18 November, 2009

Women thought leaders are great...so long as they own the enterprise

I am not a feminist. A feminist perhaps brings to mind a prototypical man-hating-woman. I like men in general, love some in particular and have reservations against a few. My reservations are against personality traits of those individuals & not their gender. It is just unfortunate that they are male.

It may have been a man's world once but not all of them were bad. We are a product of our own actions and not just circumstances. The female homo-sapien is the most biased mother of all female species. Most women the world over, have for ages, cherished and valued their male offsprings more than their female ones. There have always been dedicated male activists and proponents in the fight for women's emancipation & their contributions deserve due credit. We are fortunate to live in a significantly better world today.

Feminism, however, is not an outdated concept. My facebook account message yesterday was, "Women thought leaders are great...so long as they own the company." Every well known woman-thought-leader that comes to mind today, is someone who either owns all or a substantial part of an enterprise. I recieved several messages (both male and female) later in my inbox, disapproving of my aparently feminist comment. I wonder what kept them from making a direct comment and hence, feel less inclined to offer an explanation. But here are a couple of questions -

- How many female - Aristotle, Marx, Socrates, Kautilya or Confucious - can you recall?
- How many independent women leaders made it to the very top without changing companies?

I will be most happy when my 'above mentioned fact' someday (hopefully soon) is honestly tagged as a feminist hogwash. But if you still think of me as a feminist, I really couldn't care less.

1 comment:

Rangan said...

I believe women, as a gender are better at doing things solo, unlike men, who invariably needs brainstorming.
But of course, the true thought leaders are not only those who taught us what to think (who are mostly men going down in history) but also those who taught us how to (who are mostly women, consisting of our mothers)