The challenge of gender equality: how organisations can promote it today
The economic gender gap and the need for education and alliances for equality
by Veronica Giovale*
Cultural backlash and organisational fatigue show how DE&I (and beyond) needs to regenerate and move forward inexorably. I therefore return to talk about a demodé topic: gender equality. And I do so after having been invited to listen to a round table at Palazzo Marino (Milan) on 'Women, financial autonomy and self-determination: a necessary binomial', where several broad-minded women spoke, all role models who, through their studies, their work and their behaviour, are influencing the whole of society.
As is often the case in these moments, when you allow yourself to listen and activate the nurture mode, your mind wanders and connects various dots. I have therefore noticed that in this last two years I have created formats for learning and reflecting on the meaning and behaviour that arise from the intertwining and relationship between freedom, autonomy, participation, violence, privilege, power, visibility, choice and money, embedded within the dynamics of gender (and beyond). I have done this both within large companies and in various contexts where the formats were dedicated to citizens, in a social sustainability key.
My first reflection on the title of the round table was to ask whether, how and how much people really question how they personally experience money, power and visibility. How much they link their self-determination, or part of it, to financial autonomy.
From my personal perspective, as we live in social systems in which economics and money have taken on a certain relevance (whether we like it or not), we can say that thefinancial autonomy determines us as subjects, offering us a certain degree of power. A power linked to our sustainability in the medium to long term, to freedom of choice, to visibility, to the possibility of remaining in or leaving a situation that is narrow to us. I would therefore add a substantial nuance to the title of the round table: the importance of achieving full emotional autonomy, as well as financial autonomy. These two aspects are related, but do not necessarily travel hand in hand. Being autonomous, in a profound sense, and self-determining means feeling an active part of one's existence, while also coming to terms with a certain inner loneliness. It means starting from oneself and protecting oneself - in a very broad sense - primarily by oneself.
The cultural dynamic in which we are immersed often sees, in large numbers, women highly trained to take care of others and sometimes to delegate, underestimate or even downplay the importance of self-determination through (also) financial autonomy. Men, on the other hand, for historical and social reasons, are often more trained to decide what is best for themselves and to make themselves, willingly or unwillingly, visible in the public space (obviously with all due personal and cultural differences).
