do they really believe we can all go backwards in time to 31 December 2019? Are they lacking the creativity and energy to be the catalyst for a different future miles away from their vision four months ago? Or are they simply patronizing their citizens and employees by thinking that if they keep insisting on going forward to the past, we’ll all close our eyes to our individual and collective experiences during this crisis?
