What Women Want
To change the world, listen and really hear.
How often have you heard the tired old jokes about, ‘Who knows what women want?’ As if women are an indecipherable and erratic species incapable of knowing what they want or how to reach any goals they might manage to formulate in their pretty little heads. Flighty, weak, indecisive, helpless, dependent on male intellect and strength - which is pretty much unlike every real woman I’ve ever met.
As the talented and ambitious Reese Witherspoon noted, in movies, women almost always “turn to a male lead and ask breathlessly, ‘What do we do now?!”. To which she rightfully observed, “Do you know any woman in any crisis situation who has absolutely no idea what to do? I mean, don’t they tell people in crisis, even children, ‘If you’re in trouble, talk to a woman.”
Look back over the last 5,000 years. Women’s voices have been consistently silenced - from the obvious and brutal Salem witch trials and Scold’s bridle to death by a thousand cuts, where women’s opinions and value is constantly debased, subtly and pervasively in every part of our lives, throughout our lives. Competency questioned. Commitment questioned. Motive questioned. Opportunities withdrawn. Lower paychecks. Work restrictions which make it impossible for women to progress if they have responsibilities for any form of living creature, while being socially ostracized if not caring for all those living creatures. The constant fault-finding and nit-picking, as if woman are the problem, not part of the solution. It is so much more convenient for everyone if women stay quiet, remain in their caregiver role, don’t challenge the primacy of males - which isn’t biological primacy, merely cultural primacy cultivated over too many years, reinforced by religion, laws, and societal norms. Norms which have even been, to my everlasting astonishment, adopted by some women, who have been taught to believe that they are weak and inferior to men.
The erasure of women’s voices in Afghanistan has been another kick to the gut, my final straw.
Women who have known relative freedom, education, and opportunity over the last 20 years. The opportunity to reach their potential erased in a matter of days. It reminds me how quickly women’s voices can be silenced, in so many ways. It reminds me what a steep and slippery slope women climb every day. How quickly our gains can be erased. It happens all the time. I’ve lost count of the number of brilliant women I know who have been censured, sidelined, and silenced, though their ideas are often adopted, with credit attributed to the nearest male.
We lose so much when we silence women’s voices, either physically or by minimizing the validity of women’s opinions. We lose the chance to move the entire world forward, because we have ample research that shows that the human race is better off when we listen to what both men and women say. I find it ironic that ‘don’t be so irrational’ is often used to minimize women’s opinions, because if those (men) with power were rational, they would follow the research and actually listen to women’s voices. But we as a broader society of humans aren’t rational. We sacrifice societal stability and the holy grail of shareholder return because we don’t really want to hear what women want. Listening to what women, actually hearing them and changing, might disrupt the patriarchy.
As the pandemic drags on, I read article upon article about how work will change. Will workers return to the office or not? Underlying these discussions is the real issue - how is work conducted and how is it valued? Peeling back the layers even more, we are questioning how we function as a society and what needs to change. The questions are being asked, but will we listen to what people really want? Will we listen to what women want too? Will we take this opportunity of global disruption to move forward or scuttle back to the status quo?
21 years ago I wrote a thesis on this very subject. It was literally entitled “What Women Want: Why Women Are Leaving Traditional Jobs in the U.S.” I researched why accomplished professional women were leaving the workforce. I conducted in-depth interviews with women from a range of professions and experiences, did the literature reviews, and came to the conclusion that women were looking for flexibility. Not ‘you can start work at either 8:30 or 9’ flexibility, which was about as wild as the business world was willing to go at that point, but ‘what is work and how is the work actually done?’ flexibility. A redefining of flexibility that questioned the need for face-time, too frequent business trips, endless meetings, hours in the office, traditional hours, collaboration, job-sharing, and measuring and rewarding success. Essentially the questions we have been faced to confront during the pandemic. These women were suggesting was a redefinition of work, but make no mistake, these women wanted to work. They wanted to contribute to society. They were just frustrated at the narrow definitions of work and how work is valued.
And then came the ‘not listening’ again. My advisor strongly encouraged me to have my thesis published because it was original work, unique in the field. And so I submitted it to a number of periodicals. Nothing. Nada. When they could be bothered to reply, it was a rejection. Of course there is always the possibility that my research or writing wasn’t up to standards, but since it earned a Distinction from the London School of Economics, one of the top social science research universities in the world, and was accompanied by a recommendation from my advisor, well, it did leave me thinking that perhaps it wasn’t the quality of the research or writing, but rather the belief that what women want wasn’t considered important. That actually listening, and hearing, was not worth the time and effort. That was a long time ago and I had forgotten about my thesis, but all I could think recently was, if voices like mine were listened to 21 years ago, if the conversation had begun to shift, would we have been in a better position to weather the pandemic? Would 3 million women have left the workforce, destabilizing the economy, families, and the social safety net? How much change doesn’t happen because we don’t hear women?
The not hearing what women are saying has made me increasingly angry over the last 50+ years. The not listening, not actually hearing what people are saying, extends to any number of situations and keeps us from moving forward, with increasingly dire possible outcomes. Not hearing keeps us from creating positive social change. There has been glacial change as we begin to recognize the value of listening and hearing, but we must accelerate the change. The days of sending in ‘experts’ to fix ‘impoverished countries’ are fading as there is a growing understanding that understanding, hearing, what local people perceive the problems, and the solutions, to be is a more efficient use of time and money than imposing outside ideas. We have evidence that when people living below a median income level receive cash, essentially listening and hearing what they need and providing them with autonomy, they use it for necessities and are more likely to start working full-time while receiving the benefit. We all benefit when we listen, and hear.
When we listen, and actually hear women, and then incorporate those views, positive change begins to happen. We women are not asking for more or better, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said, “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
Just think of the possibilities for all of us.
(My thesis addressed women in white-collar professions. An even greater disruption to our perceptions of work would need to occur to cover the majority of women in lower-paid or hourly jobs. But I am convinced that if we begin to listen to women across the spectrum, working conditions for both men and women will improve.)