I Want To See Women Screw Up Big Time

Or at least as much as men

Photo by Andy Lee on Unsplash

Women are more prepared, more qualified, make better leaders, and yet are underrepresented in positions of power, where instead over-confident, underprepared and short-sighted men, seem to flourish. Double-standards?

We are now living the consequences of decades of poor decision-making made by average-to-mediocre men who were allowed into power for all the wrong reasons, and certainly not for merit. Let’s not call now on overperforming women to fix and clean up the mess, and maybe blame them if they do not manage, I mean that would not really be such a revolution, would it?

Don’t get me wrong, I want the best for everybody, I want the best women to get the best jobs and the power they just deserve, we as society need the most qualified people to lead us, yet I want to see just as many average-to-mediocre women being given the same opportunities and power given to average-to- mediocre men (which is a lot of power), across all level of management and leadership, and across all sectors (education, health, finance, politics, business...etc).

I want all women to succeed not just the overperforming ones, this is not charity, that’s equality.

I want women to have the opportunity to screw up big time or at least as much as men (which is big time), fuck-up billions, and come out clean and stronger, I want women to try their best, fail and be celebrated for trying, just like men.

I do not want women to outperform men, as paradoxical as it may sound I wish men would outperform women, we would all be in better place by now. I want women to enjoy the same standards, trial-and-error tolerance, scrutiny, and understanding as men. Honestly, I want to see the female version of Trump and Boris Johnson, and not hear a word about their ruinous leadership, technical incompetence, or eclectic coiffure. I know, I am daydreaming.

Women are required to bring to the table so much more than men, and pass through such a strainer, that overperforming is the default setting. Let’s not pretend this comes at no cost for women.

Let’s instead ask men to step up and learn to clean up after themselves or just leave the crime scene for good, we all know too well how hard it is to clean around when there are still people going about with their dirty boots.

We as a species need to come to reason.

Women know their value, they need to be given equal rights, it should not be that they have to overperform to find themselves on “equal footing” with lesser men. If we need to raise the bar, and we probably do, this has to be for everybody, we can not keep running on double-standards.

Let’s not press ourselves into the rescuer wonder-woman role — been there done that — we do not owe perfection to anyone, let alone to men.

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