The Feminine principle finally enters into business and organizations.
The masculine principle has dominated our lives for centuries. Businesses were constructed according to them, other organisations as well. Everywhere on the world the patriarchy has made us believe that things need to be in a certain way: hierarchical structure in power and responsability.
Since about 60 years, together with the Women’s Lib Movement, things began to change, and now, in the second decade of the 21st century, there are structures available which integrate the feminine principle of connection, integration and appreciation of the person (and not only their work potential and efficiency). Watch this short clip extracted of a conversation with Cecile Green in The Wisdom Factory.
I recall talking with friends back in the 70’s about the then unfolding women’s movement, saying to them that if the women’s movement didn’t change the workplace and the very nature of work as we understood it then that, “What good would the movement be?”.
Granted that I was speaking as a man who didn’t like work as I was experiencing it, those changes in work have been more slow to arrive at work than in other aspects of the new lives of men and women pressured by the women’s movement.
Indeed, women did arrive into new positions once not open to them, but many women found they needed to be “supermen” in order to “prove” themselves, some actually adopting suits and ties as work attire!
Those early attempts have softened somewhat but real structural changes in the workplace have been slow to materialize. In recent years, though, Holocracy has made a dent in the nature of the power structure (when once those in power agree to it) and a more organic treatment has emerged when it is adopted. But it concerns itself only with the “objective” work life, not, for example, with interpersonal problems between staff members.
Fortunately (and it’s not surprising that Cecile Green, a woman, has pioneered in this) the creation of COLLAB has finally allowed ALL aspects of our lives, not just our “work lives” to be fairly considered within the very structures of the work place. Finally a a place to work where we can bring our whole selves to the table, without censoring or “putting on hold” the real us.
Sounds impossible? It did to me, but here is a new reality that can bring about that long awaited new story of work I hoped for 40 years ago. Cecile has shown us how to do that!