I would recommend that everyone watches the following two TedX talks.
The first is a talk by Jackson Katz on feminism. It discusses the need for men to speak up and support feminism.
The second is Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. Her talk discusses her observations of women in the workplace and how women sometimes limit themselves through their own actions.
Any thoughts on these videos? What do men and women need to do to level the playing field? Any personal stories of when you have seen change?
alicegritti
bharati718
Fiona Davidson
Zehra
Women in Aid 
I really love the first of these videos. I recently got engaged to my long term boyfriend. I have found the reaction of men especially quite disheartening. There have been lots of comments about me “imprisoning” or putting a “ball and chain” on my partner. But he asked me to marry him. He decided it was time. Not me. Neither myself or my partner have felt that comfortable in pushing back when people make these comments and instead we both quietly laugh and try and move the conversation along. After watching the first video we are both going to try and be stronger in saying these comments are not ok.
Congratulations and all the best for you two!
The second talk by Sheryl Sandberg highlights in a very nice non provocative way some of the factors hindering women´s careers from moving forward at equal speed of their male colleagues. More and more people are nowadays for equal opportunities for women and men on the conscious intellectual level, a very positive development indeed. However, there is so much that we all do without realizing, that counteracts the ambition of equal opportunities.
The tricky part is that most of the time we are not even aware of it.
A few examples:
• Women taking a step back in meetings as mentioned in the talk
• Women downsizing their own competence and contributions, basically being too modest. One example was given by a HR Officer of a humanitarian organisation who said that they discovered that often men stated to be fluent in French and where therefore shortlisted for positions, while women stated to know only a little French, however when French language skills were tested the women generally proved to have stronger skills than the men despite stating the opposite.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy; having different expectations from a woman- leads to a different interaction than if a man would do the same – ultimately leading to less opportunities for females.
• It seems that men in general are better at supporting each other and to network when it comes to career.
The last example I believe is an important one that we can change. If we as women make a conscious effort to support other women for example by:
• Giving each other advice and encouragement
• Praising one another for jobs well done
• Discuss professional development with female colleagues
• Tell female colleagues line manager when impressed by their work
• Recommend good female candidates for jobs
As humanitarians we should always support our colleagues in order to reach the humanitarian objective to save lives and reduce human suffering in the best way. However, part of that support is also the above. Our jobs are challenging and we all need support.
Greetings to all
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