IWM / Women’s International Recompense
Starting a business and growing a business are two very different forms of energy. Not necessarily dichotomous, but in many cases they can be; critiquing an issue vs working with and within the issue, resource and knowledge gathering vs letting go, indulging and holding back. You get the point.
As women, we have been socialised into mastering some of these abilities. Some of them I can learn in an MBA, which I did in 2021, others I can’t. These include gathering the community, nurturing people, planning ahead and connecting with others. The ability we have to start something, like an enterprise especially in its infancy, regardless of the product, or run an office, a home, is one the world takes for granted. This is because it is built off the skills we’ve been socialised to learn. Even though it requires a lot of hard work, we do it, and it looks easy because of socialisation. Unfortunately because of this, these abilities that carry social weight become downplayed. Even when we are exhausted, we keep on, because that is what we have been taught. One of the best conversations I had last year, said in such grace, cemented the realisation that we as women need to celebrate the abilities that innately come to us.
This IWM I am adding to this realisation, the need to celebrate and more importantly, be recompensed for abilities that we have been socialised to do, not just our innate talents which I think are separate. The reason for this is that, across patriarchal societies, institutions and the media, at best, only acknowledge women's everyday efforts for international women's month, and mothers day. Otherwise, these efforts, though they carry social weight and create impact, are not paid well in the currency of safety and money. This is visible in wider structural acknowledgements to women's contributions to the household and also the political field.
In the Western world, over the last 3 months, we have seen 2 high profile politicians, Jacinda Arden and Nicola Sturgeon, pack up their time in office in front of an avalanche of an international economic upheaval and national domestic issues. This, despite their motivations and years aiming to bring wider social reforms such as Scottish independence and ending child poverty in New Zealand, have cited that they are at the end of their capacities. Their self awareness in bowing out, aka political integrity, even at the end of the road, unlike the end of Liz Truss’s 45 days - speaks to the length of an arduous uphill road that women trail personally and in business. Lets not doubt for a second that much of what has sustained their time in office is the socialisation aspect - women’s ability to hold it together.
While women being in places of power and leadership doesn't always signify systemic progress or translate to real power, it is the emergence of the personal and political that allows us to see what is at stake for women daily. Naturally, the things society critiques when a woman is in public office or a visible place of leadership, are just the same things that happen to women on a micro scale, but more amplified; i.e Dianne Abbot, British-Jamaican, faces more abuse than any other female MP in the UK. The doubts of Tanzanian leader Samia Suhulu Hassan’s ability to lead Tanzania into a new fairer future from the late Magufuli, has converged into a new word by her doubters - "chawacracy", meaning ‘shoe-licking’, referring to the praise given to her by her admirers.
But what happens if we women begin to divest from these long socialised tasks of dutifully giving free emotional labour, silent toiling, navigating naysayers and going above board only to wear ourselves out and, supporting others to do very basic things? What if we decided that, if we are to trail these roads, and handle them with grace, that we need immediate and substantial structural recompense? Or better yet, immediate and substantial recompense, with actual breaks to reward our socialised ability to innovate, care-take, and maintain the institutions of the world. Or maybe do nothing at all.
Something about being stuck in a constant mode of socialisation without structural appreciation, over flattery, at best feels eerie, and at worst especially for a woman like me, of Caribbean heritage, replays the foundations of labour exploitation that formed the basis for the industrial complex we are in today. This is not a natural order, and the more I see it, experience it and hear it from other women, the more I realise how unnatural it is to just stop. It's also unnatural to seek and ask for direct recompense for the constant labour. Of course this is not a long term solution, these actions play into the same structures that play us, because really, we need a new one. For now, and the next time I am expected to amplify or share an aspect of my socialisation as a woman, aka, my years of socialised learning and refining, I will demand more.
