Labels, don’t you just love them! — Lionesses of Africa

By Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept

Sadly we are not talking of the amazing FemiHandbags; Ruff ’n’ Tumble; House of Tara; Lilly Alfonso; SuzieBeauty and the many other thousands of incredible brands from Lionesses, the labels that just scream quality, trust and passion. Here we look at the labels and the generalizations that then attach themselves especially to women and attempt to drag us down.

“The Japanese Olympic Committee was discussing steps for bringing more women onto boards in sports. The male leader of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee voiced a grave concern: “When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying.” The man [speaking] was Yoshiro Mori, a former prime minister of Japan. He resigned from the Tokyo [Olympic] committee [soon after making these] remarks.” according to an article in the Washington Post (here).

In fact, the article goes on to explain that data actually shows otherwise, that it is males that hold up the room, talk longer and dominate. The article points out: “The pattern is clear and consistent: It’s usually men who won’t shut up. Especially powerful men.” W-P

The problem comes from gender stereotypes which continue to persist no matter how hard it is to turn the super-tanker of sub-conscious bias. “People expect men to be assertive and ambitious but women to be caring and other-oriented. A man who runs his mouth and holds court is a confident expert. A woman who talks is aggressive or pushy.” W-P.

In far too many meetings women certainly feel it is better to be silent and polite than to appear pushy and overconfident. Never one to ignore a spade when he is already stuck in a hole and digging deeper, the ex-PM and soon to be ex-Head of the Tokyo Olympic Committee continued: “We have about seven women at the organizing committee, but everyone understands their place.” As The Washington Post helpfully suggests: “If you think women talk too much, it could be because you expect them to talk so little.” 

The same is true of interruptions, women are seen in a far harsher light. According to a study done by Stanford University Linguist, Katherine Hilton (who is also a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center – so serious stuff), (here), with interruptions there is a gender bias even there. Indeed in a study she did of 5,000 people listening to a carefully scripted dialogue that included exactly the same interruptions from both men and women she found that “Male listeners were more likely to view women who interrupted another speaker in the audio clips as ruder, less friendly, and less intelligent than men who interrupted. However, female listeners did not show a significant bias in favour of female or male speakers.”

Turning back to the ex-PM (still digging): “When one person raises a hand, others think they need to speak up as well… Women are competitive.” 

But (as the W-P points out) the data tells us the opposite. Economists find that when men and women are paid to solve problems, they do equally well. But if they’re told their pay will depend on whether they solve more problems than others, women do worse — especially if they’re told they’re competing against men. Women are often reluctant to compete against men, and it doesn’t stem from biology. 

It stems from power.”

But where does this power come from? Is this really a hangover from the days before the suffragettes who fought so hard for basic rights such as the vote? Or the very patriarchal society that many of us have pushed away? Surely things have changed? 

Perhaps data can tell us and as always, the best place to see data in day-to-day action is via finance. Given that it is a very binary result – “I invest” or “I do not invest”, results are very clear and easy to see. As we know, have seen first hand and have heard from others, to raise finance from the very male dominated finance world is still incredibly difficult. 

Perhaps that is part of the power puzzle, as Oscar Wilde said:

“Those who control the money, control the future.” 

The headline figures of investment, however, look good – perhaps we should be more hopeful, as was recently shown in the latest PitchBook survey of Venture Capital (‘VC’) investment (here): “Female-founded companies are raising venture capital at significantly higher levels than at any point in the last decade, suggesting that long-standing efforts to boost representation in entrepreneurship are paying off at an accelerating rate.” 

However, (and yes, as readers of our articles know only too well – we always like to scratch the surface and have a look under the veneer…):

“While the trend is encouraging for female founders, the numbers pale in comparison to the overall VC market’s rise in fundraising activity over the years. “One of the reasons why it’s been hard for female-founded companies to attract funding is that only a small percentage of venture capital dollars are controlled by female VCs,” said Elizabeth Edwards, founder and managing partner of H Venture Partners, a female-owned venture capital firm.” 

Given that pictures paint a thousand words, here are two: