EQUALITY MEANS EMPLOYING PEOPLE WHO MAY MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE
We’re familiar with feminism and everyone’s now careful to make sure they don’t discriminate on grounds of race, gender, faith or sexual orientation. But did you know that you can do all these and still be missing out one of the largest minority groups?
Of course feminism isn’t new. Ever since suffragette Emily Davis died under the thundering hooves of a horse, disrupting the 1913 Epsom Derby, men have been aware that women mean business! Today, in the race for success women and men are usually neck and neck. There are no real obstacles to hold the ambitious woman back.
For the politicians, dead set on equality of opportunity, there remains one significant problem. Not all women want to be entrepreneurs. Some don’t even want to work, but instead are completely fulfilled doing traditional things like raising kids and baking cakes.
That’s not to say I’m sexist. I also know some very happy ‘stay at home dads’, who wipe noses, attend playgroups and are as skilful with their Dyson as any MIG welder with his lance. Equality in my book is about choice.
Nobody should feel pressured to conform to any gender stereotype; especially one promulgated by politicians. Yet look at the pictures that illustrate any economic strategy report and you’ll see that at least half those pictured are women, and wherever in the UK you happen to be, the most prominently featured people are clearly not of European origin either.
Living as I do in rural East Anglia that’s a shame. By far the largest ethnic minorities here are those migrant workers from Portugal and the Baltic states. The problem for those ‘report writers’ from the public sector, is that these groups don’t look like minorities. Most could easily pass themselves off as East Anglian. That poses a real problem for political correctness has to be visually obvious. Perhaps if they had their nationality tattooed on their forehead the politicians would feel happier to picture them. But that of course smacks of Nazism and would be offensive to all.
So discrimination is not just about women; it’s about everyone. But before moving on to make my point about other kinds of discrimination that arguably are more deserving of our support, let me introduce you to my friend Kerry. She is in late middle age and at 6ft2 something of an Amazon. She’s never been self employed and was happily working as a bus driver when the urge to become a women surfaced and would not to go away.
Kerry continued to drive a bus as she grew a bust and lived as a woman. The only remnants of her former gender comprise a carefully hidden ‘lunch-box’ packed away under her skirt. (Her Primary Heath Care Trust has targets for gender reassignment surgery and Kerry has to wait!)
Although she chose not to make a fuss, she lost her driving job and now works nights at a bus depot cleaning chewing gum and worse off the seats when everyone else has gone home. To have the courage to make the life changes she has made, surely would equip her well for self employment. But where are the feminists who should be supporting Kerry? I may be being unfair, but my guess is they’re supporting women who have led a more conventional life.
Most women you see are quite capable of starting a business, breaking through the corporate glass ceiling or doing anything else they set their hearts on. Yes we have to make allowances for their biology; at least until men become capable of having babies, but surely we are civilised enough these days to do that?
I want to urge you to stop discriminating against the thousands of people who are not always strong enough to fight the stigma that holds them back. People who have so much to offer, but who too rarely are given the opportunities their skills, experience and stamina deserve. Let me give you two examples, of people I have met recently.
Illuminee is in her late 30s. Privately educated by parents who made real sacrifices to find the fees they could ill afford. She married the boy she saw widowed as his wife, her best friend died in childbirth. Within weeks of her own son being born, her husband was brutally slaughtered, as was her sister and many other members of her family. This was genocide, endorsed by her country’s government and observed by the United Nations who chose not to act to stop it.
Since arriving with her young son in England from Rwanda, Illuminee has had to cope with her past. She’s had to deal with the aftermath of traumas so terrible, that we can barely imagine how she survived at all. She is now a British citizen, trained, qualified and eager to establish an outside catering business, focusing on African cuisine. It’s a niche market she knows exists in the increasingly cosmopolitan city where she lives.
She currently lives in a small flat, supported by state benefits, with no capital to invest. How can those setting out to help women entrepreneurs help her? There are rules that need bending, particularly around funding and state benefits. Or do they ignore her and help someone able to give them a good outcome with a lot less effort? I wonder!
Then there’s David; a qualified catering manager with a solid track record. That is until serious mental illness took him away from work and dropped him into the twilight world of anti-psychotic drugs.
Now largely recovered, although to be fair he will never be quite the same again, he has set up a gardens maintenance business. He enjoys being outdoors and the physical work helps alleviate the pain he still feels in his head.
Customers are not generally put off by his somewhat eccentric habit of wearing spectacles held together with strips of sellotape (some usually across one lens). His charges are modest, his work-rate variable but his commitment is absolute, as is his desire to support himself financially.
How would the business support agencies cope if he were to ask for advice? He still takes each day as it comes and cannot always go out to work. Even though the basic rules of commerce, reliability and presentation, give him major challenges, doesn’t he deserve society’s support? Or is it easier again for those doling out the assistance to conveniently overlook David and help in his place someone less needy but more likely to allow targets to be met.
Let me end by reassuring you that I fully support all initiatives that help women come away from the fireplace and into the marketplace. But let me also assure you that I will only be campaigning on their behalf when I see more positive support for those who also want to become self employed, but are too often conveniently ignored because to help them requires flexibility, adaptability and above all, risk.
Tell me, are any of us really doing enough to banish stigma and discrimination from the world of business?