The reporting of the tragedy that Norway was forced to host recently has included opinion from a range of commentators, though it wasn’t until I read Roz Kaveney’s account in The Guardian this week that the importance of one minor (in the grand scheme) episode was highlighted for so many reasons.
As with all tragedy’s, heroes emerge, those that played a small part in saving lives and limiting the impact that evil can inflict, and Kaveney’s account not only described the bravery of two women, lesbians at that, but also the sorrow that these two women were not celebrated in the same way that two men would have been, should they have taken similar risks.
The women, Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, jumped aboard their boat when they heard the gunfire and sailed between battleground and safety to save the lives of the innocent, all the while putting themselves in the line of fire.
Such heroism, includes Kaveney, is all too often assumed to be a role played out by a man, so when the roles are reversed, why is it not celebrated in the news?
A good question. When did you last see a film that portrayed two heroic lesbians fighting crime and saving humanity? We make assumptions today, both in and out of the workplace, that rarely match up to reality, and the bravery (then the subsequent reporting of the act) of Dalen and Hansen, is the perfect example of reality not fitting the stereotype that we have created.
In the workplace, it is exactly the same. Women don’t dominate boardrooms, is the traditional view, and this is how it is played out in reality. Why?
Stereotypes and assumptions bound by traditional views should be outcast bv now, but they exist and are left to fester and breed.
Our own research here at Muika Leadership illustrated the lengths that women must go to in the financial district just to climb the ranks and earn the same ranking as men (click here to read the findings). What is changing?
Norway’s horror story would have been just that, despite how it was reported. But, resisting the emergence of a tale true heroism, despite gender and sexual orientation, was an opportunity greatly missed.
Karen Murphy
Muika Leadership – Assumptions limiting your success? Take the ultimate test here: Leader Training
