mekka okereke :verified:
I've never been to Grace Hopper. I don't hold "listening lunches." I don't tell people to "lean In."
I hire, promote, and sponsor, women, and not just white ones. I refuse to tolerate abusive dudes. I am very comfortable having uncomfortable conversations when people create an unsafe environment. I don't let anyone, not even other women, create environments where it's harder for women to succeed. I make sure that women around me get equal pay for equal work. I'm vocal about me doing childcare.
mekka okereke :verified:
This isn't "dad of the year," stuff. This is bare minimum.
But I'm vocal about saying that my expectation of myself, is that if I can't manage my career without hindering my wife's career, I'm probably not a very good executive. ??♂️
My career is going to be 40 or 60 years. That's a long time. I'll only have toddlers for ~3 of those. If we build a workforce that filters out "people that have kids," we will build a suboptimal workforce. See Twitter right now. QED.
mekka okereke :verified:
Yep.
I'm vocal about the fact that I took my full paternity leave both times. Women don't "have babies." Parents "have children."
I have a 1 hr block on my calendar every morning for "kid duty." You can book over it, but then you have to come watch my kids!
I can do evening meetings. Global team. Happens. But if it's a "Papa night," I don't apologize if my toddler walks into the call. ??♂️ She mainly wants to see if you have kids, or a puppy. She leaves when It's just boring adults.
Oli
@mekkaokereke when you say you’re vocal about doing childcare, is it things like “no I can’t meet at 4pm, I have to pick up my kids”?
If not, can you unpack?
Woozle Hypertwin
I was told to be more assertive, too -- and this was 2 decades ago when I was still presenting as male! -- even though I got better results from being cooperative and asking nicely.
ICJ says: Free Palestine 🇧🇫
@mekkaokereke
> I fundamentally don't believe that we can address sexism and misogyny by giving women extra stuff to do.
Yes! Especially considering that 90% of the time the advice is "assimilate into norms of masculinity" which assumes those norms are better when often they're really not.
e.g. I was given the feedback to "be more assertive" from men at work, even though I consistently got more buy in for my ideas than they did.
mekka okereke :verified:
I interrogate my relationship with manhood and masculinity. I understand that even if I personally don't do things to make life more difficult for women, that the default is that I benefit from millenia of baked in systems and expectations. I didn't create these systems, but as a beneficiary, I have a responsibility to move them towards balance.
I fundamentally don't believe that we can address sexism and misogyny by giving women extra stuff to do. Men have to do the work.
Cassandra
@being @mekkaokereke
I just saw someone promoting a book about "things women can do" to overcome sexism, and I realized I am so over that. It's time to teach men what they need to overcome to be good men in this world.
ReimanSaara
@mekkaokereke It is important to understand that gender equality does not mean that men are giving up nice things. Patriarchy hurts majority of men as well, just in different ways. Many "male privileges" are upon closer examination no privileges at all.
Patriarhcal roles reserved for men are quite narrow and make their lives less safe and more lonely.
mekka okereke :verified:
I don't trust my own intuition about what it's like to be a woman coworker. Because I know my own male ego will paint things rosier than they really are, convincing me that I'm "one of the good ones."
I don't trust my own intuition about how equal a partner I am in housework and childcare. Because I know that my own male ego will convince me that I do more housework than I really do.
So I make a point to ask and check in and I make it safe to give me feedback. I try to quantify the experience.
clacke
Luis Villa
mekka okereke :verified:
? At work I apologize a lot, share credit a lot, check in to see how my partner teams are doing, emphasize collaboration, am vocally self-critical, and care about my co-workers as people. But because I'm an NFL-sized Black dude, people view these as "masculine leadership traits."??♂️
The fact that these traits are effective leadership attributes, means they're suddenly stripped of the feminine label, and are now magically viewed as masculine??
Masculinity isn't real.
enchantedsleeper 🌈⭐
@being @mekkaokereke Absolutely this! I've seen posts/discussion about why we don't tell men to "be more like women" instead, because we act as though politeness and apologies (just to use two often-cited examples) are somehow inherently bad things, when... they're actually not? We should normalise those instead.
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