Friday 8 March 2013

Happy IWD

Today is International Woman's Day. It is the day when we should reflect on the rights that women across the globe are still struggling to attain. Simple rights like the right to life;  to be educated; to have control over your own body; to have a job commensurate with your skills and experience and to be paid accordingly; to wear what you like not what you dad, husband or priest tells you. If you believe in these kinds of equalities, you are a feminist.  Because whatever others would have you believe, feminism is not about hating men or wearing dungarees or knitting your own muesli. It is about equality  and justice pure and simple. Just because biology dictates that we are the ones that have the children, it shouldn't automatically relegate us to second class citizenry.

While in Britain we are not living under the heavy yoke of oppression that women in other parts of the world are having to bear, be in no doubt we still have a long way to go. Power is not evenly divided, not even close. Where are the women in public life? In politics? In the judiciary? In the board room? In the City? Yes, there we can name a few examples in each, but it is just a few. If there were more, a lot more, I think life (for men and women) might be a bit fairer.

Today is also the day we should celebrate the achievements of women, the women who have blazed a path to make our lives (men's and women's) better. Here are a few of the women who have influenced me and made my life better (in no particular order):


  • Rosa Parks, civil rights leader
  • Albertina Sisulu, one of the great leaders of the apartheid struggle
  • Josephine Baker, jazz diva, civil rights activist, persistent breaker of barriers
  • Beatrice Webb, social reformer and founder of the LSE
  • Millicent Garrett Fawcett, early feminist and suffragist 
  • Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman in Britain to qualify as a doctor, early feminist and suffragist,  sister of Millicent
  • Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, suffrage activists
  • Sojourner Truth, former slave, minister and women's activist
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of feminism
  • Jane Austen, creator of Lizzie Bennett and so many more remarkably strong women
  • Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet, if you haven't read The Handmaiden's Tale do so immediately
  • Simone de Beauvoir, feminist and existentialist
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, so much more than the First Lady, a social reformer, champion of the rights of women and civil rights for African Americans and Japanese Americans, the first Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, overseeing the drafting of the UN Declaration of Human Rights
  • Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, the first non-white woman to open her own law practice in South Africa, the first non-white woman to serve as a judge in South Africa, a judge and then President of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda where she established that rape and sexual assault could constitute acts of genocide before being appointed as a judge to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She is also very funny and my aunt
  • Adelaide Joseph, my mother who fought the fight for women's rights in apartheid South Africa and who together with my feminist father taught me and my sisters not to let our gender limit our ambitions or lives 
So woman or man, spend some time today thinking about what you can do to close the gender gap and about the women who have helped to make you who you are. 

Thursday 7 March 2013

Knowing when it is safe to take the shot

There is a clip circulating of our very own Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, trying to skip. Now this is not a post about Gorgeous George's fiscal competence and I am not going to make any cheap cracks about jump starting the economy. No, this is a post about how to avoid looking like an idiot at an event where there are cameras.  There is only one thing you need to do and it is really simple: you need to make sure you have a press officer with you who knows my five top tips for avoiding having you look like an idiot. 

So my top tips for press officers are:  
  • What is in the background? Will there be a plant coming out of your boss's head? A swastika? A man dressed as a monkey or any kind of animal? Have you checked all the angles? Anything to make your guy look like an idiot? If there is anything, anything at all, don't let him/her stand in front of it. Make him/her take a different route, put some people in front it, do whatever you can to avoid the shot.
  • Don't let him/her do any sport or physical activity at all if they are rubbish at it. Even if they really are really good (not just good in their own head), don't let them do it in a suit. The only person who gets away with it is Barack Obama shooting hoops and that is because he really is very good at basketball, doesn't play with his jacket on and is super cool.
  • Make sure that your guy is absolutely clear that he/she must never accept an invitation to do engage in any kind of activity or hold any piece of equipment which you haven't arranged.
  • Don't let him/her wear ridiculous headgear. Hard hats are ok, but enter food preparation areas at your own peril.  If there is some kind of religious or cultural requirement to wear specialist head covering and/or remove shoes, think about the rest of their outfit - do you need to ditch the Savile Row for something with a more local flavour?  
  • Be very careful when it comes to eating/drinking in public. It is best to avoid it, unless of course it is a visit to a pub or restaurant. In a pub, if you guy is an actual guy he should have a pint in a straight glass, you have more leeway if your guy is a gal. But no champagne for either gender. In an eating establishment, the shot is your guy eating a forkful, that's all that needs to be consumed.  
In the end it is all about maintaining dignity, the dignity of your guy, his/her office, his/her organisation and about maintaining your reputation -  you don't want to be known as the person who allowed the Chancellor to look like an idiot. 

Sunday 3 March 2013

Mixing it up


I am interested in equality. I am concerned about how the Establishment is still the bastion of well-heeled, white and largely middle-aged men. 

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with such men per se. I do, however, have a problem with the fact that in 21st-century Britain so much of power (political, economic and social) is still held by them. This is why last year I became a trustee of the Fawcett Society which  has been working to close the gender gap in Britain since 1866. It is also why I decided to tackle the issue of the lack of equality and diversity in my very own profession and agreed to become the chair of the PRCA Diversity Network a few weeks ago. 

For those of you not familiar with the world of pr (of which the PRCA is the professional body), I should report that it is predominantly white; a 2011 survey revealed that just 3 per cent of the profession were Asian, 2 per cent African or Caribbean. And it isn’t just the lack of ethnic diversity that is a problem. The profession scores badly when it comes to age, gender, disability and socio-economic group. Things are better than they were.  When I first started in consultancy 10 years ago I was struck by the dominance of white, privately-educated men. There were very few people who looked or spoke like me. Thankfully now we are seeing more women in the boardroom. But the profession is still far from representative. 

Things have to change. And before anyone gets all Daily Mail on me, this is not about political correctness (it won't surprise you I detest this phrase) , it is about attracting the best people. There is only one discrimination I tolerate and that is to favour bright people. Currently the pr profession is missing out on lots of bright people.  

We held the first meeting of the network last week. It was both fantastic and disappointing. Fantastic because it was the first time I had been to an industry event with so many young colleagues from ethnic minorities. It was great to see that these bright young things have not been put off by the image of our profession and had penetrated the walls of the bastion. Disappointing because they were the ones interested enough to attend. It would have been great if one or two of the posh, white blokes who run the profession had turned up. If things are going to change, they need to engage, they need to play their part to make a difference. I am determined that they will. Watch this space.