On International Women’s Day, We Need To Keep Extending The Circle
Kemi Nekvapil understands powerlessness. The speaker, coach and author grew up in foster care and had many doors closed to her because of her race and gender. In this extract from her book Power, A Woman’s Guide To Living And Leading Without Apology, she shares the moment she discovered that we all have blind spots when it comes to diversity.
Many years ago I was very excited to be invited to one of my first women’s leadership conferences. It was happening in Noosa, a beautiful coastal town on the east coast of Australia. There were just under 200 women invited, and it was an incredible event. I met women there who are still trusted friends and colleagues to this day.
On the second to last day, there was a panel discussion on diversity. As we were all gathering for the session, there was a holding slide on the projector screen. It was a patchwork of women’s faces, about a hundred of them all pieced together, smiling brightly and confidently.
I looked up at this holding slide and thought, “Where are the women who look like me?” All of the women on the slide were white and yet this was a panel about diversity. I was one of three women of colour at the conference, and I can’t remember if I was already standing at the back of the room, or if I was moved to stand because I was feeling so uncomfortable.
As I listened to the very esteemed panel talk about diversity on boards, I kept staring at the screen – at the smiling, confident, white faces looking back at me. The panel was focusing on gender diversity, but I felt it was impossible for me to be in that room and not flag what I saw as a misstep. Actually, a complete oversight. Where were the women of colour? Why were they not also smiling confidently at us from the slide? Where was the intersectionality in this conversation?
A sensation that I couldn’t control began rising up in me. I wanted it to stop because it was uncomfortable. But I couldn’t stop it, because there was something more at stake here. My intense discomfort was a sign I couldn’t ignore. My internal voice was saying, “You need to point this out. If you don’t speak up, who will?”
I looked around the room several times to see if anyone else was about to stand up or raise their hand, to point this out. I tried to read the body language of the two other women of colour in the room but I could not gauge if they were thinking and feeling the same as me.
My inner voice was saying, “You have to speak up.” But then another chimed in, “You have been invited here. Do not upset anyone.” And another, “Do not be the angry black woman.” I wasn’t angry, but I was definitely getting hotter, and waves of nausea kept sweeping through me. It felt like I’d been feeling intensely sick and uncomfortable for about an hour, but it was only a few minutes. Before I knew it my hand was in the air and I was invited to ask my question.
I’m sure it was obvious that my voice was trembling as I said, “When I look at the screen all I see is white women. Where are the women who do not come from an Anglo background?”
““My inner voice was saying, ‘You have to speak up.’ But then another chimed in, ‘You have been invited here. Do not upset anyone.’ And another, ‘Do not be the angry black woman.’ I wasn’t angry, but I was definitely getting hotter, and waves of nausea kept sweeping through me.””
It felt like five hours had gone by, according to my trembling internal clock, before a panellist responded with, “First we will tackle gender, then we will tackle other forms of diversity. We can’t do everything at once.” She hadn’t liked my question, but that didn’t stop me.
“If I do not see myself or anyone who looks remotely like me on that holding slide, I do not believe you are advocating for me – I don’t see that I belong on a board,” I said.
Her next response was very dismissive – I certainly felt dismissed – but then something interesting happened. It wasn’t only me who disagreed with the panellist; there was a noticeable drop in energy and a few audible sighs of displeasure. Then there was silence. And then the next panellist responded in a very different way.
“I had not even thought of it like that,” she said. “And in future, when I am having the conversation about gender diversity on boards, I also need to take in cultural and ethnic diversity as well. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
It was so affirming for someone to say they hadn’t thought of this, it was a humility that transcended ego or defensiveness. The second panellist was not responsible for the images on that slide, but she knew she was complicit in the system that promoted who belonged where.
I made my way back to my seat. I needed to sit down. I felt very exposed and incredibly vulnerable, and my heart was beating out of my chest. As soon as my bottom hit the seat, the woman next to me looked at me and said, “Thank you so much for speaking for me. As a Chinese woman I was thinking the same thing, but I was too scared to speak.”
There are many differences between African and Chinese ethnicities, but as a minority, she did not feel welcome on boards either. As we headed off for a break, I was approached by a white man (a sponsor) who said, “It is so good that you said that. I was thinking that too.”
“Really?” I said. “I’m curious, do you have an experience of diversity that makes you aware of this?”
“No,” he said. “But looking at that picture, it was obvious who was missing.”
During the break, many of the other delegates thanked me for speaking up and said how it had opened their eyes to where they were complicit. I must have been inundated because I missed out on the scones and jam that were being served for morning tea – which, for an English person, was a little upsetting.
After the break, the next speaker shared that she has a daughter with a disability, and finding employment for her was very difficult. That’s when I realised where I was wearing my diversity blinkers, where I was complicit. As I had said to the diversity panel, women of colour go to banks, we brush our teeth, we buy cars and yet we are never represented in the media as doing so. This speaker was saying the same about people with disabilities.
We all have our diversity blinkers. Admitting we have them is where we give each other the power to learn and stand together.
This is an edited extract from Power, A Woman’s Guide To Living And Leading Without Apology by Kemi Nekvapil, Penguin Random House, $34.99