Here in the UK

Here in the UK, there is a fly-on-the-wall series that has just ended called the Apprentice. The concept is simple. Twelve hopefuls battles it out for a job with entrepreneur Sir Alan Sugar. Sweet name, huh? You wouldn’t know it by looking at his permanently sour-faced expression. But that’s not the point.

The eventual winner was a 26 year old blond by the name of Michelle Dewberry. But it’s not her hard-work or rags-to-riches tale that has sparked the debate (a former supermarket check-out girl, she was earning £100,000 a year by the time she was 24) it’s her business style, both in the metaphoric and literal sense. She is quiet, she believes hard work can get a woman anywhere in business, not ruthlessness. Then there’s her business style. While the other female contestants chose the uniform of a business woman – no-nonsense power suits- Michelle usually appeared in much softer attire, pretty skirts and colourful tops. And dressed like that, she won anyway.

There is a big difference between businesswomen on the continent and business women in the UK. In Europe, they can hold down the top job and still not compromise their femininity. They exude it, and turn it to their advantage in the work they do. By this I don’t mean sleeping with the boss. I mean they are not afraid to display their femininity. In sharp contrast, most of the businesswomen I have met in the UK have turned out to be even more ruthless, aggressive and downright mean than their male counterparts. They dress is cuts that conceal their curves; anything that gives away that they’re actually women is a no-no, especially skirts.

Why is that? Eastern philosophy believes that there is male and female energy in each one of us. Personal harmony is achieved by balancing these energies. In the UK, these women absolutely squash their female energy and let the male energy run riot. It’s as if they’re trying to be more male than men to make it to the top. In the continent, they may plan like men but they still execute like women. They get the job done while looking like corporate birds of paradise.

All well and good, I hear you say, but this may also be why our sisters on the continent get paid less than men. True. In Spain it’s as much as 25% less, in Greece 10%. In Britain, women get paid on average 17% less than men for doing the same job, and this is in the 21st century, so obviously this ‘one of the guys’ attitude is not getting any results.

When I was at university I made the mistake of living in an all-female hall of residence. I was already sheltered to begin with and this only aggravated the situation. I swung into the realm of radical feminism and blamed men for everything from the price of sanitary pads to the gender pay gap. Upon graduating and being thrust into the real world, I realised how flawed my philosophy was.

Women in the top echelons of power do all they can to pretend that they’re not women. They don’t act like women, they don’t dress like women, they don’t interact like women. This can’t work, because women and men are fundamentally different with different approaches and different thought processes. One is no better than the other. Men have made it to the top by being men. Women may make it to the top by being like men, but in doing so we are doing a huge disservice to our gender.

Ancient cultures revered the female as magical and mysterious, because they were responsible for the mystery of birth and creation. Many of the religions were goddess-based and most societies were matriarchal. Then along came science and religions with men at the centre, and everything changed. The mystery and power that comes from being a woman still exists, it’s just that women in the West are not tapping into it, and a lot of women in the East who are aware of it channel it into the other extreme of being all-female and easy to trample all over.

It’s easy to see what’s happening because I used to do the same thing. I was extremely uncomfortable with my status as a female and when puberty hit I went into denial. I remained this way ignoring the fact that I was actually a woman until about the age of 20. Then, almost overnight, I became aware of an energy that I couldn’t explain that was inside me. It wasn’t about how men looked at me, or trying to impress them.

It was a sudden awareness of the potential rather than the disadvantage I had as a woman, and every day became a celebration of this. I began to dress differently because I was proud of who I was. Unlike before, I didn’t think well-fitting clothes were an invitation to men, they were a declaration to women that I was one of them and happy to be so. It feels like a little bit of the goddess energy survived over the ages and I’m perfectly comfortable to acknowledge it.

Maybe the next wave of feminism will succeed when women realise the power they have in using their female energy in balance with their male energy. If women showed men that they’re completely comfortable in their own skins as females, maybe they would take a girl in a skirt seriously in the boardroom. The female mind approaches things differently; perhaps business could learn a thing or two from how a woman thinks if women at the top were less self-conscious of being women.