Small Business Column: Business needs the feminist movement

In this week’s column, Kehlan looks at women in business and why feminism needs to stage a comeback.

Nude celebrity pictures and ineffective abortion laws show that society is still lacking logic when it comes to the role of women.

Everywhere we look we see the objectification of women and that continues to play a deep and pervasive role in the business world too.

Let’s all stop pretending that gender equality is truly here. It’s not and we’ve never had it.

Young women believe that because they can vote and do many things their mothers didn’t (or weren’t allowed to do, in some cases) that society has changed how it views women.

Wait until they start a new career, the realties will seem very different.

Women are consistently paid less than their male counterparts, get far less management jobs and are often sidelined in favour of male counterparts for promotions.

I could cite numerous studies to back this up but I have a word limit for this article.

Universities and incubation centres offer courses designed specifically to get women into and keep women in business.

This is because the male-dominated world of business still has no idea what it is like to be female and in business.

How could they? For all their business lives, men will never touch on the problems women have to face.

They will never be the only male in the room. They will never have to think twice about how having children may effect a point in their career.

Men are on the outside looking in, distant from the realties and distant from the fact that they are part of the problem.

I recently interviewed Jim Clarken from Oxfam Ireland.

According to a report Oxfam had produced on the gender pay gap, women are still 70 years away from pay equality.

That’s two generations of women later.

Start-up Ireland recently published a very informative list of Budget 2015 ideas that should be implemented.

In it was cited the length of parental leave for women on the birth of a baby.

It suggested bringing male leave to the same level as women.

Gender quotas in politics could also go a long way to the production of legislation framed with women in mind.

The reality is that we are still a long way away from equality in business.

There is still a need for feminism and it needs to bolster itself in the business community.

The economic benefits of true equality to a society and an indigenous economy are enormous.

How much value do you think would be added to the economy if every woman was paid the same as their male counterpart?

In fact it’s not even about economies; it’s just the right thing to do.

Ireland is supposed to be a modern, progressive 21st century country.

When it comes to women in business, it’s time that Ireland started acting like a modern, progressive society.