World peace? Women’s Day dialogue that actually matters

On 8 August 2012, writer, academic, and activist Helen Moffet wrote a furious blog post titled “Take your Women’s Day and shove it”.

Of course, it went viral.

You can find it easily enough on the web if you’re comfortable with strong language. It’s far more powerful in its original form but essentially, Moffet rants against the government’s complete abandonment of the country’s women and says, “The public spectacle of hypocrisy that is Women’s Day is just rubbing salt into their wounds.”

Twelve years later, there’s still a growing heaviness around National Women’s Day on9 August that shows no sign of lifting.

It can make the well-intentioned “happy Women’s Day” sentiments that circulate on WhatsApp seem tone-deaf to the issues that make this day anything but happy for many women in this country.

Our National Women’s Day commemorates the 1956 Women’s March to Pretoria, where about 20 000 women of all races protested against the apartheid government’s pass laws. It honours the contributions of women like Lilian Ngoyi and Albertina Sisulu, and remembers their role in shaping the nation.

But the way Women’s Day is celebrated today – with goodie bags and offers of discounts – is perhaps symptomatic of how we prefer to avoid difficult but essential conversations and offer spa days instead.

In more than a decade of designing and hosting women’s leadership conferences, I learned that there were certain weighty social topics that wouldn’t attract the crowds. Audiences would far prefer panels about lifting other women up, how to network better, or how to boost your personal brand.

It made me think of the scene in the movie Miss Congeniality, in which Sandra Bullock smiles beatifically and says “World peace” in answer to the question “What’s the one most important thing our society needs?”

Bullock plays Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Gracie Hart, who goes undercover in the Miss USA beauty pageant to prevent a group from bombing the event. Gracie is a straight-talking cop rather than a people pleaser. But when her first retort, “harsher punishment for parole violators”, gets no response from the audience, she reconsiders. And when she resorts instead to the “world peace” response that the audience expects, the crowd goes wild.

It’s a line that has become almost iconic in the way it captures what happens when we are seduced into saying what everyone wants to hear rather than what needs to be said.

There’s a time to pitch the conversation at a level that’s appropriate. But the role of a leader is to host the conversations that need to be held, to include all voices present, and to pose the important questions that need to be answered. These are the most important contributions women leaders can offer.

Some years ago, I spent some time researching the area of online gaming. Author Jane McGonigal in her book Reality has Broken, tells us that the average young person in the United Kingdom will spend more than 10 000 hours gaming online by the age of 21.

Malcolm Gladwell first proposed the 10 000-hour theory in his best-selling book Outliers: The Story of Success. Ten thousand hours of practice and preparation seems to be the crucial threshold that makes the difference between being good at something and being extraordinary at it.

The question McGonigal poses is what exactly are gamers getting good at? The conclusion she comes to is that the core skill being developed is that of collaboration. The ability to problem-solve and work with strangers from around the world.

I’ve asked myself a similar question over the years when it comes to applying these same principles to the skills that women learn when we serve soup and pour tea, and when we learn how to include others and make them comfortable. What exactly are we getting good at? Or rather, what are the skills we’re mastering as we host gatherings?

These aren’t the skills of housekeeping and domesticity. Rather, we’re honing the ability to organise, to unite, to mobilise, and to convene. We’re mastering the skills required to manage, work with, and lead groups of all sizes. We’re learning how to read the room, and how to lead the room. We’re learning observation, practising listening, and noticing what remains unsaid.

As the world shifts to take these skills more seriously, it’s an indictment on the role women still occupy that we need to be reminded that the strengths traditionally associated with our leadership, are skills that we’re poised to strengthen and claim. The ability to host dialogue, manage conflict, find common ground, and model respect in the midst of hatred. These are the leadership skills we need more than ever.

The good news is that women have a natural ability to host conversations, create safe spaces, and make others feel welcome.

Introducing and hosting conversations are the skills that have launched humanitarian relief efforts that have earned the Nobel Peace Prize. They are also the same skills that are used by neighbourhoods, parents, and teachers to solve local problems.

The conversations that will make the most difference won’t happen in auditoriums. They will happen when women speak up about what matters most, and when men listen more to what needs to be said.

In the words of Gloria Steinem: “One of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak”.

We have a collective responsibility to continue the work of the women who walked before us, and to protect the future of the women who will follow.

These are the kinds of conversations we need more of during women’s month. And there’s no shortage of talented women leaders to step up to host them.

Debby Edelstein is the founder of QualityLife Company, a global leadership coaching consultancy and the creator of leadership development programme WeLead Circles. She is co-author of “Unapologetically Her: Global perspectives of Women’s Triumphs, Strategies and Resilience” and a member of the Board of Advisors at Harvard Business Review.