Tag Archives: #Patriarchy

Big Tech Can Clone Your Voice: A Technological Triumph or a Moral Tragedy?

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A tic-tac-toe board with human faces as digital blocks, symbolizing how AI works on pre-existing, biased online data for information processing and decision-making
Amritha R Warrier & AI4Media / ​Better Images of AI​ / tic tac toe / CC-BY 4.0

On 29th March, OpenAI – the company that develops ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools – released a ​blog post​ sharing “lessons from a small-scale preview of Voice Engine, a model for creating custom voices.”

More precisely

“a model called Voice Engine, which uses text input and a single 15-second audio sample to generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles the original speaker.”

They reassure us that

“We are taking a cautious and informed approach to a broader release due to the potential for synthetic voice misuse. We hope to start a dialogue on the responsible deployment of synthetic voices, and how society can adapt to these new capabilities.”

And they warn us that they’ll make the decision unilaterally

“Based on these conversations and the results of these small scale tests, we will make a more informed decision about whether and how to deploy this technology at scale.”

Let’s explore why we should all be concerned.

The Generative AI mirage

In their release, OpenAI tells us all the great applications of this new tool

  • Providing reading assistance
  • Translating content
  • Reaching global communities
  • Supporting people who are non-verbal
  • Helping patients recover their voice

Note for all those use cases, there are already alternatives that don’t have the downsides of recreating a voice clone.

We also learn that other organisations have been testing this capability successfully for a while now. The blog post assumes that we should trust OpenAI’s judgment implicitly. There is no supporting evidence detailing how those tests were run, what challenges were uncovered, and what mitigations were put in place as a consequence.

The caveat

But the most important information is at the end of the piece.

OpenAI warns us of what we should stop doing or start doing because of their “Voice Engine”

“Phasing out voice-based authentication as a security measure for accessing bank accounts and other sensitive information

Exploring policies to protect the use of individuals’ voices in AI

Educating the public in understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI technologies, including the possibility of deceptive AI content

Accelerating the development and adoption of techniques for tracking the origin of audiovisual content, so it’s always clear when you’re interacting with a real person or with an AI”

In summary, OpenAI has decided to develop a technology and plan to roll it out so they expect the rest of the world will adapt to it.

Techno-paternalism

To those of us who have been following OpenAI, the post announcing the development and active use of Voice Engine is not a bug but a feature.

Big Tech has a tradition of setting its own rules, denying accountability, and even refusing to cooperate with governments. Often, their defense has been that society either doesn’t understand the “big picture”, doesn’t deserve an explanation, or is stifling innovation by enacting the laws.

Some examples are

  • Microsoft — In 2001, ​U.S. government accused Microsoft​ of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows. Microsoft claimed that “its attempts to “innovate” were under attack by rival companies jealous of its success.”
  • Apple — The ​Batterygate​ scandal affected people using iPhones in the 6, 6S, and 7 families. Customers complained that Apple had purposely slowed down their phones after they installed software updates to get them to buy a newer device. Apple countered that it was “a safety measure to keep the phones from shutting down when the battery got too low”.
  • Meta (Facebook) — After the ​Cambridge Analytica​ scandal was uncovered, exposing that the personal data of about 50 million Americans had been harvested and improperly shared with a political consultancy, it took Mark Zuckerberg 5 days to reappear. Interestingly, he chose to publish ​a post on Facebook​ as a form of apology. Note that he also ​refused three times ​the invitation to testify in front of members of the UK Parliament.
  • Google — 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. Still, the onus is on the victims to “clean” the internet — ​Google​ requires them to manually submit content removal requests with the offending URLs.
  • Amazon — They ​refused​ for years to acknowledge that their facial recognition algorithms to predict race and gender were biased against darker females. Instead of improving their algorithms, they chose to ​blame the auditor’s methodology​.

OpenAI is cut from the same cloth. They apparently believe that if they develop the applications, they are entitled to set the parameters about how to use them— or not — and even change their mind as they see fit.

Let’s take their stand on three paramount issues that show us the gap between their actions and their values.

Open source

Despite their name — OpenAI — and initially being created as a nonprofit, they’ve been notorious for their inconsistent ​open-source​ practices. Still, each release has appeared to be an opportunity to ​lecture us​ about why society is much better off by leaving it to them to decide how to gatekeep their applications.

For example, Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder, said about the ​release of GPT-4​ — not an open AI model — a year ago

“These models are very potent and they’re becoming more and more potent. At some point it will be quite easy, if one wanted, to cause a great deal of harm with those models. And as the capabilities get higher it makes sense that you don’t want want to disclose them.”

“If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extremely, unbelievably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea… I fully expect that in a few years it’s going to be completely obvious to everyone that open-sourcing AI is just not wise.”

However, the reluctant content suppliers for their models — artists, writers, journalists — don’t have the same rights to decide on the use of the material they have created. For example, let’s remember how Sam Altman shrugged off the claims of newspapers that OpenAI used their ​copyrighted material​ to train ChatGPT.

Safety

The release of Voice Engine comes from the same playbook that the unilateral decision to release their ​text-to-video model Sora​ to “red teamers” and “a number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers“.

The blog post also gives us a high-level view of the safety measures that’ll be put in place

“For example, once in an OpenAI product, our text classifier will check and reject text input prompts that are in violation of our usage policies, like those that request extreme violence, sexual content, hateful imagery, celebrity likeness, or the IP of others.

We’ve also developed robust image classifiers that are used to review the frames of every video generated to help ensure that it adheres to our usage policies, before it’s shown to the user.”

Let’s remember that OpenAI used Kenyan workers on ​less than $2 per hour​ to make ChatGPT less toxic. Who’ll make Sora less toxic this time?

Moreover, who’ll decide where’s the line between “mild” violence — apparently permitted —and “extreme” violence?

Sustainability

For all their claims that their “​primary fiduciary duty is to humanity​” is then surprising their disregard for the environmental impact of their models.

Sam Altman has been actively talking to investors, including the United Arab Emirates government, to raise funds for a tech initiative that would boost the world’s chip-building capacity, expand its ability to power AI, and cost several trillion dollars.

An ​OpenAI spokeswoman​ said

“OpenAI has had productive discussions about increasing global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy and data centers — which are crucial for AI and other industries that rely on them”

But nothing is free in the universe. ​A study​ conducted by Dr. Sasha Luccioni — Researcher and Climate Lead at Hugging Face — showed that training the 176 billion parameter LLM BLOOM emits at least 25 metric tons of carbon equivalents.

In the article, the authors also estimated that the training of GPT-3 — a 175 billion parameter model — emitted about 500 metric tons of carbon, roughly equivalent to over a million miles driven by an average gasoline-powered car. Why such a difference? Because, unlike BLOOM, GPT-3 was trained using carbon-intensive energy sources like coal and natural gas.

And that doesn’t stop there. Dr. Luccioni conducted further studies on the emissions associated with ​10 popular Generative AI tasks​.

  • Generating 1,000 images was responsible for roughly as much carbon dioxide as driving the equivalent of 4.1 miles in an average gasoline-powered car.
  • The least carbon-intensive text generation model was responsible for as much CO2 as driving 0.0006 miles in a similar vehicle.
  • Using large generative models to create outputs was far more energy intensive than using smaller AI models tailored for specific tasks. For example, using a generative model to classify positive and negative movie reviews consumed around 30 times more energy than using a fine-tuned model created specifically for that task

Moreover, they discovered that the day-to-day emissions associated with using AI far exceeded the emissions from training large models.

And it’s not only emissions. The data centres where those models are trained and run need water as a refrigerant and in some cases as a source of electricity.

Professor Shaolei Ren from UC Riverside found that training GPT-3 in Microsoft’s high-end data centers can directly​ evaporate 700,000 liters​ (about 185,000 gallons) of fresh water. As for the use, Ren and his colleagues estimated that GPT-3 requires about 500 ml (16 ounces) of water for every 10–50 responses.

Four questions for our politicians

It’s time our politicians step up to the challenge of exercising stewardship of AI for the benefit of people and the planet.

I have four questions to get them going:

  • Why are you allowing OpenAI to make decisions unilaterally on technology that affects us all?
  • How can you shift from a reactive stand where you enable Big Tech like OpenAI to drive the regulation for technologies that impact key aspects of governance — from our individual rights to national cybersecurity — to becoming a proactive key player on decisions that impact society’s future?
  • How can you make Big Tech accountable for the environmental planetary costs?
  • How are you ensuring the public becomes digitally literate so they can develop their own informed views about the benefits and challenges of AI and other emergent technologies?

Back to you

How comfortable are you with OpenAI deciding on the use of Generative AI on behalf of humanity?

PS. You and AI

  • ​Are you worried about ​the impact of A​I 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”?

I’ve got you covered.

AI Readiness Checklist

My Post #IWD2024 Reflections: One Win and Three Persistent Failures

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Handcuffed hands of a woman on a background of a cloudy sky.
Image by Лечение наркомании from Pixabay.

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. 

The Guardian

During #IWD2024 social media was full of posts talking about having more women in leadership, in tech, in STEM, in business…

But the reality is that society cannot even keep women alive.

The Guardian has started an interactive project highlighting the women who have been murdered in 2024 so we don’t forget them.

But is that enough?

No. Because they are not the problem.

We need to start focusing on the perpetrators.

  • Who are they?
  • How come sons, husbands, brothers, and male neighbours feel entitled to kill their mothers, wives, sisters, and female neighbours?
  • How do we as a society foster and at the same time minimise those murders naming them as “crimes of passion” or a “spur of the moment act”?

And also on their alibis

  • Family
  • Police
  • Justice system
  • Patriarchy
  • Misogyny

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Let’s start doing things differently.

The feminisation of hybrid work

I got an email from LinkedIn asking me to comment on the post Flexibility versus visibility: Does hybrid work threaten women’s progression? sharing their research on their site. 

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. 

On the flip side, men don’t see themselves as having such constraints, so they are happy to go for an “office” job and in practice do remote work.

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

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/10/i-could-have-written-three-plays-about-her-jennie-lee-mp-and-wife-of-nye-bevan-is-celebrated-on-stage

Ms. Jennie Lee, MP

  • Is Britain’s youngest MP
  • Britain’s first arts minister
  • Set up the Open University and the Arts Council

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.

@The Guardian — You need to do much better.

Back to you

How do you feel about #IWD?

Inside the Digital Underbelly: The Lucrative World of Deepfake Porn

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A brightly coloured illustration which can be viewed in any direction. It has many elements to it working together: men in suits around a table, someone in a data centre, big hands controlling the scenes and holding a phone, people in a production line. Motifs such as network diagrams and melting emojis are placed throughout the busy vignettes.
Clarote & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / Power/Profit / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0.

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.

Creators

They get revenue from two main sources:

Deepfake porn websites

Let’s have a look at three deepfake porn websites, each with a different business model.

MrDeepFakes

Some highlights of how this platform operates 

  • Videos are a few minutes long.
  • Generates revenue through advertisement.
  • Relies on the large audience that has been boosted by its positioning in Google search results.
  • Its forums act as a marketplace for creators and clients can make requests.

Fan-Topia

Their business model 

  • 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

  • One of the top 10 referral sites for Mr.DeepFakes.
  • 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. 
  • A gateway for minors to deepfake source codes and related content, given Github’s worldwide partnership program with schools and universities and its terms of service stating that users can be as young as 13. 

Web hosting

According to a Bloomberg review, 13 of the top 20 deepfake websites are currently using web hosting services from 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.”  

Apps stores

Apple’s App Store and Google Play host apps that can be used to create deepfake porn. Some of them are available to anyone over 12.

Payment processors

  • 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.

Who’s watching porn deepfakes?

In their report “2023 State of Deepfakes”, Home Security Heroes state

  • 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 A​I 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”?

I’ve got you covered.

AI Readiness Checklist

“Fixing” Women: The Profitable Tricks of the Beauty Industrial Complex

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A very thin woman with a serious face and a measuring tape in front of her eyes.
Photo by SHVETS production.

Last week, an article caught my attention.

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

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?

Breaking Free: Dispelling 6 Myths About the Gender Pay Gap

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Closeup of woman hand putting a coin into a piggy bank.
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash.

I’ve been pondering what I’d like my last post of the year to be about. Below are some ideas that crossed my mind

  • Something that’ll prompt reflection about 2023 or action for 2024? 
  • A personal anecdote? 
  • A client aha moment?
  • An uplifting story? 
  • A cautionary tale?

I was definitely not thinking of discussing women and money. The reason? I’ve talked about women and money extensively since I started blogging. For example, I’ve discussed

  • The UN findings about how women invest 90 percent of their income back into their families, compared with 35 percent for men. 
  • How society profits from the unpaid work of women and how we could rethink it for a better tomorrow. 
  • How salary increases are one of the ways my clients reap the benefits of my coaching and mentoring program.

Three factors made me decide to revisit yet again the topic before the end of the year

  • 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 that I was “removing my coaching hat and putting my mentoring hat on” I exhorted her to negotiate her salary and offered my availability to provide feedback on the compensation package. Her reply clearly showed me that she wasn’t aware salaries were negotiable.
  • Recently, 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 realise that when we talk about how gender influences salaries, often many things get conflated — for example, equal salary and the gender pay gap.
  • Last but not least, this year 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, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.”

In this article, I 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
  • The leverage available during salary negotiations

But first, let’s start with the personal reason I’m so invested in this topic.

My salary story

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. Their bargaining chip was that they knew I was without a job and that it was obvious I was quite inexperienced in negotiating my compensation package. 

My gut feeling was that 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, a year later I learned that I was severely underpaid. That had three consequences

  1. Feeling betrayed by the organisation, I decided to search for another job, which I landed about a year later.
  2. As bonuses, promotions, and pension schemes depended on my salary, that initial negotiation mishap penalised my earnings — and retirement “pot” — for many years.
  3. Given the pervasive practice of asking candidates for their previous salaries, several times it compromised any leverage I could have when negotiating a new role.

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 recognised 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.

It has since been repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010.

Sex equality rule

(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, 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. 

A new EU pay transparency directive, adopted in April 2023, will “ 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. 

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: 

  1. 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”.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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!

Worst case scenario? You get what you got offered in the first place but at least you know you reached the maximum that was 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. Set a salary increase goal for 2024.
  2. Share this article with a woman who will benefit from negotiating her salary in 2024.

Happy New Year!

Upwards & Onwards: The Career Breakthrough Gift You Deserve in 2024

Last Friday, I received an email from a super-smart and ambitious woman that joined my personalised program “Upwards & Onwards”.

This is a 3-month coaching and mentoring package where I work 1:1 with clients to

  • Examine where they are in their careers.
  • Decide on their next bold professional move and ensure that it integrates into the lifestyle they want for themselves.
  • Identify the gaps between where they are and where they want to be.
  • Create a plan.
  • Implement the plan.

When we started the program, this client had been blocked in her career progression for some years and the gap between her situation and the career she dreamed for herself appeared to be insurmountable.

Forwards to last week: In her email, she told me she just accepted a job offer that epitomised the role of her dreams! To her credit, she embraced coaching and mentoring and consistently followed up with the plan.

Through this program, others have succeeded in getting

  • Both a promotion and salary increase during maternity leave.
  • An internal promotion.
  • A more senior job in another organisation.
  • A substantial salary increase.

QUESTION: Are you ready to get the career you deserve? Click on this link to purchase the “Upwards & Onwards” program for £850.00.

Purchase “Upwards & Onwards”

NOTE: From January 2nd 2024, I’ll raise the price to £970.00. This price change is a reflection of my commitment to keeping the program affordable whilst making my business sustainable financially.
 
Click on this link to purchase the “Upwards & Onwards” program for £850.00.

QUESTIONS? Book a free call.

#CareerCoaching #CareerPromotion #CareerProgression #CareerSuccess #WorkLifeCoaching #LifeCoaching

Defying Patriarchy: Strategies for a Joyous New Year’s Celebration

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Christmas dinner table with a white millennial man sat at the top of the table flanked by an old white couple on his right and two brown children on his left. On the other side of the chlidren there is a millennial brown woman lighting the candles on the table. The millennial man and woman smile.
Let’s guess who prepared the Christmas dinner. Photo by cottonbro studio.

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? 

Upwards & Onwards: The Career Breakthrough Gift You Deserve in 2024

Last Friday, I received an email from a super-smart and ambitious woman that joined my personalised program “Upwards & Onwards”.

This is a 3-month coaching and mentoring package where I work 1:1 with clients to

  • Examine where they are in their careers.
  • Decide on their next bold professional move and ensure that it integrates into the lifestyle they want for themselves.
  • Identify the gaps between where they are and where they want to be.
  • Create a plan.
  • Implement the plan.

When we started the program, this client had been blocked in her career progression for some years and the gap between her situation and the career she dreamed for herself appeared to be insurmountable.

Forwards to last week: In her email, she told me she just accepted a job offer that epitomised the role of her dreams! To her credit, she embraced coaching and mentoring and consistently followed up with the plan.

Through this program, others have succeeded in getting

  • Both a promotion and salary increase during maternity leave.
  • An internal promotion.
  • A more senior job in another organisation.
  • A substantial salary increase.

QUESTION: Are you ready to get the career you deserve? Click on this link to purchase the “Upwards & Onwards” program for £850.00.

Purchase “Upwards & Onwards”

NOTE: From January 2nd 2024, I’ll raise the price to £970.00. This price change is a reflection of my commitment to keeping the program affordable whilst making my business sustainable financially.
 
Click on this link to purchase the “Upwards & Onwards” program for £850.00.

#CareerCoaching #CareerPromotion #CareerProgression #CareerSuccess #WorkLifeCoaching #LifeCoaching

Navigating the Digital Battlefield: Women and Deepfake Survival

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Two people are illustrated in a warm, cartoon style, one on the left and one on the right. The person on the left, who has their back to the viewer, and is typing on a laptop which is sitting on a table. The computer screen is dark with rows of coloured squares representing programming. The person on the right is wearing a white lab coat and safety goggles. They are reaching down to lift up an orange hazard label which is about the size of a book. The label is an orange square with a black exclamation mark in the middle. The person looks like they are being careful as they lift it.
Yasmin Dwiputri & Data Hazards Project / Better Images of AI / Safety Precautions / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0.

The annual campaign 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence begins on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs through International Human Rights Day on 10 December.

Gender violence campaigns traditionally focus on physical violence: sexual harassment, rape, femicide, child marriage, or sex trafficking. The perpetrators? Partners, family members, human traffickers, soldiers, terrorists.

But that’s not all. You may be a victim of digital violence right now — in the comfort of your home.

Let’s talk about deepfakes.

The myth of political deepfakes

Deepfakes are images, audio, or video generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence technology to convincingly replace one person’s likeness with that of another. 

When talking about deepfakes, most media refer to the threats they may pose to democracy. That was exemplified in the famous deepfake video of Obama in 2018, where he called Donald Trump a “total and complete dipshit”. Although that video was clearly false, it did show the potential of the technology to meddle in elections and spread disinformation.

Capitalism and deepfakes

In addition to the threat to political stability, the benefits and threats posed by deepfakes are often framed in a capitalistic context

  • Art —  Artists use deepfakes technology to generate new content from existing media created by them or by other artists.
  • Caller response services — Provide tailored answers to caller requests that involve simplified tasks (e.g. triaging and call forwarding to a human).
  • Customer support —  These services use deepfake audio to provide basic information such as an account balance.
  • Entertainment — Movies and video games clone actors’ voices and faces because of convenience or even for humourous purposes. 
  • Deception — Fabricating false evidence to inculpate — or exculpate — people in a lawsuit.
  • Fraud — Impersonate people to gain access to confidential information (e.g. credit cards) or prompt people to act (e.g. impersonate a CEO and request a money transfer). 
  • Stock manipulation — Deepfake content such as videos from CEOs announcing untrue news such as massive layoffs, new patents, or an imminent merger can have a massive impact on a company’s stock.

As a result of that financial focus, tech companies and governments have concentrated their efforts towards assessing if digital content is a deepfake or not. Hence, the proliferation of tools aimed to “certify” content’s provenance as well as legal requirements in some countries to label deepfakes. 

And many people share the same viewpoint. It’s not uncommon that, when discussing deepfakes, my interlocutors dismiss their impact with remarks such as “It’s easy now to spot if they’re fake or not”.

But the reality is that women bear the brunt of this technology.

Women and deepfakes

Deepfakes themselves were born in 2017 when a Reddit user of the same name posted manipulated porn clips on the site. The videos swapped the faces of female celebrities — Gal Gadot, Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson — onto porn performers. And from there they took off.

A 2019 study found that 96% of deepfakes are of non-consensual sexual nature, of which 99% are made of women. As I mentioned in the article Misogyny’s New Clothes, they are a well-oiled misogyny tool:

  • They are aimed to silence and shame women. That includes women politicians. 42% of women parliamentarians worldwide have experienced extremely humiliating or sexually-charged images of themselves spread through social media.
  • They objectify women by dismembering their bodies — faces, heads, bodies, arms, legs — without their permission and reassembling them as virtual Frankensteins. 
  • They may be the cheapest way to create pornography — you don’t need to pay actors and there are plenty of free tools available. Not willing to put the effort into learning how to create them yourself? You can order one for as low as $300.
  • They are the newest iteration of revenge porn — hate your colleagues? Tired of the women in your cohort ignoring you? You create deepfake videos from them made from their LinkedIn profile photos and university face books and plaster the internet with them.
  • They disempower victims — Unlike “older” misogyny tools, women cannot control the origin of deepfakes, how they spread, or how to eliminate them. Once they are created, women’s only recourse is to reach out directly to the platforms and websites hosting them and ask for removal.
  • As with all types of gendered violence, women are also shamed for being the target of deepfakes — they are blamed for sharing their photos on social media. I encourage you to read Adrija Bose’s excellent article that summarises her research work on the effect of deepfakes on female content creators.

What do we get wrong about deepfakes?

If 96% are non-consensual porn, why don’t we do anything about it?

  • We think they are not as harmful as “real” porn because the victim didn’t participate in them. What we miss it’s that we “see” the world with our minds, not with our eyes. If you want to have a taste of how that feels, you can watch the chilling 18-minute documentary My Blonde GF by The Guardian where the writer Helen Mort details her experience of being deepfaked for pornography.
  • Knowing that it’s fake is of little relief when you know that your family, friends, and colleagues have watched or could eventually watch them. Moreover, there is research proving that deepfake videos create false memories.
  • As we believe that “it’s not the real you, it’s fake”, victims receive little support from the justice system and governments in general. You can watch this 5-minute video from Youtuber and ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) artist Gibi who has been repeatedly targeted by deepfakes and who shares the very real consequences of this practice that is perfectly legal in most countries.

Talking about governments, let’s check how countries regulate deepfakes.

Deepfakes and the law

In 2020, China made it a criminal offense to publish deepfakes or fake news without disclosure. Since January 2023 

“Companies have to get consent from individuals before making a deepfake of them, and they must authenticate users’ real identities.

The service providers must establish and improve rumor refutation mechanisms.

The deepfakes created can’t be used to engage in activities prohibited by laws and administrative regulations.

 Providers of deep synthesis services must add a signature or watermark to show the work is a synthetic one to avoid public confusion or misidentification.”

On Friday 8th December 2023, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), proposed by the Commission in April 2021. Although the full text is not available yet, the Commission published an announcement where deepfakes are categorised as specific transparency risks 

“Deep fakes and other AI generated content will have to be labelled as such, and users need to be informed when biometric categorisation or emotion recognition systems are being used. In addition, providers will have to design systems in a way that synthetic audio, video, text and images content is marked in a machine-readable format, and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated.”

In the US, there are no federal regulations on deepfakes. Some states like California, New York, and Virginia have passed laws targeting deepfake pornography.

What about the UK? In September 2023, the Online Safety Bill was signed off by the Houses of Parliament which criminalises sharing deepfake porn. The offence will be punishable by up to six months in prison and it would rise to two years if intent to cause distress, alarm, or humiliation, or to obtain sexual gratification could be proved. Note that the bill doesn’t criminalise the creation of deepfakes, only sharing them.

For further details about global deepfake regulation approaches including countries such as Canada and South Korea, check this article from the Artificial Intelligence Institute. 

Call to action

The remedy of our patriarchal society against physical violence towards women has been to encourage them to self-suppress their rights so that the perpetrators can roam free. 

For example, we tell women that to avoid becoming a victim of violence they should stay at home at night, avoid dark places, or don’t wear miniskirts. Failure to do so and get harmed is met with remarks such as “She was looking for it”.

I hope you’re not expecting me to exhort women to disappear from Instagram, get rid of their profile photos on LinkedIn, or stop publishing videos on TikTok. All the opposite. It’s not for us to hide from deepfake predators, it’s for platforms and regulators to do their job.

My call to action to you is threefold

1.- Take space: Let’s not allow this technology to make us invisible on social media —  hiding has never challenged the status quo. It’s a survival mechanism. If we hide now because we’re afraid of deepfakes, we’ll never be safe on the internet again.

2.- Amplify: Educate others about the risks and challenges of deepfakes as well as how to get support when deepfaked for pornography. 

3.- Demand action: Lobby to make platforms, software development companies, and governments accountable for making us safe from non-consensual sexual deepfakes.

BACK TO YOU: What’s your take on deepfakes? Should they be fully banned? How do you believe the benefits outweigh the risks?

PS. You and AI

  • ​Are you worried about ​the impact of A​I 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”?

I’ve got you covered.

AI Readiness Checklist

Myth-Busting Women’s Careers: The Truth About Collaboration and Empathy

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A woman and a man are sitting close to each other and the woman's hand rests on the men's shoulder like providing support.
Photo by SHVETS production.

WEBINAR RECORDING: From self-criticism to inner wisdom

This year I ran the quiz “How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?” As I mentioned in this article, 94% of you believe that “you should be able to achieve a life-work balance.” 

What was the next top patriarchal belief among the survey respondents? 67% of you answered that “Women are naturally more collaborative and empathic.”

Let me demonstrate to you that this “collaboration and empathy female gene” is a myth that hurts women’s careers and what to do instead. 

Women are “more” collaborative

Human beings are gregarious species. And it’s not fortuitous. We are rather weak animals and we cannot thrive on our own. We need the protection and support of a group to survive.

This interdependence is especially important for humans before reaching adulthood. Some researchers even hypothesise that the human capability to speak was first developed among our ancestor mothers prompted by the need to communicate the complexities of caring for human offspring. 

But it’s not only about language. Humans and their ancestors have hunted, fished, and farmed together for two million years. 

So, if as a species we don’t have any other choice than to be collaborative, how come this characteristic is perceived as a “feminine” trait? Because it serves the patriarchy to thrive and women to survive:

  • The myth that “women are naturally collaborative” is an excellent cover-up to shove all the non-promotable admin work to women — office work —  and feel comfortable claiming weaponised incompetence — faking incompetence at any one task (usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.
  • Society teaches women that we’re “human doings” rather than “human beings “— our “worth” is perceived to be attached to what we do for others rather than inherent to being a person. Hence, women collaborate as a way to show how valuable they are.
  • Women belong to a lower-power group so they don’t have the choice to be — or appear to be — collaborative with other low-power individuals to achieve their objectives, especially if those goals challenge the status quo. 

The female empathy

I’ve written about empathy before prompted by of all the hype, mysticism, and abuse around this word. 

Simply put, empathy is our ability to guess how other people feel, what their emotions are. They are guesses because we cannot feel others’ feelings —  emotions are constructed by us. As psychologist and neuroscientist professor Lisa Feldman Barrett says “The [facial] expressions [of emotion] that we’ve been told are the correct ones are just stereotypes and people express in many different ways.”

Dr. Feldman Barret posits that we’re taught those “emotion concepts” by our parents

You don’t have to teach children to have feelings. Babies can feel distress, they can feel pleasure and they do, they can certainly be aroused or calm. But emotion concepts — like sadness when something bad happens — are taught to children, not always explicitly.

That’s for example the reason that in our culture we have the “sadness” emotion concept but Tahitian culture doesn’t. “Instead they have a word whose closest translation would be “the kind of fatigue you feel when you have the flu.” It’s not the equivalent of sadness, that’s what they feel in situations where we would feel sad.”

So, humans “learn” about emotions and the expectations from others about how to express them since we’re babies, without gender distinctions. Then, why women are the “empathic” ones?

Let’s see what are our expectations from an “empathic” person:

  • Mimicking the emotional state of the other person in our face and body — if a person cries, an empathic person should “look” sad.
  • Labeling and reassuring the other person’s feelings — when a person complains, an empathic person may respond “I can see why you’re so frustrated”.
  • Providing support — when a person shares that they are sad, an empathic person may offer a hug or a comforting hand on their shoulder and ask what they can do to alleviate the sorrow.

It sounds like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? That’s the reason patriarchy has assigned it to women:

  • If we’re genetically programmed to be empathic, it’ll be our obligation to be attuned to others’ needs and, as a consequence, fulfil their demands.
  • We’ll be expected to clock countless hours towards emotional labour— checking the team’s mood and being the emotional caregivers of the workplace. 
  • Assigning all carework to us will be a no-brainer — we’re genetically pre-programmed to “sense” others’ needs.

Moreover, this expectation of women as “empathic beings” is so strong that many women on the autism spectrum grasp that they can “pass” as neurotypical by using rehearsed catchphrases, such as “good grief”, “interesting” or “that’s amazing”. It’s called masking. In other words, making believe they are “empathic”, that they can mirror others’ emotions.

What about men?

Women expect other women to be collaborative and empathic by default. Otherwise, we label them “bad women” and wish them hell, as Madeleine Albright did in her keynote speech at the Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA’s All-Decade Team in 2006.

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Whilst we women are very busy throwing bricks at other women, men reap the benefits of being seen as collaborative and empathic (not too much though, otherwise, they lose “toxic masculinity” points with their colleagues). What does that look like?

  • We overpraise men that show any kind of collaborative or empathic behaviour — no matter how small.
  • We absolve men for not pulling their weight and for disregarding the impact of their actions on others. After all, “boys will be boys”.

The good news: Collaboration and empathy are learned skills

We’ve forgotten that we teach children to share their toys and play together as well as to “read” other people’s emotions. Instead, we have bought into the patriarchal tropes about women’s natural talents. 

But there is a remedy. If we acknowledge that collaboration and empathy are learned skills, that means that 

  • People can teach them.
  • People can master them.
  • People can be held accountable.

Conclusion

The belief that women are naturally more collaborative and empathic is a social construct reinforced by articles, books, and social media. When we stand by it, we reinforce the patriarchal status quo.

On the flip side, we have a lot to gain by remembering that collaboration and caring for our communities are learned skills.

Your homework:

  • Allow yourself not to be collaborative or “empathic” when it doesn’t serve you well (for example, when you’re snowed under by “office work”).
  • When colleagues hide their rudeness and individualism behind gender tropes around empathy and collaboration, remind them that those skills can be taught and learned, as we do with children.

BACK TO YOU: Where do you stand on the genetic predisposition of women for collaboration and empathy?

RECORDING: From self-criticism to inner wisdom

Recently, I ran a one-hour webinar where I demystified confidence for ambitious women who want to thrive in their professional and personal lives.

I shared

  • My personal story about confidence.
  • · The true nature of confidence.
  • Three career traps triggered by self-criticism.
  • A framework to reverse the influence of patriarchal self-criticism so you can benefit from your inner wisdom and redefine confidence in your terms.

BONUS: During the webinar, I also coached two women on how to overcome the patriarchal beliefs that were holding them back from progressing in their careers. 

Click here to access the recording and learn how to develop a healthy relationship with your feeling of confidence.

Unmasking Work-Life Balance: Breaking Free from Patriarchy One Myth at a Time

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Woman juggling balls with two girls. All of them dress in similar attires which elitics a feeling that they are related to each other.
Photo by Ron Lach.

WEBINAR RECORDING: From self-criticism to inner wisdom

Dear reader,

Each time you’re confronted with a choice to make, 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 life-work 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 life-work 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 looking into each word in this statement “life-work balance”

  • What does the binary life vs work tell you? Maybe that 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 how they are 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 cannot do all the things on 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 that are 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 to be better at time management.
  • You should be “fixed” through hundreds of very expensive programs that promise to teach you the “ultimate time management tools”.
  • You’re rightly patronised about the choices you make — others know better than you what you should do to achieve “work-life balance”.

What would happen if you dared to replace the thought “You should be able to achieve a life-work 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

FREE WEBINAR: From self-criticism to inner wisdom

Women from different ethnicities and ages standing up with their arms crossed looking at the camera.

RECORDING: From self-criticism to inner wisdom

Recently, I ran a one-hour webinar where I demystified confidence for ambitious women who want to thrive in their professional and personal lives.

I shared

  • My personal story about confidence.
  • · The true nature of confidence.
  • Three career traps triggered by self-criticism.
  • A framework to reverse the influence of patriarchal self-criticism so you can benefit from your inner wisdom and redefine confidence in your terms.

BONUS: During the webinar, I also coached two women on how to overcome the patriarchal beliefs that were holding them back from progressing in their careers. 

Click here to access the recording and learn how to

Theft of the Mind: When Women’s Ideas Become Men’s Triumphs

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Smiling woman with big mirror in nature. The mirror is in front of her body reflecting nature, so it's like she was transparent.
Photo by Kalpit Khatri.

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

What about art?

Not enough? Mother Jones has put together ​an insightful timeline of men getting credit for women’s accomplishments​. Some gems

  • 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?
  • Brewers — From the earliest evidence of brewing (7000 BCE) until its commercialisation, ​women were the primary brewers on all inhabited continents​. But who do you picture in your mind when you think of a “brewer”?

Our gendered standards of excellence

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.

FREEBIE: The Joyful Career Assessment Hour

Do you have the feeling that you have reached a ceiling in your career waiting for the business to recognise the value you deliver? Are you working very hard but the promotions keep going to others?

Join me for one hour on Tuesday 21st at 6.30pm GMT where you’ll learn:

– How to get a clear picture of your professional accomplishments in 2023.

– Tell your career story in a compelling manner.

– Be ready to discuss your career aspirations for 2024 and beyond.

Let’s finish the year asking for what we want!

Link to the free webinar ​here​.

Insights from Four Women’s Conferences: The Value of Collective Female Wisdom

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Four images: (1) Announcement of Patricia Gestoso’s talk “Automated out of work: AI’s impact on the female workforce” at the Women in Tech Festival, (2) Four British female politicians in a panel at the Fawcett Conference 2023, (3) Agenda of the Empowered to Lead Conference 2023, (4) Announcement of Patricia Gestoso’s talk “Seven Counterintuitive Secrets to a Thriving Career in Tech” at the Manchester Tech Festival.
Collage and photos by Patricia Gestoso.

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.

Fawcett Conference 2023

On October 14th, I attended the Fawcett Conference 2023 with the theme Women Win Elections!

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.

Some of the highlights below

Sharon Amesu

3 Cs:

  • Cathedral thinking — Think big.
  • Courageous leadership — Be ambitious.
  • Command yourself — Have the discipline to do things even if you’re afraid.

Dr Tessy Ojo CBE

  • 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.
  • Ambition — set impossible goals (Patricia’s note: I’m a huge fan of impossible goals. I started the year setting mine on the article Do you want to achieve diversity, inclusion, and equity in 2023? Embrace impossible goals)
  • 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.”
  • ‘Black History Month should be the whole year’.
  • 3 Cs: Consideration, contentment (satisfaction), courage.
  • ‘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.

As I told the audience, the biggest threat to women’s work is not AI. It’s patriarchy feeling threatened by AI. And if you want to learn more about my views on the topic, go to my previous post Artificial intelligence’s impact on the future of the female workforce.

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. 
  • There are more CEOs in the UK FTSE 100 named Peter than women.
  • 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.

Manchester Tech Festival

On Wednesday 1st November, I delivered a talk in the Women in Tech & Tech for Good track at the Manchester Tech Festival.

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

“If somebody is unhappy with your life, it shouldn’t be you.”

You have 55 days to the end of 2023. I dare you to

  • Leave behind the tiring to-do list imposed by society’s expectations.
  • Learn how to love who you truly are.
  • Become your own version of success.

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, explore strategies to overcome them, and implement a plan.

Contact me to explore how we can work together.

How to upend your life: Become an accidental caregiver

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Close-up of two people holding their hands.
Photo by Thirdman.

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 research on the effect of COVID-19 on the unpaid work of women demonstrates the massive hidden work towards caring for the elderly and other family members.
  • 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.

The problem is that by continuing what we’re doing, we’ll have to wait 300 years more to reach gender equality as per the UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The cure

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. 

Work with me — My special offer

“What if the rest of this year is the best of this year?”

You have 75 days to the end of 2023. You can continue to do what you’re doing. But 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 insight?
  • 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, explore strategies to overcome them, and implement a plan.

Contact me to explore how we can work together.

Of the patriarchal value of time: Women’s unpaid work

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A woman with an expression of overwhelm is surrounded by balls of different colours suspended in the air. She has her hands up like trying to protect herself from the balls.
Too many balls in the air? Photo by Zak Neilson on Unsplash.

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.

Gendered tasks

Not all tasks are created equal:

  • The tasks bestowed upon women because… they’re women — Household, childcare, and eldercare simply “suit” our “natural” abilities.
  • 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 non-promotable tasks — Office housework, glue work, and weaponised incompetence. After all, women are inborn team players.
  • 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.
  • Women’s bodies don’t belong to them— They are units of production vulnerable to the whim of those who decide when and how they should get pregnant and how and when they become mothers.

Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions

Why seizing control of our time is important?

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.

What do women do then? My answer comes in the form of the title of an excellent book by Gloria Steinem “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”.

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. 

PS.

Do you want to get rid of chapters in the “good girl” encyclopaedia that patriarchy has written for you? Book a strategy session with me to explore how coaching can help you to become your own version of success.

Book a free strategy session

The DNA of Tech Unveiled: Patriarchy, Exceptionalism, Meritocracy

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Brown woman in casual attire with a laptop in her lap typing software code.
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels.

I’m delighted to be featured in the last issue of The Mint Magazine on the digital economy. The piece, entitled Motherboard Matters, is my first contribution to an economics journal!

In this article (5-min read), I highlight how the pervasiveness of patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy in the technology sector is at the core of women’s battle for fair access to leadership positions in tech.

I also share how we need to overhaul tech so it moves from extracting to contributing to society and the planet.

Motherboard Matters

I’ve now been working for over 15 years as a head of services in the tech industry. Throughout my career, I’ve strived to support other professional women with the determination to see workplaces reach gender equity during my lifetime.

The pandemic has wrecked that hope in the tech sector even though it is thriving financially. The reason? Tech hasn’t seen the opportunities to challenge practices such as unpaid care work and the revered 40-hour workweek that keep women away from leadership positions. Instead, it has brushed off the problem with platitudes: flexible working… work from home… hybrid working…

This lack of questioning is the product of the pervasiveness of patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy in technology, which hinder the deep transformation required to upend the status quo. These characteristics are part of its DNA and have long stayed under the radar of most people, including myself.

When I started in software, I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable in a sector where you must work much harder to progress in your career if you are not simultaneously white, heterosexual, able, and male. I’ve been an immigrant all my life, so I was used to being “the other” and to have to prove myself over and over.

Then, in the early 2010s, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote Why Women Still Can’t Have It All and Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. In different ways, those powerful women sent the message that women didn’t have the same opportunities as men to get to the top and that imbalance had to be fixed.

Around that time, I was promoted. I quickly noticed that often I was the only female senior manager in projects and meetings. The smart and promising women that I had met years earlier had come back from maternity leave to unappealing part-time jobs, without access to the plumb assignments that lead to career progression.

The motherhood penalty revealed to me systemic patterns where before I’d seen only coincidences.

The tipping point was when I joined a group of professional women working in various industries and at all career levels. Our honest conversations about men stealing ideas, the harmful effects of unconscious bias, or the motherhood penalty revealed to me systemic patterns where before I’d seen only coincidences. That prompted me to create the first employee-led group focused on fostering gender equity at my company, which positive impact was recognised with the 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers UK award. I also spreadhead other initiatives to grow diversity and inclusion in other organisations. I also discovered that power asymmetry was not a bug but a feature embedded since the birth of tech.

In the 1930s, women were hired to solve mathematical problems that were considered at the time as repetitive work. Some of those calculations were as complex as estimating the number of rockets needed to make a plane airborne or determining how to get a human into space and back. When computers took off in the 1960s women became the programmers while men focused on the hardware which was regarded as the most challenging work. As programming gained status during the 1980s, men pushed women out of those jobs. That prompted a sharp increase in the salaries of software developers, institutionalising patriarchy and the gender pay gap.

Historically, tech has approached these issues by “fixing women.” For example, women in the sector are coached to develop stereotypical male leadership traits. In the past decade, tech leaders have promoted the abdication of responsibility for solving gender inequalities and charged women with mitigating the damages. For instance, female executives are expected to act as role models on top of their full-time jobs. This can go all the way from agreeing to be the company’s speaker at STEM events to sponsoring the female employee network.

This transfer of responsibility is also alive and well in start-up tech businesses. A venture capitalist shared with me his view that the key to increasing the funding received by women’s businesses was that they were mentored by successful female founders. I replied that those top performers were often overburdened by the demands of paying back to society and that men could also mentor women. Later that day, he asked me to mentor a woman with a promising business idea that he was trying to help. He introduced us via email mentioning my interest in supporting her and inviting us to connect. His “helping” was done.


In recent years, the most popular software development approach, agile, has become a staple of the business jargon. The origin of this methodology can be traced back to 2001 and 17 software developers unhappy about what they considered excessive planning and documentation practices. They came up with their own set of rules: The Agile Manifesto.

The rationale is that tech is special and its regulation is counterproductive and stifles innovation.

But agile is more than a project management approach. It buttresses tech’s deep cultural belief in exceptionalism, the idea that our sector is inherently different from, and even better than, all the others. This helps to explain how we allow tech companies to go fast and break things while we impose strict regulations on the food and drug industries. The rationale is that tech is special and its regulation is counterproductive and stifles innovation.

The debates about the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) are perfect examples of how this sector dodges the rules applied to other industries. For example, I recently met with other professionals to discuss future trends in support software. Everybody was very excited about the use of AI tools such as sentiment analysis to improve the user experience. Then, I brought up the proposal for regulating those applications released by the European Union a month earlier. The participants – who were unaware of the document – quickly asserted that the directive had nothing to do with support. In summary, norms are for others.

This framework conveniently disguises the dearth of opportunities for underrepresented groups as being the result of a lack of intelligence and skill.

And the most pernicious cultural tenet in tech is its self-proclaimed meritocracy. How do we heal a system that considers itself virtuous? The idea that tech is inherently fair is rooted in its connection to logic and mathematics which commonly translates as objectivity and reason. This framework conveniently disguises the dearth of opportunities for underrepresented groups as being the result of a lack of intelligence and skill.

Can we extricate patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy from tech? Yes, we can but it’ll need an overhaul of its vision, mission, and purpose. It’ll need humility.

What does that mean in practice?

First, it means moving away from methodologies that could foster power asymmetry between creators and users. Instead, we should adopt systems thinking and multi-stakeholder co-creation practices for the development of products, services, and workplaces.

Second, recognising that the financial success of our sector relies on innovations funded by governments and products purchased by customers. Hence, paying taxes that are commensurate with tech business profits is not philanthropy but a fair contribution to society.

Finally, abiding by the same rules and regulations imposed on any other sector with the potential of affecting billions of lives. Only then, will tech be able to deliver on its “Don’t be evil” promise.

Further reading

System map of the factors accounting for the low representation of women in leadership positions in tech companies.

Life under lockdown: Report on the impact of COVID-19 on professional women’s unpaid work

BACK TO YOU: What are your views on the topic? How does my story resonate with yours?

Motherboard matters
Picture of a computer motherboard that illustrates my article Motherboard Matters in The Mint Magazine.