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Hi, I'm Natasha with BareTalk TV, and recently in an article written in for,
was by actually a friend of mine, Penny Green, she talked a lot about the
lack of representation of females on boards and this has been a huge bone of
contention for me because I just see all of these boards, especially in the
cannabis industry that are full of, and I hate to say it, the male pale and stale.
Like the full of the Davids, and the Warrens, and the Trevors and there's no
females, and what you do see sometimes it's females on advisory boards but for
some reason we're not being put up to that level of like board appointments,
and so I just wanted to know what your thoughts were, and why do you think we're
still in this place of a lack of females on boards. - I think it's sad, that it's
even still an issue in this day and age, I mean like you know the U.S. almost had
a female president, that like the Canadian government Justin Trudeau has
evenly made his cabinet exactly equally male and female proportions. - Let's hold that thought,
because I have some thoughts about that as well. - So I can't believe it's really
still an issue you know. - But it is a still an issue because, it's usually on
boards like that, it's still a big boys club, right? You know you find that out of
a seven board members there's only one female what is it like 20% or even less
than that in Canada? - Yeah I think we're seeing there was a study out of the UK
that said they're actually closer to like 30 percent of females on boards, but
what we're seeing is I mean, as we all know is that our population is made up
of at least 50% women, and so why isn't representative, and we won't even get
started on the the coloured and the diversity side of it, but I'm just, I do
want to go back to the point you made about Justin Trudeau. Okay I need to make
clear, is that I don't think the whole tokenism quota side of it that you
really see on the left side of the political agenda, is what we want, because
then I think you're setting up women to fail. When you're like, 'we're gonna make
50 percent of our cabinet females because it's 2016,' and then just because
they're female, like I think we need to find a fine balance like, how are women
gonna be placed on boards because of their merit, and not because of their Vaginas. -
That's true, but I think it's a start, right? It's a start, you have to
start somewhere, and then grow from there. I think this 50 percent is or the quota
is to give people a chance. - But some of those women didn't do very well in
those rolls and now that gives someone a reason to say, 'well look, what you did,'
you don't set up people to fail, but we need to find a way to push women forward
and be queen makers, there's so many King makers out there, we need Queen makers
who are pushing women forward based on their merit, because we know there's a
lot of us. - There's a lot of us, definitely a lot of us, but I think the
more you put out there, the more you're gonna get the gems in there, right? -
I just don't like Justin Trudeau, so maybe. So we've come to the key of the real issues, right? -
Now, totally understand that, I always believed you should be chosen for your
merit definitely it shouldn't be based on colour, race, gender, or no matter what,
but sometimes you have to force things in order to make a change - and I do agree, and I
think calling it out is important too because I think a lot of times we'll
talk in our small groups to be like 'oh my god, I can't believe it's still not
there,' but if we all have a public platform we need to use that platform to
call it out and if we know people who are the CEOs, and on boards, we need to
call them out too, - And I think it's women have to advocate for themselves. I think
we have to be the ones who are proactive, and ask for more, ask to be you know, take
a risk, and try to approach people who aren't on boar, 'you know what, I don't
have experience, but I can be valuable on your team,' so I think it's our
responsibility. - Or I have an MBA, and I have this much experience and I need to
be on your board because. - If you were on a board with say, there was maybe like
ten males and three females you included would you feel like for the lack of a
better term like intimidated? - No. - Or would you feel any sort of lesser able to
voice yourself? - No, not at all but I think maybe I'm a little bit different because
I just don't give a *** about what people say. - There you go, we need more women like you. - maybe a higher sense of
confidence than I should. - Yes, girl power! - Girl power. -So I think this issue of
females on boards is definitely one that's been around for a while and I'm
hoping it's going to leave soon, but if you have any thoughts, if you have any
success stories or any challenges please comment below and on our social media.
We'd love to hear from you, I'm Natasha with BareTalk TV.