disrupting the Disruption

In what has been one of the greatest Ally-calls to date, Emma Watson shook the Twitterverse (and apparently the rest of the world, too) by announcing the launch of the He For She campaign for gender equality worldwide, this weekend at the UN in NYC. 

Men I want to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I've seen my father's role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother's. I've seen men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it'd make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49. Eclipsing car accidents, cancer, and coronary heart disease. I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. 

Men don't have the benefits of equality, either. 

We don't often talk about men imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are. And that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don't have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won't feel compelled to be submissive. If men don't have to control, women won't have to be controlled.  

As the daughter of single-dad startup guy who did it alone in the 80s—when "Mr. Mom" was a comedy, and not an everyday reality—this got me teary-eyed. :)

We have so much work to do in Tech—and, in the world at large. As techies, we've proven our capacities to move mountains. The work of worldwide gender equality, needs our efforts and our voices. !!

On Monday night, the 2012 Paycheck Fairness Act was shot down for the fourth time by the US Senate, in a vote drawn down party lines.

My color-commentary summarization of what the 2012 Paycheck Fairness Act would mean for both employers and employees, is below:

A favorite quote I found in the press on the matter: Kelly Ayotte, a Republican senator from New Hampshire, said that she voted against the law because she worried it would prohibit merit-based pay. Meritocracy inhibitor. Right. The employment policymaking equivalent to the dog ate my homework.

The complete text of the legislation, is here. The first page at that link—the legislation's summary—is what I screencap'd for the above JPG.

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When saving the photo-collage above, I named the image manshow.png

Yesterday’s 90min Apple Event did feature an abundance of women. Keeping with historic patterns of showcasing new products, almost every device-screen image in a demo, featured a beautiful woman. The game that was demoed, featured an (adorable) female character. The retail demo showing a credit card experience, featured women actors. None of the presenters of the products, however, were women. None of the celebrated makers behind the magic, were women. One product demo image of a panorama, even featured a model standing on a berm of rocks in the ocean, in a stark likeness to Botticelli’s Venus. (?!)

I would have just rolled my eyes, had the whole thing been a unilateral man show. The dichotomy between a +90% presence of beautiful, radiantly-feminine women as models in the product demo images, and the 100% presence of men as product owners demonstrating their brainchildren, instead just left a dark, empty-pit feeling in my stomach. It was a very personal feeling of disappointment, despite the tingling of my skin in ecstatic glee from the actual design & tech solutions themselves, presented as finessed, production-ready products I will be storefront-camping like a total dork, to be among the first to buy. 

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A VERY exciting step forward, this is! 

Yesterday, Fast Company published a story about this incredible new European organization, Economic Dividends for Gender Equality. They offer certification for companies they determine through a rigorous 6+ month process, to be "actively committed to gender equality." We need this. We SO need this!