Here is my first excerpt from my upcoming book.
As you know I am writing a few ebooks so have decided to blog some of the content because it’s just so interesting! I would love your feedback!
eBooklet 1: A Man’s Guide To (Ultimate) Power – How to Keep Women Out (Or Not)
Introduction
“All truth passes through three stages. first it is ridiculed. second it is violently opposed and third it is accepted as being self-evident.” Arthur Schopenhauer.
Have you ever wondered who so many men are in the highest positions of power?
Why do they fill the top and best paid jobs in corporations and governments? Why are they 80% of the CEOs in the largest North American companies? And on the flip side, why are so many college educated women working in their homes for no pay or benefits and doing the bulk of child rearing and the thankless work of household cleaning? Why are so many women divorced and poorer for it? Don’t you wonder, after all this time, after the women’s liberation movement and the feminist movement why women just cannot seem to break through the glass ceiling or get out of the kitchen?
Most people readily admit that women today face many barriers including sexism and discrimination – but that that these barriers are slowly disappearing. Others will tell you that it’s just a matter of time until women graduates reach the numbers necessary to tip the scales inside companies. Others are convinced that women just need to be tougher, work a bit harder and be more willing to make sacrifices to truly excel.
Although all of these explanations are partly true, they actually mask the real reasons why women are still struggling to gain power and freedom. As a rule we label the empowerment of women as a womens’ issue and by doing so we focus narrowly on helping women as individuals and engage only women in the conversation. This in turn causes us to remain blind to the critical fact that our whole culture holds women back. We are all inadvertently holding women back. We just don’t see it because it is accepted as “the way things are” and supported in millions of tiny ways such as though media, corporate practices and institutions.
This book shatters our out-dated thinking about why women fall behind and why so many men jump ahead – at work, at home and in politics. Fitzgerald directs our attention to the deeply rooted systemic barriers women face – that are almost completely invisible. In order to truly free women we need to look at the entire forest, not just 50% of the trees.
As a radically fresh, intelligent and often humorous approach, Fitzgerald urges us to stop telling women (and men) to change and instead aim at the many beliefs, habits and practices that we have inadvertently inherited, along with our out-dated and often absurd assumptions about men and women. By shifting our focus to the real culprit, we can each individually peel back the barriers that hold women back, but equally important, we can help men and women reconnect as true partners at work and in life.
Here are the chapters:
- Convince women there is something wrong with them
- Expect women to act like mini-men
- Tell women they just need more courage
- Burden women with completely absurd expectations
- Place women on a tightrope of double binds
- Squeeze women into outdated stereotypes
- Discourage women from seeking power
- Convince women they don’t want or need power
- Do not value feminine strengths
- Keep women busy with self help
Over the next few weeks I will be posting each of these chapters in this blog. I hope to get your feedback! Cheers, Maureen