Women’s Empowerment goes against nature. The very fabric of human existence. You’re fooling yourself if you think differently. A common refrain from antifeminists and a stance that is wholly incorrect. Women make up 49.6% of the world’s population. There is nothing more natural than ensuring they are empowered. We have wars and injustice on every level of society, and when we try to discuss a possible end to the way things have been going, we are told that this is the way of the world. Nothing will change. This is human nature. A species at war with itself is natural.

I posit that we ensure fifty-fifty representation across the board – privately and publicly. Offices seeking to govern or manage in any capacity must have equal representation. It should be illegal to hire more men than women (before you get upset: and vice versa) and it should be illegal to run a company with more than 50% of men. If your board has ten people on it, five must be men and five must be women. Your workforce must be divided fairly. The responsibility is on the governing/managing bodies to make the effort.

The question then arises about those offices that require one person to fill it. I suggest that there be a rota of the two genders. For instance, now that a man, Imran Khan, is Prime Minister, the next candidates up for election ought to all be women. After that, all the candidates must be men etc.

Why do this? Why change the way the world has functioned all this time? We’ve achieved so much just as we are. Of the ten wars with the highest cost to human life, three were waged in the last century alone. The Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom found that equality of the genders is significantly more reliable a predictor of peace than a country’s GDP or status of democracy.

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute found that we could add $12 trillion to Global GDP in six years by actively working towards advancing women’s equality.

According to the 2015 McKinsey report on diversity in the workplace, companies with high levels of diversity in gender, ethnicity, or race are up to 35 per cent more likely to have financial returns above the national average of their industry.

There is this and so much more evidence to suggest a world where women and men exist equally is safer, stronger and infinitely more preferable.

by

Zeina Toric-Azad

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