Women of Quiet Inspiration In My Life
nternational Women’s Day is always a good time to reflect on those women who have had an impact on your life. We still have too few women role models in the world so it’s important to recognise those who are. It’s easy to feel inspired by famous faces who have highly visible achievements but today I want to remember just a few women who passed under the radar for much of the world and yet still had a profound impact on me.
There’s almost always a teacher; good or bad. Mrs Hamilton was the primary school teacher who taught the last grade class before moving on to high school. She was passionate about science and I am sure inspired a generation of girls who passed under her watchful eyes to believe they could be involved in STEM long before anyone ever thought of encouraging girls into tech. She was an unusual women from the titled classes who believe in teaching young children from under-privileged areas like Brixton (1960s) where I was born. She encouraged and inspired us to always keep improving. We were privileged to have her.
I met Joan Wicken in my early 20s when working for the government of Tanzania in the Nordic countries. At the time the Nordic countries were pumping development aid into Tanzania, which, under the guidance of Presidnt Julius Nyerere was the modern socialist hope of Africa. Joan was President Nyerere’s personal secretary. A committed socialist, I remember her best for the Vespa scooter she used to come to work on from her small, humble bedsit in Dar es Salaam. She used to tell the President and his Ministers that government officials shouldn’t travel in limosines because it set a bad example to poor folk. She didn’t believe much in the power of aspiration for things, but she did deeply believe in education.
Along with other expatriates, she helped found Kivukoni College. At the time of Independence in 1961, higher education in Tanganyika was non-existent: the country had just 13 graduates, a situation transformed by the college as it became a centre of socialist excellence, producing some of Tanzania’s best civil servants. To a girl who grew in up the Thatcher era as a committed capitalist, we often didn’t understand agree but I deeply admired her commitment to the President and Tanzania which I also came to love. She made have been closed-minded on the issue of capitalism but she was a fascinating example of a courageous, dutiful and relentlessly loyal civil servant. It would be easy to stereotype Joan as typical of her era in her relationship with Africa, and as a ‘No2’ rather than as a female leader, but she inspired me as a woman who chosen to go out into the ‘wild’ alone and carve a life for herself.
I’ve had few close friends who are women. A writer who had a profound effect on me in middle life is Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I picked up Women Who Run With The Wolves by accident, at the bottom of a very acute period of depression. For most of my life I always struggled with being an outsider, excluded from the ‘community’ of women perhaps because I never had much interest in small talk and as a business owner I preferred the company of men. Clarissa’s wonderful book celebrates the true fierceness and wildness of women’s spirits when released from living life to the tune of a world designed by men. When I read it (and I re-read it regularly) it felt like coming home, and for the first time a validation of who I was as a non-conforming woman.
My cousin Susan Palmer was always someone I looked up to as a child. A decade older than me, Sue was the first girl in our very working class and extended family to go on to further education. She had a monster fight to do it. The women of our mothers’ family were unkind and oppressive to their girl children, and often unsupportive of the girls taking advantage of the opportunities that a modernising world was holding out. She was a far away beacon at times, who married a rising star in the computing world and lived often overseas. But she was always there in my mind as an quiet example of what could be achieved if you ignored the constraints of family and birth and kept on pushing. Again the desire for knowledge and the commitment to education was a common thread. It’s been joy in the last decade as our respective homes have gotten geographically closer to spend more time with her.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been the kind of person who needed role models in my life. I haven’t ever aspired to be like anyone else or do what anyone else has done. I’ve always felt that the quiet people who pass gently through your life but do you some kindness, set you some small example of integrity and moral authority, can have as much leadership impact as the highly decorated. These are just a few that made a difference to me.
