Last night I went for a walk with a lady friend. She just came back from Nigeria and regaled me with tales of how Lagos is all snazzied up, and how people that she worked with have progressed on their career ladder. We joked about how tough it is to climb the career ladder in the U.K. And how maybe if we were back in Nigeria we might have been on a better trajectory. My friend works in IT and she started the roll call of her former colleagues and what they had become. I stopped her after a while and asked a question.
I asked, where are the women?
She looked at me for a few seconds, realising what I was asking and said, they have all dropped off. She went on to tell me how her colleagues were impressed that she was still in IT after so many years and after having children.
Where are the women? Are they on the boards? Are they at director level? Are they chairwoman, CEO's, CFO's of big organisations or have they dropped off to start their own thing, run small businesses, stay at home with the children because it's just too hard to continue in the corporate world?
Until we have more women at levels of great influence, the situation will continue as it is. Women will continue to disappear from corporate male dominated businesses after a certain period because it's too hard. We need to keep asking the question and finding out ways to help the women thrive. We must support each other in our work places and push for more women being involved at leadership levels so that the status quo can change.
I really hope that my children don't ask the same question when they start work. I hope they don't have to say, 'where are the women?'
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