I just read the most irritating words written that has my blood boiling, but for different reasons than you think.  Not because they are wrong, but because – as a woman deeply concerned with gender reconciliation – I agree with him.  Yet for different reasons.

Silicon Valley V.C. Firm Can’t Find Any Women.  The problem is you, not him.

I read the entirety of the article here, and watched the snippet here.

True, as a woman passionate about gender reconciliation – it is really hard not to jump into the “Let me at him” feminist stance on this.

Yet, this stance gets us no where.  

I have been studying gender/sex roles, abuse, power & control, economics and our social structures for years now and know that the solution is different than what most would think. The solution is NOT in competing with men – but in honoring our differences, our uniqueness and bringing that to the table with a powerful feminine voice.

Look at what he says not from a masculine lens…
BUT FROM A UNIQUE FEMININE LENS
What this man says about the pipeline problem could very well be the issue. And/or it could be that a lot of women might find the tech sector depersonalized and more robotic than our deep creative resourceful selves care to do…even if we haven’t named this consciously.

Marty Neumeier in his book MetaSkills talks about how our educational system has been set up to produce unimaginative, uncreative “robots” that can perform repetitive tasks with no emotion.  Now-a-days we are finding that actual robots are starting to replace us in the workplace, and that treating ourselves as robots ain’t cutting it for many reasons.  I have actually had several Stanford Mechanical Engineers in my car (as I am driving for Uber to just get out there and meet people/network!) who are BORED out of their wits at their jobs because they are – well mechanical, unimaginative, un-creative.

So, maybe women in this country who have been “liberated” in some sense don’t care to go into the sciences because the Emotional side of science has been left out.

ONE POWERFUL SOLUTION FOR WOMEN:
Women have been trained out of knowing/valuing/and speaking our differences that could make a HUGE impact on businesses.

One such trait is our – duh, duh, duh – Emotionality.

Marty goes on to comment that what makes us human is our capacity to feel …and that “the more evolved a species is, the more emotional it is.”

Now, while I believe both sexes are highly evolved emotional beings – it is women that still have been allowed to have slightly more emotions in our culture than men.  Our culture has tried to wipe these out of us.  Yet even with pills and drugs to make us less emotional, our emotions persist ~ month-in and mouth-out to be highly emotional beings.

I would argue that women, instead of disowning this highly DESIRABLE evolutionary trait – learn to cultivate it to all of our advantages (women and men alike) along with other highly unique feminine traits.  Read more about this in my post “When will Corp. America Value Mother’s Work as Work?  When women do these 3 things.”

This will take educating women AND MEN on how we are different, why those differences ARE VALUABLE, living those differences and then educating women on how to speak all of this with compassion and love for the men – so as to not make them enemies.

STOP WAITING ON MEN TO DO WHAT ONLY WE WOMEN CAN DO
I don’t want to pretend this is an easy fix and that it will happen overnight.  What I am suggesting means that we will have to think outside of any preconceived box of how things are done now.  We cannot continue to use the same means we have been using in the past 150-200 years and expect things to change.  Our “means” have to change.

This means that we – women – need to bring to men’s attention that we do not wish to compete on/in their standards…because these are standards for men and masculine traits.  We are not men and do not wish to pretend to be men (at least  deep within I hope this is true, even if not consciously yet seen).  Therefore we do not want to compete within their standards.  We have every right to set our own standards that would allow us to bring in our UNIQUE differences that BALANCE out the heavily dominated masculine viewpoint of the world right now.

Intelligent men like Marty Neumeier are realizing that we need more “Feminine Principles” (my word not his) to help offset the overly driven/breakneck pace that the masculine energy has us all slaving away – and for what?

I want to leave you with another article by a friend, Jennifer Kenny, writing about the issue of Leadership Standards being masculine standards not favorable to the uniqueness of women leaders.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Holli is a trained NLP Leadership Coach and a full spectrum wellness consultant specializing in helping people and small companies have Optimal Human Performance. She believes that duality is needed, and that women have a tremendous opportunity to impact the world for greatest good within the business world at this juncture in time.  She assists individuals and companies to resurrect what she calls the “Feminine Principles” (emotional intelligence, compassion, intuition, non-linear ideas) and marry it with a the “Masculine Principle” well established in the world .  She does this by teaching:
* Women how to return to the wisdom and transformative power of their cycles so they can bring their unique BALANCING traits into the world
* Corporations how return to the wisdom of the seasons and moon cycles, allowing people to step out of the fight/flight/freeze paradigm and into Disruptive Innovation