The Power of Women. June Sarpong
in 2025, and could translate into 840,000 additional female employees’.3 Certainly, as things stand, we are often failing to harness the full potential of 50 per cent of society. Imagine the technological, cultural, and political progress we could make if we fully empowered that half of society.
It can be tempting to see this as exclusively a women’s issue. But that’s not the case. And in addition to discussing how important it is that we provide a level playing field for mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends, this book will prove just how much society as a whole – including husbands, sons, brothers and male friends – has to gain, economically and socially, from the rise of empowered women.
And there are wider benefits too. Women are usually the de facto operational managers of a home. An ability to manage a budget, resolve conflict, and inspire excellence come as standard. This skill set is an obvious advantage in management and should not be overlooked or undermined. That is not to say these attributes are exclusive to women, but those who are able to demonstrate these transferable skills are undoubtedly an asset to any business. For the male boss above her this operational manager brings a responsible pair of hands, and for the male subordinate, possibly an encouraging style of leadership that fosters progression and development. And for colleagues – yes, an element of competition, but also an opportunity to learn alternative styles of working and thinking. Women have shaped the template and culture of the home for centuries; it’s now time for us to add a lasting ‘feminine’ dynamic to the workplace, and reap the social and economic benefits of doing so.
The results – personal, cultural, and economic – of gender equality will be spectacularly beneficial, for women, for men, and for society as a whole. But we won’t get there unless we can convince even the biggest cynics that feminism works for everyone. This book will highlight women’s lost potential and, more importantly, provide the tools and arguments to support the fact that gender equality will enable a bright future we will all benefit from.
Throughout the ages, from paintings through to magazine covers and the movies, society’s beauty standards have been represented in the media via images that have been heralded as the ‘ideal’ of the day. Women in particular have been subjected to this relentless objectification and anyone falling short of these standards is either denigrated or ignored, leaving millions of young girls and women feeling unworthy, unrepresented, and fearful of rejection.
Women are held to an entirely different set of standards than their male counterparts – we are valued by the way we look and how young we are; the ‘prettier’ and younger the better: only 18 per cent of TV broadcasters over fifty years old are women,1 and the majority of female film characters are in their twenties [32 per cent] and thirties [25 per cent]2. The mental pressure this creates wreaks havoc on our self-esteem. As a result, women are plagued with a level of self-doubt and self-criticism (myself included) that men do not have to face. And it’s led to a narrow representation of women, not just in the visible media but behind the scenes as well.
As someone who has worked in the media for almost twenty years, I am very much aware of the power of the visual image and the impact it has on how we value ourselves; I’ve experienced its discriminating effects first-hand. With ordinary women drastically under-represented, the proliferation of misogynistic trolling on social media, and the easy access to online porn, it’s become blindingly obvious that unrealistic, unrepresentative, and sometimes unhealthy images of women are projected into people’s homes and minds on a daily basis. To counter this, we clearly need our media to start involving and portraying women in a more balanced and affirming manner.
The Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis has become a leading advocate for the better representation of women in the media: her Institute on Gender in Media is doing a stellar job of holding Hollywood accountable by monitoring the representation of women both in front of and behind the camera. I was fortunate enough to discuss this issue in detail with Geena when she delivered the keynote address at the Women: Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) New York 2012 conference, which I helped to organize. And, in the six years since Geena delivered her keynote not much has changed – the data from her latest research on gender equality in advertising is quite startling: when studying the screen- and speaking-time of women in commercials (across 5 English-speaking territories), there had been no discernible change in a decade. In 2006, 43.6 per cent of all commercials showed women on screen for 20 per cent or less of the commercial. By 2016, the figure was a similar 44.2 per cent. Commercials with men only were five times as common as women-only adverts (despite the fact that women dominate in many purchasing decisions). In advertising, men were on screen about four times as much as women.3
We see a similar picture in TV and film, where of the 100 highest-grossing films of 2017, women represented: 8 per cent of directors, 10 per cent of writers, 2 per cent of cinematographers, 24 per cent of producers, and 14 per cent of editors.4
The Institute’s findings point to a systemic problem at the very core of the industry: the largely male decision makers in the commissioning meetings, and maybe even the writers and directors themselves, are unwilling to put women at the heart of their stories. Geena is very frank about the problem: ‘All of Hollywood is run on one assumption: that women will watch stories about men, but men won’t watch stories about women. It is a horrible indictment of our society if we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half.’5
In some ways, we are trapped in a vicious circle here. Boys see from early on that male superheroes have a wide range of abilities, but the female’s superpower will primarily be that she looks good in a tight outfit that may well be nice to look at, but it can’t be called interesting. In a world where women on screen are idolized primarily for their appearance and rarely given stories of depth or complexity, it’s no wonder that it’s been hardwired into all of society that women are not interesting to men.
But things are beginning to change, and savvy studios are reaping the rewards. In 2017, the three highest-grossing films of the year in the US all had female leads: Star Wars – The Last Jedi (Daisy Ridley), Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).6
Women need the support of men to create new, more inclusive stories, because of course part of the issue is undoubtedly that the decision makers, writers, and directors are – as the stats above confirm – also predominantly men. But we all need to challenge our internalized misogyny. Gender discrimination can be insidious and more difficult to detect because it doesn’t carry the same level of self-reproach as racial or disability discrimination. The vast majority inherently know racial discrimination is wrong, even if we carry conscious or unconscious bias, but with gender our ideas about what constitutes sexism are warped, so diagnosing misogynistic behaviour can be difficult and confusing.
The challenge, therefore, is manifold. As well as conducting some self-analysis of our own internalized misogyny, we also need to work together to create stories around women, and to make sure women have the opportunity to tell those stories themselves. Until women see more balanced and inspirational images of themselves, the journey to reach the level of unwavering self-belief required to fulfil our potential will be all the harder. As it stands, only the exceptional can get through. Unfortunately, by the mere definition of the word, most of us are not exceptional.
The film industry is not the only culprit in the media, of course. Unfortunately, a lack of diversity is still very much prevalent in mainstream women’s magazines, too. Despite it being a female-centric industry, the images that make it onto the pages of our glossy magazines have long been notoriously homogenous – the women are reliably young,