Suzanne West,
President & CEO at Imaginea Energy Corp
“I think one of the foundational problems in
why we don't see women in the "stats"
is because we are asking them to join a game
that doesn't credit their strengths, and they are
potentially unfairly assessed in a game that is
flawed for their full participation.
We have conditioned most people to believe that leadership is modeled by the patriarchal "command and control" which at its core, gives powers to leaders by taking power away from its workers/contributors. Patriarchal systems only provide rewards for a few leadership positions, so by their very nature, foster internal competition - which is ultimately poisonous to organizations with respect to collaboration and making choices for the greater good of the system. Patriarchal systems value "more" and are built on accumulation of "more". Patriarchal systems typically reward linear, Newtonian thinking, and often dismiss intuition as something they can't measure or trust. Very sadly, Patriarchal systems eventually gravitate people to self-preservation.
As a woman, who early in my career experienced these Patriarchal systems, I was intuitively disturbed by them. If this was the leadership that they wanted and the system they wanted upheld by their leaders... then I did not want to be that kind of leader...
I prefer not to label men as men and women as women, but rather the energy that drives them. Are you driven by a controlling energy or are you driven by an empowerment energy?
I wonder if we changed our paradigms and cultural norms to be matriarchal in nature - to be leaders who were rewarded for their values, their intuition, their personal development, their vulnerability, their wholeness of thinking, their creative nature, their prudent risk taking, their quality of relationships, their ability to be trusted, their caring for those around them, the long-term health of their organizations, and the wisdom they demonstrate.... would we see much different stats... because now we have women participating in a new game and architecture that they are not only well-suited for, but could knock it out of the park!"