The Scandinavian Variant of Success in Life
Nadezhda Azhgikhina
(From the book «Granddaughters of Vikings at their Home»)
I was given this brochure – a thin booklet with colorful cover – by Camilla Buzaglo, the public relations secretary of the Women’s Section of the Social Democratic Party. The book was easy to handle – it was thin, small size, could easily find its place in a pocket of a «business» jacket or a handbag, next to a wallet and a powder-box. «Many Swedish women carry it around», Camilla told me, «looking though the pages when they have a spare moment. It is suitable reading for going in an underground train, a bus or while standing in a line in a store». Seeing my disbelief (mind that the brochure was titled «The Booklet of Power») my companion reassured me: «You see, here in Sweden we do not think that the mission of Social Democrats is to attract to power as many women as possible or even give them the reins of government. We are talking of showing them that the power must not necessarily be hard, it can be humane, reasonable and in general can be quite a suitable occupation for a normal person.
The given booklet not only blended in the «Swedish socialist concept» as I understood after flipping though the first pages. It also contained the series of practical advises curious even for a foreign reader. So what are these recommendations given in «The Booklet of Power»?
«The Booklet of Power»
A short guide to achieving real personal power
Nowadays many women aim to get power. But when real power is very close, it somehow tends to slip away from them. So let us find out where it disappears! Women who aim to get real and rightful power come across endless traps on their way. In our booklet we will point out these mistakes and teach you to evade or eliminate them.
Power is good!
Let’s begin with clearing out one important thing – the power itself is never ugly or disgraceful. It does not become thus until it is misused. Power is something beautiful, important and useful for all those who want to overcome the existing injustice and achieve positive changes.
Power should be handled with care, with plenty of human intuition and wisdom. We have all seen what happens when men are allowed to capture all positions of power in the banking, financial and business spheres.
Men themselves are just not capable of making good use of power. We have seen numerous confirmations of that. Men need good examples of the right use of power - the examples to guide them. It is the only way to stop abusive exercise of power.
So women should take responsibility for at least the half of power in all bodies that make important decisions.
The power gives us the possibility to influence events and achieve changes, but at the same time we must be ready to answer for the decisions we help forward.
If you are a woman and are ready to accept additional power and additional responsibility, then go on reading. Otherwise you can lend this booklet to another woman for some time.
Give some careful thinking to what gaining power leads to. Start getting used to the thought that you are ready to show your capability to occupy a leading position. Do not avoid power. Lay your hands on it!
I am ready to become a member of the board.
I am ready to take on the duties of the chairman.
The half of all positions - to women!
Make a careful analysis of the power structure in your local municipal council or your organization. Who makes the most important decisions? Are there enough women in this governmental body? The answer to these questions is usually negative. Make sure that women are promoted and appointed to these high leading posts. First, you should mark out the positions of power which are to be taken by women, and work out the strategy of effective promotion of women to these posts. Who are the best candidates for this task? Make up a list of qualities and necessary experience for the women-leaders. Remember, not a single man is born to occupy a position, say, of a local union executive committee member, as well as no woman is. Both men and women are equally capable of such work.
Here is the plan of your action:
Find out the levels of power where the most important decisions are made.
Check on the representation of women at these levels.
Work out the strategy of increasing the number of women in these bodies.
Make up a list of names of the candidates and qualities they need.
Learn the rules of the game!
If you do not know the ways decisions are made, you can lose much. It won’t be easy to make your way through the procedure of introducing objections to this or that suggestion if you did not begin with studying the ways various suggestions are given and presented. In order to avoid unpleasant surprises, it would not be bad to hold your preliminary meetings before the most important sessions. Take care of inviting to these meetings a woman with rich experience and knowledge of various details of the procedure of decision making. She will explain you what can be expected and what suggestions can be made by women at different stages of the procedure.
Sometimes important decisions are made «in one dashing blow». To avoid this you should not take your eyes off the procedure and must take care that the process of making a decision should follow the other way. Women simply cannot afford the luxury of not knowing their way around procedural rules and formalities.
Besides, these rules are not as difficult as it may seem. It is all much easier than cutting and sewing a jacket.
It is vitally important to have the power over the way decisions are made. Otherwise all preliminary arrangements will be in vain.
Here is the plan of your action:
Organize preparatory meetings and go through all imaginary scenarios.
Make good contacts with women who have a lot of political experience and will help you learn.
Organize a group to study difficult procedural rules.
Strive for women to be in the top of the list!
It is good when names of men and women alternate in the lists of candidates, but it is also important that women should take the first place in the list not less often than men. The list which has a man in the first place will lead to forming the «trinity» of two men and one woman. These three people are usually the presidium or the executive committee of a board - in other words, the forum which prepares the questions to discuss, forms the agenda and makes many of the decisions which are not to be put forward for everybody’s consideration.
There is one more important reason to make us strive for women to take the first places in the lists. There is always a risk that only five, or three, or even a single person will be really elected - the one whose name is on top of the list. If men’s names are always the first, we will never achieve justice in distribution of men and women in the bodies of the government, no matter how hard we try to alternate male and female candidates in the rest of the lists. That is why it is crucial to put the names of women to the top of at least half of these lists.
Here is the plan of your action:
Suggest that there should be a rule to make two lists every time, so that one of them would have a man on top, and the other - a woman.
Publish the names of women who are leading candidates in the local mass media together with their good pictures. It is usually takes everybody by surprise because it is so extraordinary!
See to your candidates’ wide popularity. Let their presence be seen by everybody long before the elections - in the mass-media articles, letters to journals and newspapers, public appearances etc. It is not hard to do at all.
Offer yourself as a member of the appointment committee
One of the most important positions is membership in the appointment committee. The appointment committee supplies to the leaders the list of suitable candidates for various posts. It is necessary that there should be more women in this committee. Female members of the committee should work out their general strategy of the ways to promote women and the list of women to promote to high positions. It is important to prepare the ground thoroughly. You should contact the candidates long before their prospective appointment and give them time to get ready. Make up a list of necessary personal qualities and experience. Supply this list to the appointment committee. Make sure that all women of the committee confirm their support to the list in public. Women must support each other in all possible situations.
Here is the plan of your action:
Make up a list of suitable candidates to the leading posts and point at their particular merits.
Organize the classes to help the candidates master oratory, work with written materials and learn the strategies of work with the mass-media.
Appoint a mentor-chairman of your group.
Put your candidates forward in the most efficient way.
Put forward female candidates!
Carefully and seriously choose the candidates to promote. This choice must be based on the actual situation. Their chances of success should be high enough. Begin to put forward a candidate long before the meeting which should result in electing new members of the executive committee or the chairman. Make up a list of merits and experience of your candidate. Contact the women who are to be present on the meeting and give them arguments to support the woman you are putting forward. Make sure that women would constitute the majority of those present on the meeting (it is not hard to do at all, as meetings are regularly visited by few people).
Advertise your candidate in the local press. This way you will change the situation when a male candidate who appointed himself is automatically elected to a post or even re-elected for the next term. Let the local newspaper publish the information about your candidate a day or two before the elections. Provide your candidates with strong support.
Let them be noticed. Write letters about them to editorial boards of the local periodicals. Organize positive comments about them.
Demand that party organizations should choose their candidates to the permanent committees and different posts. This way voters will have a clear idea of all posts that are to be occupied by candidates, and this alone will lead to the increase of the number of women on these posts. It is very favorable for women when voters learn about them long before the elections. Organize educational programs for future members of the committees or the board. Each candidate should know of the responsibility a member of each committee is charged with. Over the last years we have seen several examples of people joining the boards and committees without fully realizing the responsibility associated with their positions. Nor could they imagine how serious their tasks were. We, women, don’t possess a «golden handshake» and therefore must fully realize our responsibility and be ready to fulfill our duties scrupulously.
Here is the plan of your action:
Establish good contacts with women-journalists.
Make up a list of all possible female candidates and their positive qualities.
Obtain good-quality pictures of your candidates to hold the campaign in the mass-media.
Organize press-conferences so that you will be able to present your candidates.
Come to power in parties!
More and more political parties come to understand that names of men and women must alternate in the election lists. But not a single party has realized yet that this alone is not enough for it to gain the reputation of a reliable organization.
No party can win women’s confidence if its election lists are mixed, but men are still in command, the experience of women is left without attention and the party is not concerned with political problems which are interesting and important for women. Theatrical scenery is not enough if it is not backed up by anything else.
Political parties must strive for the just division of power in all areas, both formal and informal. They need something more than founding the groups for strategic planning or campaigning committees headed by men with a few women introduced in them to have the appearance of gender equality.
It is a major drawback that gender proportion is unequal among administrators and political secretaries that do most of the wire-pulling and therefore possess substantial informal power.
Parties usually leave the questions of public relations, propaganda and information to men. Men form the images of particular politicians, political parties and decide which part of the party program is to be unveiled. It is one of the central aspects of power that women should take under their control.
Thanks to the work of female public relation assistants the images of our parties and our politicians will turn entirely different. And much more interesting, by the way!
Here is the plan of your action:
If men occupy most of the positions in your party, refuse to accept the appointment of still one more man.
Demand the list of women who could become suitable candidates for this or that post. Look for women who haven’t yet found their way to you.
Memorize the five methods of subjection – have them at the tips of your fingers!
There are several methods men use – consciously or unconsciously – in order to gain predominance over a female group. Professor Verit Os from Norway divides these methods to five basis groups:
1. Refusal to notice women.
2. Ridiculing and disparagement of women.
3. Concealing information.
4. Double punishment of women.
5. Imposing feelings of guilt and shame on women.
You should take in the essence of these methods and learn to recognize them when they are used against you or against other women. Learn each of the methods under its corresponding number and show this number with your fingers attract your colleagues’ attention to the particular method used during the current meeting. The short descriptions provided below will help you recognize these five methods of male chauvinism.
1. Refusal to notice women.
This silent method is used every time when people (meaning «men») do not listen to what you are saying, start fingering through their notes, talking to each other while you are speaking, or excuse themselves and say they need to go to the toilet. Women tend to bring up questions different from those raised by men, because we live in different life conditions. Men would not accept the description of a situation given by a woman and prefer not to listen and not to take part in the discussion. There are countless real-life examples of women receiving comments of the kind: «You are not alone here, girls».
The refusal to pay attention is a cruel method of repression. A person who is not noticed and not listened to feels debased, unworthy of attention and respect, and may give up further attempts of struggle for changes in this field.
Here is the plan of your action:
Let everyone know that you realize what kind of method is used against you and are not going to put up with it.
Demand attention and demand that everyone should listen to you! One of the efficient ways to gain everybody’s attention is to make a pause in your speech and wait for paper ruffling and outside talks to stop.
If you are still not understood, next time use the same method against a male speaker. Give a clear understanding of what exactly you are doing and why, so that everybody would notice your tactics.
Train your voice. A clear and strong voice is hard to ignore.
2. Ridiculing and disparagement of women.
This method is very well known – the art of exercising one’s sense of humor on women’s account. In some men it has reached perfection. The main aim of these exercises is to belittle women and everything they seek in life. This special method of achieving superiority has in its repertoire a wide range of depreciatory remarks about piquant blondes, hysterical old bags etc. One hardly needs to go on.
Here is the plan of your action:
Make the insulter understand that you repulse such attitude.
Fight back. Never laugh at sexist jokes. It is especially important when another woman is assailed. We must feel responsibility for each other.
Staring at the author of an insulting joke with sincere surprise in your eyes try to do everything for awkward silence to fall. Turn to another woman and ask loudly, for everyone to hear: «What is he trying to say this way?»
3. Concealing information.
Concealing important information is an effective method to keep somebody in ignorance. «Guys» tend to negotiate in a sauna, in a gym changing room. Consciously or unconsciously they settle some bargains. At the next session – where women are already present – these «cloakroom» decisions are quickly ratified. Women are not given a chance to take part in the discussion of problems which men have already fixed in their circle. Men fail to understand why women are such dreadful bores, why they are dragging on the meeting, why they cannot approach the problem «just a little bit more effectively».
Here is the plan of your action:
Demand that all decisions should have detailed reasoning.
Strive for important questions demanding substantial preliminary study to be postponed until the next session.
Develop your own network of contacts and advertisement system to obtain the information you need.
4. Double punishment.
No matter how hard you try, it often happens that everything goes wrong! This is how the essence of a method of repression called «double punishment» could be described. Women tend to suffer from self-reproach for any possible reasons. Wherever a woman is at the moment, it almost always happens that she has to be somewhere else. Either at work, or with children, or with her husband. It causes stress which is hard to bear, and what is still worse, a feeling of one’s inadequacy and inferiority. People around accuse her of being an allegedly bad mother, often indirectly, in equivoques, especially if she is professionally active or devotes herself to politics. At the same time women for whom family and home are top priorities are criticized for not giving enough time to work. If a woman tries to do all things at once, she comes against dissatisfaction and frustration from all directions.
Women need nothing more than to have a possibility to combine work with family life and have the right to say «no» both at work and at home! In contrast to women, men are seldom exposed to this kind of double punishment. In most cases it goes without saying that they can say «yes» or «no» at home. This situation is unacceptable and unfair. Women and men should have equal rights to normal family life and professional career.
Here is the plan of your action:
Be very careful in choosing your husband.
Be very careful in choosing your boss.
Strive for the right to reply «yes» or «no» to your boss without getting the usual punishment of refusal to promote you.
Make an agreement with your husband or partner which will give you the right to political activity.
5. Imposing on women feelings of guilt and shame
This method of subjection is the most ambiguous and paradoxical of all. Women who have suffered violence or humiliation begin to feel blame for the things that happened to them.
People often say that «she» has no one to blame but herself and her behavior. «She» more or less asked for trouble herself!
This kind of accusation leads to the situation when a woman starts to believe the critics herself. Yes, she thinks, maybe all the guilt is mine. I have nobody to blame but myself. As a result many women begin to accuse themselves in the trouble that took place, no matter how reasonable such self-condemnations are. In this case it is important to analyze the situation and form a realistic concept of what actually happened. First of all one needs to understand that there is no reason to take the blame upon oneself.
Here is the plan of your action:
Turn to your close girl-friend and analyze the situation together.
Attract your friends to your defense.
In other cases speak in defense of a woman who has become a victim.
Get rid of your feeling of guilt; in order to do it, try to get the real idea of what is the base of the things which happened to you.
Answer to the people who blame you. Let them see what really happened.
Keep this booklet near at hand. Have it in your purse. Read it as often as you can. Slowly but surely you will find out that power is a good, interesting and useful thing.
And at last, you will learn to recognize in a moment all those difficulties and obstacles that prevent you from gaining still more power over your own life.
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