Around International Women's Day, as every year, we are bombarded with a variety of flashy and jingling messages created by clever marketing minds to show the world: We are super diverse and women-friendly, so buy/work/invest with us! Add a hashtag and a pun as a slogan button, and we feel good about it. That is, we as companies and recruitment officers.
When you browse through the senders' websites, you usually fall into a bottomless pit.
Their current global women's campaign is often not even important enough to be featured on the landing page. It is rare to see anything else related to the cause other than posters, posts, or films. And that's probably just as well, because as the saying goes, "What's big in the shop window isn't in the store."
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
In my old-school programming, one would recognize a concern in the fact that those who are in favor of something also do something for it that goes beyond gurgling advertising substitutes, just as Uncle Erich Kästner once told us: "Nothing good happens unless you do it."
Since the economy has long been the most powerful narrative generator in our society, which we continue to call civilization despite all our experiences, there would be fertile ground here for tangible values and thus for serious, trustworthy content marketing with a value-driven narrative that works from the inside out, even without being plastered on billboards.
Visibility, yes please!
Yes, visibility is also important. Very important, in fact! Especially in these unsettling times, when some of what has already been achieved in terms of diversity, equality, and so on is being thrown back into the trash can, International Women's Day is probably not far off, when the first Tradwives campaign will take the stage and all the guardians of law and order will feel an anti-feminist rush of happiness in their rotten loins.
Visibility for women and so-called women's issues is extremely important, and festivals such as Let's Get Visible cannot be praised highly enough and should be marked in men's calendars (November 20, 2026, Linz).
Every initiative needs support, even if one might think that 115 years after the first International Women's Day and 78 years after the publication of the Declaration of Human Rights, the job should be done: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Well, even the most stupid should understand who is meant by "all."
The past is rich (or rather poor) in women who were hidden away as a precautionary measure and their achievements, known in science as the Matilda effect. This term refers to the structural ignoring or attribution of women's scientific achievements to their male colleagues. The phenomenon, named after activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, describes how women are often made invisible despite their significant contributions. The more a woman works, the more a man in her environment benefits from it.
Take Otto Hahn, for example, who discovered uranium fission together with Lise Meitner in 1938. Hahn provided the experimental evidence, while Meitner, living in exile, formulated the physical-theoretical explanation. Lise Meitner was one of the most respected scientists in the world at the time and was nominated for the Nobel Prize a total of 49 times. The jealousy of the laboratory director—ironically at the Nobel Institute where Meitner worked in exile—meant that only Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944. Lise Meitner was not considered.
Leonie Schöller explores these issues and provides an in-depth examination of the topic in her book Stolen Women: Thinkers, Researchers, Pioneers: The Invisible Heroines of History .
Such activities are also a recurring theme in films and books. Fictional, as in Everything's Chemical by Bonnie Garmus.
Or in real life, for example, in the film Joy about the invention of in vitro fertilization, which was largely pioneered by the young nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy, without her receiving any recognition for it.
Or Big Eyes, about the true story of painter Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter Keane passed off her famous big-eyed paintings as his own work and marketed them in the 1950s and 60s.
Or Hidden Figures about African-American mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. They worked behind the scenes at NASA in the 1950s and 60s, which was competing with the Soviet Union to launch the first rocket into space. Racial segregation prevailed in the US and gender equality did not exist, but it is thanks to these three brilliant women that John Glenn's orbit of the Earth in a spacecraft in 1962 was successful and safe.
It is also interesting to note that in films such as Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Some Like It Hot, men dress up as women in order to achieve something personally. In films such as Mulan, Yentl, and Boys Don't Cry, on the other hand, women dress up as men out of self-defense because, as women, they would be cut off from their goal of self-realization.
These subjects would be great content for new curricula currently under discussion, beyond the debate of "iPad or Latin," but simply a light-footed step toward a place where the word "education" in the education system could waft around young noses as a hint of its meaning, or even as a strong breeze around boys' noses.
Making things visible, repairing every pothole on the road to equality, signposting every way back from the wrong turns—this is essential and must be done without exception. All of this is important, but it is not enough. Not at all.
We must undermine and urgently correct the underlying narratives of our culture. Because culture, i.e., the defining characteristics of our community, is based on the stories, the narratives of values, with which we explain to ourselves and each other what we respect, what we condemn, how we want to be, how we should be, and why. Beliefs of a community that do not have to be true. All that is needed is for enough people to believe in them.
Is storytelling a man's business?
Isn't it true that we share deeply masculine narratives in our leading stories? And is it any wonder that behind almost every major disaster there is a strong man whom no one stood in the way of, and as things stand, that should have been a woman.
In our culture, we consistently associate positivity and strength with conquering, fighting, controlling, dualism, dominating, destruction, potency, struggle, power, ego, leadership, empowerment, separation, materialism, more is better, invincibility, Mars. The result is that although we are all (still) doing well, individuals do not feel comfortable. Planet Earth as a habitat is on the verge of collapse. Exploding numbers of mentally ill people caught up in the misery of life called work, epidemics of loneliness, crumbling democracies, simmering threats of war, and, for the first time, AI, a tool that acts on its own, which is not a tool at all, but an agent whose operating instructions were hopefully not written by Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice.
Welcome to the Anthropocene, the epoch of the Earth's history in which we humans have the greatest impact of all possible influences on the state of planet Earth.
Hmm ... Something obviously isn't working here when it comes to the hero's journey, right? Perhaps the light to the emergency exit is glowing above the word "hero" and what we understand it to mean. The phrase "You can be a hero without destroying the world" fits here. It comes from Nicolas Boileau in the 17th century. Or, because it's so good, probably from his mother.
Heroes look different.
It is certainly not too early to get a few things back on track. How? Not by fighting the old stories, of course, but by bringing new options into play, new narratives that change, correct, and replace the old ones. Whatever changes, the story told about it changes first. Change the story, change the world. Nothing else has ever worked – for better or for worse.
What if we transformed our collective hero's journey into a heroine's journey? This does not mean that women should appear as the main characters in our stories and continue doing the same (excuse my French) shit that men have always done. Nor are we talking about superheroines from the Marvel universe.
It is about changing narratives of values; it is about what we need to nurture a positive narrative for the future. It is about our view of humanity and thus about concepts such as inclusion, auctoritas, embracing, sharing and participating, encountering, healing, inspiring, holistic, caring, complementing, potential, development, enabling, we, unfolding, empowerment, connectedness, meaning, vulnerable, Gaia. Values that we associate with the feminine side and reflexively and unconsciously with weakness.
What if we started viewing it as a strength, as our greatest potential, because it sets us apart from all other living beings, including AI? We could try it out anyway, just for fun. How about it? All boys are allowed and encouraged to participate enthusiastically, because in this case, more is better.
These would be stories that make us strong—as people, companies, and society. They tell of true connectedness of everything in everything in diversity, of boundless cooperation, even in antagonistic cooperation, of experiencing meaning in growth through one's own contribution to the greater whole, of the "I" that only becomes "I" through "you."
As if wished for by all good spirits, new sub-narratives and beliefs such as:
- Mentors are the new heroes.
- For each other is the new against each other.
- Spirit is the new reason.
- Being is the new having.
- Shaping the world is the new work.
- Purpose is the new profit.
- Success is the new winning.
- Depth is the new more.
Our heroine's journey takes us into the five great areas of human longing: connection, fulfillment, security, meaning, and the relevance that arises from them. And it's no wonder that futurology (whatever that is) predicts that these areas will be the most important ones in the future. These are areas in which companies and brands can actually succeed because, in the wake of our current, pervasive narrative of cultural capitalism, in which everything and everyone is subject to a frantic scrutiny for usability, a vacuum of epic proportions has emerged.
When companies create added value in this area, they establish resilient relationships with employees and customers because they have and give meaning. Brands can also embark on a hero's journey. Brands can also create meaning. Please spread the word!
The economy has long been the most powerful narrative machine of our time. It provides a lever for responsibility that is within reach, one that each and every one of us can pull, wherever we are, with what we have, here and now.
Or, as Margaret Mead knew: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." This could be the superdiverse women-friendly brands, for example—and everyone else too.
If you want to do this for yourself, your team, or your company and need consulting support, you know where to find me. Book your free initial consultation right now using the button at the top right.
Either way, I'll be delighted when you discover for yourself: "New Story. New Glory."