In recent years, the conversation around changing gender dynamics and achieving gender equality has shifted.
The notions of masculinity and femininity are being challenged, overturned, and evolved to allow individuals to express their true self.
However, most of the gender stereotypes, normative roles, ways of being and legacy mindsets about our gender identities shaped by socio-cultural processes, put men and women on opposing sides rather than encouraging a mixture of both male and female traits.
Such antagonistic dynamic is downright disrespectful to both genders and doesn’t reflect the reality of our lives as multidimensional human beings.
This discussion is an attempt to reframe our past experiences and flush our residual misconceptions from our collective system to find a way to rebalance our relationships with our ideas of gender. We will aim to find answers to what it means to be a man and a woman in the 21st century in a way that reflects our individual selves as human beings.
Virginie Glaenzer is a life experimenter, and entrepreneur who is passionate and curious about people.
She is a seasoned business expert in SaaS and new technologies, who has founded two software start-ups in Silicon Valley and one retail venture in NYC.
She is currently founder of AcornOak, a future-focused, socially responsible, all experienced female strategic advisory team ready to help small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs build remarkable brands and seize opportunities for growth in a marketplace of accelerating change.
Dr Martina Olbertova is a brand meaning expert, strategist, semiotician and social scientist on a mission to redefine the role of meaning in business. She is the Founder & CEO of Meaning.Global, a strategic intelligence consultancy helping brands adapt to the quickly changing context of the 21st century.
Witnessing the ongoing crisis of meaning in the industry, she decided to help companies understand the destabilising foundations of our world today. She explores the shifting cultural meanings of the big social concepts of our time, such as gender, identity, equality, diversity, trust, integrity or post-truth to help companies evolve their symbolic meaning and create new relevance. Her doctoral dissertation was on Gender and Media in the Age of Postmodernity to reveal the symbolic tensions of gender stereotypes in the current media discourse.
Read Martina's writing on the topic:
1- On Gender & Identity in Business and Society: This Human Business
The debate will focus on bridging the perception gap between the past, present and the future. Some of the questions we might address will be:
Overcoming The Past: Where Do We Come From?
Nature vs nurture: What is natural about our genders versus what is conditioned into us and passed down as a part of our social upbringing and a story of who we are?
What beliefs and cultural stereotypes about gender are being carried around from our culture and our past experiences?
Are men born warriors or made warriors? And what about the toxic masculinity and femininity?
Seeing The Present: What Is Happening Today?
Can inclusion be the answer as a collective quest to cultivate the highest potential in every individual, team and organization?
Does being aware of our gender identity affect our behaviors and cause us to create more implicit bias and discrimination?
Envisioning A Better Future: How Can We Liberate People To Be Their True Selves?
How can we rebalance our society to liberate both men and women at the same time to choose for themselves what is right for them?
What is the individual role of men and women in redefining the concepts of gender? Will some of those identities have to dissolve?
