Speaking with Cassandra Kelly yesterday, the joint CEO of Pottinger, entrepreneur and investment banker offered a great metaphor to explain what happens when women don’t support each other.
“It’s like there are all these barriers, or fences, there for women, and now we’re going to add barbed wire just to really cut you,” she said.
“The numbers are there for us to see [regarding the small number of women in leadership]. It is what it is. Let’s help each other. At a minimum can we not deride each other.”
It was a point also expressed — albeit in a different way — by Suzy Jacobs, the founder of networking group She Business at a panel session hosted by entrepreneur Wendy Mak this morning. Sharing the panel with Jac Bowie and Sarah Riegelhuth, also founders of female networking groups and communities for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Jacobs suggested leaders of such groups for women collaborate and help each other. “We can show we’re here and all working for the success of women in business.”
Even those women you might consider your biggest competitors in business can still be your greatest career advocates and supporters.
Women are not our own ‘worst enemies’ and don’t necessarily pull the ladder up to prevent others from getting over the fence anymore than men might do so amongst themselves.
But given some of the challenges we’re up against — and as Kelly notes, the dismal numbers regarding women in leadership are clearly there for everyone to see — we do need to actively support each other.
And we should also acknowledge the women who’ve already cut through the wire before us.
That means supporting and celebrating feminists who’ve fought and won individual battles that have ultimately enabled more choice and opportunities for the rest of us. Some people prefer not to associate with the word ‘feminism’, nor to actively support ‘feminism’, but to outright align yourself as being against the movement is to play an active role in putting up the barbed wire that makes the existing fences so difficult to get over.
Last night, I explored the #womenagainstfeminism movement online, after preparing this piece from Catherine Fox in response to it, published today on Women’s Agenda.
The WAF movement — notable outlined on this Tumblr page — made for some depressing bedtime reading.
And so it was incredible to be able to wake up and share my morning with Suzy Jacobs, Sarah Riegeluth, Jac Bowie and Wendy Mak discussing how they’re helping women in business.
You don’t have to look far to find strong and supportive women.