Facilitating Awareness...

This morning I saw Toronto icon Shawn Micallef tweet about his course at UofT starting today. His enthusiasm was obvious and contagious. No, I don’t know him. I have only seen him speak but I am sure his students are in for a treat. I actually got quite excited for any teacher/prof who is keen this September and ready to teach and inspire others. 

I remember my first year teaching at Dalhousie. It was a 3rd-year undergrad course in Behavioural Neuroscience. I was so eager to be in front of many young thirsty minds, thinking that obviously, they were as keen as I was when I was in undergrad, ready to learn for the sake of learning.  

Wow, was I wrong! Sadly, our young minds are being cheated out of an education in exchange for a piece of paper that they think means something. They come under the assumption that it will lead to a job, or more recently, another degree. Soon they will realize that the piece of paper is not that interesting to people in the non-academic world who want to know what experience they have and if they can think, be creative, and innovate. 

University students are no longer there to learn, the majority of them at least. Those who are there to learn struggle to do so with the pressures and anxieties of their classmates right beside them. Most university students are there because they SHOULD be there, because almost everyone, including high school teachers and parents, are telling them they need this degree. The piece of paper, that is.

Instead of learning for the sake of learning, they are on a conveyor belt being pumped out less unique than when they started - an analogy nicely pictured by Jenn in one of our brainstorming sessions on “What is University?”. During that same brainstorming session, I took a much more idealistic approach to my depiction. I drew of eager students learning for interest. I drew of professors inspired to teach what they wanted and excited to be heard by equally interested young people. I drew a university that stood as an establishment of deep knowledge dissemination and creation. Like I said, I idealistic and possibly nostalgic for old-school ways. It is so sad for me to know that the institution that allowed me to grow into my intellectual, creative, knowledgeable, and entrepreneurial self is sinking... fast!

Sir Ken Robinson calls for an education revolution and many people are responding to this call to action, even here in Canada. He boldly claims that education is killing creativity and that we are not preparing individuals for the rapidly changing world of the 21st century.  

I tread softly in my own efforts to revolutionize education, or at least I have been wisely advised to do so. But how does one tread softly and still claim to be building a new university? To many it’s preposterous! One of my psychology friends actually came from Kingston to assess my sanity a few months back. He thought I was having delusions of grandeur, a symptom of schizophrenia. Luckily my paranoia allowed me to catch on to his scheming before he could finish the assessment... ;)

Dear Forbes Magazine Editors,

I am writing to you in order to address something that I read in Forbes magazine that I believe hinders women’s participation in business conversations. A few weeks ago I picked up Forbes magazine issue on “The Only Colleges That Matter” because of work that I am currently doing in remodeling post-secondary education. I started reading front to back, intrigued with the content. It was the first time I had read a Forbes magazine. As a young entrepreneur, businesswoman, and scientist who has not been formally trained in business, I have been naive to the literature available in the business world. However, over a year ago I began reading the Harvard Business Review regularly, with great enthusiasm. 

While reading Forbes, I was intrigued by Steve Forbes letter on how crises begin in the summer. I continued to read through page by page, enthusiastically, until I read this line by Harry Binswanger, on page 28: 

“No one benefits from the poverty or incompetence of others. It’s in your interest that other men - in every country - be smart, productive, not stupid and incompetent.” 

In this article, I do not believe that Binswanger’s argument was actually not directed exclusively toward men, but unfortunately he used language that implicitly did. Further down, Binswanger also says: 

“Cost-savings are good for all men, everywhere. He who cuts costs saves money, expands production and raises the global standard of living... A congressional Medal of Honor should go to the CEO who cuts his costs the most, whether he does it by outsourcing or any other means. He is a true friend of humanity”.

In this section, Binswanger was, I believe, using ‘men’ to refer to ‘people’, again excluding the female population. The semantics chosen explicitly implies that CEOs are men and that all efforts for humanity are made by men for men. Although this type of language may have been commonplace 50 years ago, it is far from acceptable today. This language serves to exclude women from literature and conversations, in this instance on thought leadership in business.

My initial reaction was outrage toward Binswanger’s sexist language. However, when I continued to read through the magazine I found other incidents of such exclusive language and began to see the use of gender-biased language as an editor’s lack of awareness also. For example, on page 53, Ken Fisher says: 

“Ultimately it’s about manning up... It’s a man-up manual for the ages - great for investors, parents, teens, and CEOs.”

Then, on page 54, William Baldwin says: 

“If the trend guy makes a pot of money and the countertrend guy loses the same amount then you own an incentive fee to the trend guy...”

In all of these cases, I believe that the men authors should be referring to people, not just men.

I continued browsing the magazine, but not for the initial content that piqued my interest, but rather, for evidence that I, as a woman in business, was welcomed and invited to read this magazine and would feel included in these conversations, ideas, strategies, and thoughts. Sadly, I found little evidence. All thought leaders were men as were most of the contributors in the investing sections. I wondered, are there really no female thought leaders in business? I know of several prominent ones here in Toronto, surely there are some in the US as well. When I did find evidence of women contributors (e.g., Connie Guglielmo, Susan Burnell, Ashley Ebeling, Joann Muller) their contributions were understated with their names appearing in smaller font compared to their male counterparts. There were also no accompanying photos of women compared to many of the men’s photos and photo-sketches.

Sadly, all of this was so discouraging that I have yet to read the actual article of interest to me. In fact, the experience with the magazine felt so exclusive to men that I wonder if I will ever purchase it again, should it remain the same. 

Over the past 20 years as a women in sport, science, and business, I have been actively involved in activities that seek to reconcile the gender inequality. The environment is indeed changing. Unfortunately gender inequality still exists in many of these realms. Reading such gender-biased language in a publication of 2012 reminds me of work yet to be done in this regard. Consequently, this letter is a request for Forbes to consider its use of gender-neutral language such that it could better appeal to both genders in business. I do believe that the lack of gender-neutral language used in Forbes was done without ill-intent but rather stemmed from an unfortunate lack of awareness on the part of the authors and the editors. I would also encourage Forbes to equally profile women contributors to men. 

I want to thank you for taking the time to read this letter and for any consideration you make of this request. 

Sincerely,

Mandy Wintink, PhD

Founding Director

Centre for Applied Neuroscience

720 Bathurst Street, Room 300

Toronto, ON

A post from a few years ago:

After teaching yoga at the mall, I decided to walk around in search of a needed clock. I found myself in some store called The English Butler, looking for a clock. I happened upon these cute little wooden words that said things like ‘peace’ and ‘love’ and ‘dream’. I thought “how fitting for my Life Coaching office and our Yoga studio”. I rummaged through to find all the right words for those two spaces. I was so pleased with my finds! The nice girl packaged them up, thanked me, and wished me a good day. What a pleasant experience, I thought and felt as I left the store.

Not minutes later after leaving the store, I was hit with what seemed like an invisible brick wall, stopping me dead in my tracks. WTF?! (sorry for the language, but this is a real story and that’s what I said) I looked down at my bag and saw that I was carrying a bag full of knick-knacks! Knick-knacks = garbage, junk, ridiculousness, non-essentials… And here I was walking away with a whole lot of it! Wait. They are nice, simple, tasteful, and very appropriate for the purpose. They are accents, not knick-knacks. OMG! No, they ARE knick-knacks! I can’t fool myself. I just bought a bunch of knick-knacks!! I’m sure my grandmother justified every one of her knick-knacks as well. Of course they were probably beautiful, tasteful, elegant, and so on back in 1950 but are they now???? No! And where are they, better yet, where are they going? To the landfill, pond off to someone else, “recycled” at the local thrift store. Ya right! It’s garbage, all of it. Once we buy it, it’s our responsibility. We must accept that we have contributed to the garbage of this world, yet again!

Ok, fair enough, maybe it’s not all garbage. Arguably, it is, but I’ll appreciate that all of us have garbage, some in the form of knick-knacks, some in the forms of straightening irons, 50 frisbees, cell phones, clothes, etc. At the end of the day, or at the end of the era, if it’s left unable to degrade naturally, it’s garbage.

So the kicker in all this?  That the biggest word that I bought, the one that’s 3 inches tall when the others are 1 inch tall, the one that caught my eye before all others, the one I thought was perfect for my Life Coaching office: SIMPLIFY. How sad.

As a rule, I avoid malls. They are a death trap for consumeraholics (i.e., people who are addicted, or prone, to consuming too many material goods – I just made this word up) and a disgrace to nature. Anti-simplified. I figured I would venture off into the mall in search of my clock. Safe enough, I thought. I’m looking for a clock and nothing else. Wrong. I’ll just stick to my rule: AVOID MALLS (and box stores and the like) AT ALL COSTS!