What kind of world would we be living in if women had been in charge of governance? Would we be facing the issues we face today, existential issues such as accelerated global warming or non-existential yet very important issues such as the war in Ukraine, the US-China trade wars, the deep divide in the US between the common man and the elite, the Hindu-Muslim divide in India, the world wars of the past, religious extremism and the list goes on. What about crime rates, homelessness, literacy rates, economic poverty and other societal issues?
What about in Mauritius? Would we be facing the kind of existential issues like that of our national identity being taken apart or the scourge of corruption or even the kind of social injustice that we see today? Would drugs be as prevalent as it is today or our youth feeling as lost as it is?
I am a father of three daughters, all under the age of 14, and I find that I often ask myself this question around women and their role in society. I often catch myself telling my daughters that they are not here to compete with men on who is stronger, meaner or smarter. Instead, I believe that they are here to build something that will improve the capacity of the existing system. Allow me to elaborate.
The economic world we live in today is largely male built and dominated. For centuries, we have lived in a patriarchal world where kings were the most powerful figures and their courtrooms were male dominated. This continued for a long time and even as democracy became the leading form of governance, male domination continues to date and while it has not been all bad, it has certainly been male ego dominated. Traits such as greed, competition, imbalance, corruption, short term thinking, anger, racism and more, have been driving human evolution. The dominant economic system, the capitalist system, feeds on greed, while the dominant political system, democracy, feeds on division.
The Covid pandemic came and asked us to take a deep look at our systems. It turned everything upside down. Nature locked humans inside their homes for months on end. The toilet paper became the new gold, the economy took second place to human health for the first time in more than a century, our cities were emptied, organised crime, terrorism, street crime, illegal markets and smuggling, human and wildlife trafficking, slavery, robberies and burglaries all fell, families bonded once more. It truly felt like earth had pressed it’s factory reset button and would now be looking at a completely new trajectory from the one leading up to the pandemic.
At the same time, we saw the impact of female led countries during a time of crisis. Leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Finland’s Sanna Marin navigated their countries through the uncertainty of Covid in a way that would ultimately deliver half as many deaths on average as those led by men[1].
Is it time for us to be radical in the way we look at the future? It pays to remember that ‘the lightbulb did not come from the improvement of the candle’. I don’t believe that women and the next generation ought to seek to improve the current system. Instead, it’s time for women to help create the lightbulb now, that’s my view and that’s what I tell my daughters.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it – Albert Einstein
World systems are out of breath. They are not responding to the expectations of people anymore. We are in the age of uncertainty, where we see frustration and dissatisfaction showing up as protest movements everywhere. Conspiracy theories are rife. Trust in institutions and governments are at an all-time low. This is the reality of the world right now. Who is going to upgrade the systems that will allow those frustrations and dissatisfaction to depressurise? Who is going to bring balance to the monster that the current system has become? Who is going to introduce humanity, empathy and selflessness into the mix? Men? Hardly possible. Men are not genetically built to bring these values into the world. These problems will have to be solved at a different level of consciousness.
Human beings are yearning for humanity. We are yearning for greater care. In my view, the lack of care, the focus on the economy only, the focus on enriching oneself without any thought for the other is why we are where we are today and who does ‘care’ better? Who does childcare or healthcare or aged care better? Who does human care better?
Men have successfully made women believe that thinking from the heart is a sign of weakness. This is one of the greatest lies, a lie that has been wheeled out for too long and one I actively encourage my girls to discard. We are human beings and human beings need to feel loved and cared for. Look at our youth and how lost it has become. Balance must be restored and I believe that women are best placed for this rebalance. Greta Thunburg comes to mind.
I always tell my girls that they are not here to show that they can be as strong, as macho, as insensitive, as dispassionate or as ego driven as man (in general). They would be totally competing on the wrong benchmarks. Instead, they need to challenge the game itself. Is this the kind of game we want to be playing, now and in the future? Is the direction in which we are headed, the right direction as a race? I tell my girls not to fight for relevance within the current constraints and rules. Create relevance, create new things that the world needs but has not yet seen because women have been holding back.
We now need women’s hearts more than anytime before in history. It is only through the heart that we will truly heal as a race. This is not a power struggle. This is not women having to fight for power. Power is relative. When we first took flight, our planes had one engine, could fly for one hour and the engine would die often. Today our planes have up to eight engines, can fly non-stop for 15 hours and engine failure is 1 in one million.
Our world, our society is today flying a single engine plane and that engine is completely burnt out. There are no more upgrades that can be brought to it. If we want a better experience, if we want to explore new horizons and fly longer, we have no option but to upgrade to a twin engine place. That second engine is the engine of women empowerment. Mauritius could be the place we start from. A woman for prime minister in Mauritius at the next elections maybe? Would that not be the first sign of true rupture that everyone is banging on about? The system is totally decayed and is in need of a complete overhaul. We need caring women and caring men working together to deliver the upgrade we are all after. What better time than now to think about what the new system will need?
Glory to the Motherland
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/female-led-countries-handled-coronavirus-better-study-jacinda-ardern-angela-merkel