I am nothing if not a realist, always ready to face facts and the blunt truth as they cross my path, so let’s consider for a moment the potential opposition to this idea as I can already hear the pencils being sharpened and the PCs whirring into action. First, let me say that I welcome every comment, every argument and every rejection just as much as I will accept any plaudits or approval. At the end of this book I will give some contact details where every reader can have their say for or against. I do not want to hide from the comments, precisely because I want to start the dialogue, even argument, which for too long has been avoided. If we still don’t think there is a problem, we could just remind ourselves by reading the pages at the start of this book under the heading The World in Which We Live. If we accept nothing else, at least we should ask what we would do to correct some of these appalling statistics. I am certainly not proud, and will happily support any and every alternative to the way we are running our lives at the moment. Even if readers disagree with everything else, surely no one can support the status quo. So as they say these days, bring it on! Tell me that I am wrong, but then – and here is the rule – also propose a better plan. We have tried everything else, it seems to me, over the past two millennia without any notable success.
It’s a man’s world and always has been. That is the natural order of things, and man is certainly going to be against any suggestion that women should have more say. So I would expect man to be at the top of the list of those in opposition to this concept. Man has always been regarded as the one in charge. It follows that if he is treated in this way he will always regard himself as the leader; and no one treats man as being more in charge than women themselves. We probably haven’t really moved on from the caveman mentality – man dragging his woman by the hair to his cave – although I suspect that the cavewoman was tougher than is made out.
But man need have no fear from anything I am suggesting; I am not advocating equality or empowerment or that women should take over. Let man rule the roost. All I am suggesting is that women in the poorest of the poor societies should be given a tiny fraction of the money that is going around in order for them to start improving their lives. I am not suggesting they should become chairman of the board today. Change along those lines, if it is to happen, will be gradual and natural, and it will certainly not be overnight. In western society we have let women become equal in many public and professional institutions, but those institutions are all designed by men and for men. Women find it much harder to cope in such settings. To take a simple example, in court rooms or conference halls, a man’s voice carries far better than a woman’s. These places are not usually female-friendly environments by design, so women have an in-built disadvantage even in developed countries. They don’t have an easy time, but at least they are part of normal life and part of the workforce, and if they set out to reach the top they can achieve great things; indeed, they can even succeed in developing countries like India, even to the point of leading the country. The difference in the developing world is that ordinary poor women are not seen as part of the paid working population, the natural workforce, working in factories, doing more on a building site than carrying bricks or breaking the rocks for roads. They are capable of much more, but they need the opportunity; even the process of being trained is not poor-women-friendly. Courses should not be so rigid that they do not fit in with the reality of daily lives; nine to five will not necessarily suit all women who have domestic chores to fulfil. This was the main point to emerge from a paper from the EU’s Economic and Social Committee: training programmes should be designed to suit the people being trained, not the trainers. It is, of course, different if the woman is being offered paid employment; she will then find ways to make herself available using her extended family and friends to look after her children.
It may come as a surprise to men to know just how much women are doing. This is perfectly illustrated in the DFID report on gender equality and growth, which threw up a number of anomalies. Statistically, in a sample of 96 developing countries women’s participation in the formal labour force was low, particularly in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, where in the 20 to 24 age group the range was 37–49 per cent, compared with the average of 55 per cent or higher in other regions. And yet if one takes into account all activity, the report found:
Women work more than men in almost all regions. The total work of men and women in Peru is such that women spend 15–29 per cent more time in all work activities than do men (Ilahi, 1999). In Africa, 15 of the 17 studies summarized by Brown and Haddad (1997) find women work more than do men. In Nepal, women spend 50–80 per cent more time working than men.43
The World Bank in 2006 also found that in a country like Kenya, even though women entrepreneurs make up nearly half of micro, small and medium-sized business owners, and have a good track record in paying off their loans, they have less than 10 per cent of the available credit. The deck is clearly stacked against them, and yet it is not the women alone who suffer as a result: their families could prosper if they had a fairer deal, which in turn would mean their husbands would prosper and then their whole village. The other obstacle to women working, which was noted in Kenya, is that if they go to work in the cities they are often ostracised by their tribes on their return because they had dared to take their ‘free labour’ away from the village.
Now that the world has slipped into decline, debt and failing economies, it is precisely the time for banks, which have not exactly distinguished themselves when it comes to best practice and probity, to start favouring the more reliable customers and the regular payers. Now that the judgement of our political and financial leaders can rightly be called into question, surely we need to encourage new, female, blood into the corridors of power. If I talk to my woman friends in the civil service in India, for example, they all tell me that they have a much harder time as the men gang up on them. In the UK, what happened to all those so-called Blair’s Babes when he came to power? The much-championed female element of his government was gradually whittled away. They left because they were treated so badly in the House of Commons, regarded perhaps as mere objects of adornment and not as equals. The Commons is a very male chauvinistic place, worse than a boys’ club – it is a bully boys’ club. By contrast, the House of Lords used to be an old-fashioned, polite boys’ club, which in itself is not something to be derided as they treated women peers as equals.
I suspect men’s opposition to this plan amounts to defending their patch. There is resentment against women succeeding. Men even feel somewhat threatened by the mere presence of a female ‘high-flyer’, and for that matter women are not great sisters when it comes to supporting each other. But this is not about women toppling men from their pedestal: that is man’s preoccupation, and he is not under threat from anything I am proposing. Remember, if a woman succeeds in earning a little, everyone around her benefits in the impoverished world I am focusing on; wife and husband will be happy to see their children grow up in a healthy environment and, even better, to be able to enjoy at least a basic education. Who knows where that might lead – from a small Kenyan hut to the White House? Now it seems anything is possible.
I am not actually sure that the church – with a small ‘c’ – is in opposition to my basic contention that if you give women a little they will achieve great things. But I do fall out with the Catholic Church in particular over its attitude to family planning when it moves from the noble concept of fidelity in marriage to the sinfulness of contraception. The Catholic Church is much more male-dominated than other religions except possibly the Muslim faith. Like all institutions, religions were established by men and everything they do seems to be what suits men. Even when the Protestant faith talks in favour of women priests they only want them to go so far in the hierarchy; the idea of women bishops was enough to cause division, even potential schism. But that row only served to underline the basic point that just as Mammon favours man, so too does God’s Church – at least on earth.
The Catholic Church always fights against any kind of liberalisation for women. It is anti-abortion, but does it really believe that it is better for women to die than terminate a pregnancy? I would rather there were no need for abortion, but unless the Catholic Church stops condemning contraception, striking fear into the hearts of its faithful, particularly in countries where the faithful accept everything their priest tells them unquestioningly, you are not going to stamp it out. It is like prostitution and gambling: they have been with us since the dawn of time, and there will always be abortion until we stop having unwanted pregnancies. Remember the statistic – 41 per cent of all pregnancies are unwanted. We owe it to the poor women who can’t sustain big families, who live in fear of their men and even sometimes in fear of their God.
So where does it leave women, or indeed all of us? More unwanted mouths to feed and water, and more families to shelter is an attack on us all. Where did this notion of large families come from in the Catholic Church? Is it like the Muslims, who want to populate the world with more followers of Allah? The teachings of the Bible and the Qur’an have been interpreted by scholars down the centuries to mean what men chose them to mean, but I wonder if any god would support an attitude or a faith which is essentially so self-destructive.
Islamic law, Sharia, is fundamentally discriminatory against women so there is an inbuilt opposition to this concept: a man is allowed four wives, a woman only one husband; divorce is easy for a man, an obstacle course for women; women, not just wives, are under the legal guardianship of their male relatives; and legally even the lives of women are worth less than men’s in cases of murder or injury. No country in the world is immune from the influence of Islam or from what all Muslims believe is their duty, or dawa. A tolerant country like Britain may think it has reached a ‘working relationship’ with the followers of Islam, but it would be a mistake to become complacent. As Patrick Sookhdeo points out in his book on British Islam:
Some argue that Muslims living in the UK are in a state of darura (necessity). According to Sharia, extreme necessity transforms the unlawful into the lawful and therefore, by this argument, Muslim minorities in the West can ‘live their religions maybe with difficulty but peacefully’. They adapt to Western norms and Western legal systems while voluntarily keeping to Sharia norms as much as possible.44
Until, that is, they have succeeded in converting the kuffar, or infidels. We should remember this when it is suggested that followers of Islam living in Britain should be allowed to be governed by Sharia law.
But people are prepared to take just so much before there is a backlash. The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, obviously felt he had captured the mood of his people when in a speech which circulated like wildfire across the Internet in March 2009 he told Muslims who want to live under Sharia law to get out of Australia:
Immigrants, not Australians, must adapt. Take or leave it. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture … Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation … if God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.
The environment is not under threat because we drive cars, fly about in gasguzzling planes or because the average temperature in British houses is now 18 degrees compared with 12 degrees back in 1970.45 It is because there are too many of us, and our numbers are growing out of control. The rapidly expanding population is one of the most important threats facing us all, if not the most important, and no one wants to grasp this particular hot chestnut. There are a few lone voices. When Professor Chris Rapley was appointed as the new head of the British Science Museum in 2007 he said: ‘My position on population is that I am disturbed that no one will talk about it.’ He added that if there were a billion fewer people in 2050, the reduction in carbon emissions would cost 1,000 times less than all the other options.46
Nature has a way of sorting imbalances out – often in a violent manner. Just look how the natural order is restored in so many different sectors when life lurches too far in one direction: when nature is threatened and land and forests are destroyed or depleted, rain storms invariably follow, washing away the fragile life, usually of poor people. Plague and disease stalk the land in the same way: Aids is indiscriminate, killing rich and poor alike. An economic system, too, is forced to rebalance; the greed of bankers pushed the system too hard, banks collapsed, and others were forced to think about lending more prudently and investing more cautiously.
Will I find opposition from the politicians? I expect I will certainly find words and conferences and debates, and then what? The notion of focusing all our efforts on women will be dismissed as fanciful, hare-brained or feminist, even all three. The leaders of all the nations who signed up to the MDGs will say they already have placed woman at the centre. But forgive me if I remain sceptical. No political leader – male or female – wants to encourage women ministers. Occasionally some do succeed, even in developing countries, but more often than not those women come from some family dynasty whose name is being preserved rather than being chosen as individuals for their ability – Gandhi, Bhutto, for example. Occasionally it does appear to be on merit: in Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated as Africa’s first elected woman head of state. Liberia and Denmark, incidentally, are the only two signatories to the Millennium Development Goals who are actually trying to translate the words of putting women at the centre of the plan into action. President Johnson-Sirleaf is known as the ‘Iron Lady’ in her country and owes much of her popularity to women voters and the tiny educated elite in Liberia. Interestingly, she herself is a widowed mother of four – multi-tasking to the highest level!
As I mentioned, we can’t expect women politicians to lead on women’s issues because it sidelines them from the central work of government. This may come as a surprise, but I firmly believe that without the men being involved, the change I am looking for cannot come about because women will never have enough power to overcome the opposition marshalled against them. For real change to happen in politics or business, it requires the existing power of men.
Perhaps it is a tangential thought when we are facing famine, poverty and economic ruin in many countries, but there will be another significant loss to the fabric of life if we do not find a solution to the economic and environmental problems assaulting us, and it is exemplified in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Here the chief minister, Mayawati Kumari, a female and a Dalit, as I have mentioned, is the embodiment of a potential new attitude in India, but her state is in meltdown. It used to be the cultural heartland of India but its huge and growing population means that most are getting no education and no one has the time to think about culture. It is all a question of survival, and I wonder if it is already too late to effect change in time to preserve its history. It makes me think of a very slow-moving bullock cart lurching along – will it ever change direction, and when?
I suspect that the primary obstacle to this idea, as often with any new idea, will be inertia. Why bother? We have been muddling along like this for so long: how can we change? Why should we change? It is all too difficult. Why take a chance? What is required to make it happen? The impetus must come from the only people who are in a position to make a difference, the business community. Only they have the drive and independence, but will they also be one of the greatest obstacles? It is more than 20 years since the Wall Street Journal coined the term ‘glass ceiling’ to illustrate the barrier women face trying to reach the most senior positions, particularly in industry. In 2005 The Economist reported that women accounted for 46.5 per cent of America’s workforce and of those less than 8 per cent were top managers, even though historically women held more than half of the masters’ degrees being awarded.
The impetus for change, it seems, might be coming from developing countries, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers who found in 2007 that it was easier for women there to progress to the higher echelons.47 They surveyed firms in eight countries, ranging from China and India to Germany and Switzerland, and discovered that cultural stereotypes were a bigger obstacle in developed societies. The reason appeared to come down to survival. Samuel DiPiazza, global head of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, said:
In some countries such as Germany and Switzerland, there are cultural and social perceptions of women that make advancement much more challenging. Whereas in the developing world, where there is a huge cry for talent, where there is enormous growth, you must be able to adjust to these norms faster.
The effect of China’s one-child policy meant that all children, regardless of gender, had benefited from education and there was no rivalry between siblings for parental recognition which might have favoured a son. Tellingly, Mr DiPiazza noted that some developed countries such as Sweden did treat women more fairly, and he added that there was ‘a potential advantage and the developed world has got to pay attention to that’.
The report also highlighted the negative attitude in Germany to working mothers where less than 16 per cent of German women with children under six are in full-time employment, despite having Chancellor Angela Merkel as their head of state. Elisabeth Kelan, the German head of research at the Centre for Women in Business at the London Business School, was quoted as saying: ‘In Germany, we have the concept of the raven mother, which suggests they abandon their child if they go to work.’ In Norway, by contrast, since the introduction of a quota system the number of women on corporate boards has risen from 6 per cent to 44 per cent. France and Spain have also set targets for women’s representation in senior board positions.
I must stress once again that my aim is not to see women running every business or holding most of the seats on a board. I want the effort to be at a local level, and businesses should copy examples where giving women a helping hand does work. In parts of Nigeria women run all the street markets selling food and clothes. It has resulted in a thriving community of women who do have some power. Maybe they were just successful, but the key is that when something works, it grows. When communities and businesses can see what is effective, it will catch on and capture the imagination. We could also draw some lessons from Nigeria on where it does not work. The street markets I am referring to are in the Christian south; in the Muslim north women suffer horrendous abuse and have no such opportunities to show their independence.
As I write this, so much of what we have assumed will always be there is now looking vulnerable. Nothing is secure, from the environment to the economy and even social morality. When opponents to change line up against me, I ask them what is working satisfactorily in any country. Don’t just point the finger at the developing nations, even those we might regard as being primitive, but look closer to home. In our desire in the UK to create a comfortable protective society, we have instead gone too far. We have created a nanny state, and a thriving underclass where it is the norm not to work, where large families that we might once have associated with ‘backward’ societies are now handsomely rewarded with ever larger houses, enjoying benefits for every extra child that is born. Woe betide anyone who speaks up against them because we might be offending their human rights and, of course, it would not be politically correct. What has happened to the notion of parents taking responsibility for their own children?
It is a culture which started in the early anything-goes sixties and, like a virus, it has infected every walk of life. In the seventies, before the Callaghan’s Government had to ask the International Monetary Fund for a loan as the pound plummeted, there was so much waste. I worked as a teacher at the time and, having come from India, I was appalled by the waste in the state schools – everything from pencils and books to the fabric of the buildings; there was an attitude that we need not worry because the state would provide and we just had to put in a new order. There was always more where that came from, as it were.
That particular gravy train soon came to a grinding halt. There was ‘the winter of discontent’, 1978/9, and growing unemployment. There were millions on benefit, and a generation who first could not find work then did not expect ever to work again. Their children, in turn, grew up to realise that they were better off not working and, as we have seen in more recent years, the rest of the world soon discovered that Britain was a land of freebies and handouts. It could not last – it didn’t last. Finally, in 2009 a Cabinet minister admitted that Labour had made it too easy for immigrants during their first years in power. ‘Initially it was a kind of free-for-all,’ Hazel Blears, Communities Secretary, was reported as saying, with ‘a lot of people coming as economic migrants, but through the route of asylum seeking.’ 48
But I remain an optimist. In a country like Saudi Arabia, where you would have thought that there is no hope for women, there are the beginnings of hope. King Abdullah, who is probably more tolerant than his predecessors, has made some significant changes. Women are now allowed to stay alone in hotels, checking in alone without a male chaperone. Recently King Abdullah also took a women’s delegation with him on an overseas trip, and is even said to want more female ministers. He will undoubtedly face opposition from the religious quarter, but it sounds like progress. If Saudi Arabia can contemplate such changes then there must be hope for us all. The next question is how that change will be made.
It requires conviction and an ability to overcome our natural resistance to change. There is a kind of disbelief and reluctance to try something new, even if we have seen it with our own eyes in the work of countless NGO projects or in a marketplace in Nigeria. If it doesn’t work then we are in trouble, because there is nothing else left to try. Having seen how much women do, I believe that women carry the world and that they hold up the sky, not just half but three-quarters of it. If I did not feel so strongly about it, I would not be trying to push this solution. In the last 17 years I have been involved with women’s issues, which are not the same as feminist issues. I have been to numerous places and seen what women do in their lives – not just projects, but coping with the ordinary burdens of everyday life. If they are given a chance, I believe they will save us all. Women still don’t know how much they are capable of. They are doing the work today, but mostly they haven’t realised that their work is worth something.
If man is the greatest obstacle to change, whether through his universal fecklessness or his innate desire for dominance, I am proposing that woman comes a close second because she has been brainwashed over generations into thinking of herself as not worth or incapable of achieving anything. The mindset has been so emasculated over generations that women don’t believe in themselves. In developing countries the woman sees herself as only there to serve the man and the family, but what man doesn’t see is that woman is capable of so much more. If the relationship could become one of partnership rather than of master and slave then both would benefit.
43 DFID, Gender Equality and Growth Evidence and Action, February 2008.
44 Patrick Sookhdeo. Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam, Isaac Publishing, 2008.
45 John Beddington, UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, who wrote that most buildings are carbon-hungry and energy-intensive (Prospect, January 2009).
46 Charles Clover. ‘We need fewer people to halt global warming’, Daily Telegraph, 24 July 2007.
47 The Guardian, October 2007.
48 Daily Mail, 12 January 2009.