Ep4 The Future is NOT Female
It’s diverse and inclusive.
Welcome to The Belinda Esterhammer Show! This is a podcast about the art of winging it - whether it’s business, marketing, startups or life… well sort of.
This episode is about The Future is NOT Female. Why I am making this bold statement? Hear me out.
But before I jump right in I want to highlight that today's episode has been a really complex one for me to record within this short timeframe but I have more content planned for the future!
The word “female” is the scientific definition of a biological woman, which takes sex and gender in account and erases the identities of intersex and non-binary people. I know I could have also talked about whether future is or is not female in a non-binary context and while I was planning to touch upon this topic when I drafted this episode I realised the complexity and layers behind it and how this topic deserves its own episode.
I'm in my 30s and have been active in the female empowerment for the past few years. Before I started my own business I ran an executive leadership program for high profile female entrepreneurs for a Big 4 company. After I left to corporate world to start my own business - a marketing and consulting agency called Springboard Group I became actively involved in creating and shaping communities. From Women in Tech Hong Kong to a mentoring network for high school and university girls called NextGen Network to helping to build the startup and also software-as-a-service ecosystem across Asia I've had the pleasure to work with a lot of diverse people and companies.
Several years ago, the term "The Future is female" started to pop up everywhere - whether companies adapted it as their slogan, swags popping up left and right selling items with the future is female written all over it - even on underwear and including Hillary Clinton using "The future is female" in her campaign trail.
Where does this term actually stem from?
The original slogan was not just about women. It was about gay women. The term became popular in the 1970s lesbian separatist culture. In 2015, the Lesbian history Instagram account h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y shared a photo from 1975 of folk singer Alix Dobkin wearing a T-shirt with the “The Future is Female” taken by Liza Cowan. An LA based fashion brand got in touch with Liza and started selling its own version and donated a portion of sales to planned parenthood.
The t-shirt was a hit, much more swag followed and of course fast fashion followed suit shortly, from H&M to Forever21 started selling their own version with slogans like "Femme Forever" and "Wild Feminist" and also high fashion joined in on the trend.
While it's great that there has been more awareness around female empowerment and women's rights it's always sad to see brands cashing in on - and they're not even calling it a movement but a trend and cash cow. Especially the younger generation goes off and buys a statement T-Shirt because it looks cool not because of the actual meaning. I've been there in my teens in the 90s and early 2000s where - from my biased feeling - I statement t-shirts peaked.
Back to the future is not female. To me the future is female slogan always felt more like a trend and hype than really being this movement. This might stem from the fact that I am based in Asia and I was born and raised in Austria which is a really sexist country and I always feel like going backwards in time when I'm back. Too many brands just try to make a quick buck and join the masses while bigger corporates with their Corporate Social Responsibility in mind jump on the band waggon too to make it are least look like they're really caring.
Recently FORTUNE released their annual FORTUNE 500 list which ranks America’s largest companies. The 500 companies that made the 2020 list represent two-thirds of the U.S. economy.
This year's list had 37 female CEO's which beat last year's 33. Women still only run just 7.4% of the businesses on the list. If we take racial diversity into account the list shrinks to only three women of color. And I only found 1 Asian female on the list.
These numbers show clearly (in case anyone needed proof) why it's still a long journey ahead for diversity and not just gender diversity and female empowerment. It's not just about gender or even race - what we need is diversity of thought and we need to create space for varied views.
A study last year from S&P Global Market Intelligence found that public companies with female CEOs or CFOs often were more profitable and had better performance. The study also showed that boards held the female CEOs and CFOs to a higher standard than the men when hiring them.
And even though women are making significant strides to break through the glass ceiling, there's still a lack of racial diversity. Nearly all are white in leadership positions.
If I think back to my time at corporates and also generally the people and companies I work with - how many people in leadership positions are white male baby boomers? There are many reasons why women still haven't cracked the glass ceiling and I will discuss this in another episode but often women are each others biggest enemy and also if we take race into account it adds another layer to the ceiling.
Women, in much of the are world are down at the bottom of the hierarchy. I agree that we need a future where females are empowered because in the past and also throughout history human meant by default male. The Book invisible women made it painfully clear how there are so many factors that make a person less visible to society in a world designed around the physically average white man. It can manifest in countless ways, making some people more invisible than others. This ties back to my claim that we need to make sure that the future is not just female but we need to empower overall diversity - gender diversity is a good start but it needs to go way deeper than that, we need diversity of race, diversity when it comes to age and diversity of thought.
In closing I want to highlight that the future is always now. The future lies in the choices we make today.
Of course I wish for a future where everyone - whether straight, queer, trans and non-binary; regardless of race and age can express who they really are and they’re seen as the extraordinary individuals that they are. And with the tragedies we've seen in the past few days I really wish for a future where black lives matter to everyone, everywhere, at all times.
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And in case you wondered why this podcast is about the art of winging it, it’s because I’m winging right now.