The woman in my life changed my perspective on another quote, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’ – Tipperary Live

The way to change human behaviour is to woo, instead of preach. To weave love, instead of threatening disaster, to demonstrate how wonderful our human experience could be, and in some way to live a life in harmony with that.

Social justice advocate, Dr Jordan Peterson is a clever man, with a clear vision of science, psychology and an understanding of human behaviour second to none.

Why then, does he have so many adversaries, people ready to fight him on every issue? Perhaps its because, for all that he is often the smartest person in the room, he doesnt bring his antagonist with him.

Its all in the delivery. The trick is to have no antagonist, no opponent, to delve into issues in a way that makes the person on the other side of the debate want to listen and come along for the journey too.

If we want someone to keep an open mind we cant close it by pushing defensive buttons.

We must become them, seeing their point of view, ours, and the objective facts, to uncover the commonalities which unite us. Then we can begin to shape a new balanced reality.

A common point of debate and of often open hostility is the gender pay gap, but what if I told you that while gender bias is the obvious culprit, the root cause is lack of compassion, vision and true understanding of the value and place of men and women, not only in the workplace, but permeating how our societies are structured.

For example, equal people qualifying at the same time with the same level of education and experience, doing the same job with equal raises, equal rates, equal time spent in the workplace and equal promotion, should experience fairly equal outcome.

The first obvious gap appears when a woman takes time away to raise a family.

She misses out on time in her field and so returning to work finds herself behind her male counterpart, both in experience and in promotional prospects.

She has lost approximately two years in choosing motherhood, and another year and a half in days missed at work due to child illness, school or dental appointments and related activities.

At the end of her working life she now lags behind her male counterpart because she chose to continue the human race.

There are many other contributory factors outside this timeline.

She may miss a promotion in her mid thirties for instance, because although she is equally qualified as any male candidate, she may well be seen as likely to start a family and take a career break where a man wont and business has been taught to maximise profit and minimise factors that negatively influence that outcome.

Knowing this, we see that society has been engineered to keep this imbalance.

Men arent enabled and encouraged to take the career break that would share the parenting workload and companies arent encouraged or forced to divert profits into making both realities possible, where men and women alternate and share the parenting load, supported by business and the state in tandem, without losing financially.

Remember too that the human race slowly perishes due to under population if women dont take time to be mothers but this doesnt seem to register with how our society is structured and, in the developed world, we see the truth of this in falling birth rates and increased work hours.

In this case women are the providers of both next generations of employees, innovators, creatives and leaders as well as providers of every company on earths customers too.

Chasing mere equality of opportunity or outcome isnt enough.

Both the State and business must not only encourage women to take career breaks, they must support the integration of childcare and family well being into the very fabric of business models, through cooperative capitalism, the sacrifice of maximised profit for a system that shares equity, that places a monetary value on the womans decision to be a mother, equal to that of her partner in external employment while giving her partner the supports to support her too.

What of the women who dont have children?

Are they worth less somehow?

They often feel so, as their purpose in society seems paradoxically and inextricably linked to procreation.

What we have to remember is that what a person contributes to humanity matters every bit as much as how they contribute.

Women who choose careers, women whose bodies are unable to conceive, women whose circumstances make it untenable to become mothers, these women are equally valuable because of the unique perspectives they bring to both the workplace and to the wider social setting.

Behind every great man is a great woman used to be an aphorism worth quoting, especially if you were the one in the foreground.

How about changing that to say Behind every great person is a team of men and women working in concert to achieve a common goal, and then adding, Anyone not listening to a womans voice is ignoring 51% of the world.

It seems to me that to reimagine how the gap can be closed in this case, structures and priorities must change. Society and business must change to see equity and the happiness of the populace as the goal.

Educate both children and adults to value humanity rather than perceived social order, as teaching infants will further the cause much more easily than trying to tell people where they fall short decades later. This is where advocates must learn to woo rather than preach, to grow a new society.

The woman in my life changed my perspective on another quote, A rising tide lifts all boats. While its true that the better society does the better it is for all, a rising tide lifting all boats only helps if you are in one, its precious little good to those who arent.

Those people drown. If we are to rise together we must accept each other fully, with compassion and love, living together as one or else we really will flounder and drown.

We become Yin and Yang, balancing opposites, each containing a little of what the other brings to the table while seeing that there is only one table and that is another chance to practice Acceptance.

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The woman in my life changed my perspective on another quote, 'A rising tide lifts all boats' - Tipperary Live