CEO and founder of Womensphere, Analisa Balares, sits with senior partner at McKinsey, Kweilin Ellingrud, to discuss gender equality in the workforce.
Having women participate in the economy at an identical rate as men would boost the world's economy annually by approximately $28 trillion. Yet, gender equality is still something that needs to be fought for in workplaces around the world. Kweilin Ellingrud, a senior partner at McKinsey where she leads gender equality research, sits with Analisa Balares, CEO and founder of Womensphere and commissioner of the women's refugee commission, to discuss why gender equality is not a zero-sum game, how we can encourage future generations of workers to champion women’s empowerment, and what companies can do to attract and maintain a diverse workforce.
Hosted by MJ Rodriguez, Dare I Say is a podcast from HarpersBAZAAR.com and Edit Audio Inc. that sits in on unfiltered conversations between the most influential women of our time. They are daring to make the difference we deserve.
00:00 MJ Rodriguez: Hey, this is MJ Rodriguez and you're listening to Dare I Say, the podcast from Harper's Bazaar where we sit in on unfiltered conversations between the most influential women of our time, women daring to make the difference we deserve.
00:12 [INTRO MUSIC]
00:31 MJ Rodriguez: The gender gap has not budged much over the last 15 years. Globally, women participate less in the workplace than men. They are more likely to work a low paid job and juggle their career with unpaid work as primary home caregivers. There are fewer women in politics and one in three women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Work needs to be done both internationally and at home. Analisa Balares and Kweilin Ellingrud are both trying to close the gap. Kweilin is a senior partner at McKinsey where she leads gender equality research. She advises Fortune 500 companies on how to improve workforce diversity, Analisa is the CEO and founder of Womensphere, a platform that boosts female leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship. She serves as a commissioner of the women's refugee commission. In this episode, the pair discussed why gender equality is not a zero sum game, how we can encourage future generations of workers to champion women's empowerment and what companies can do to attract and maintain a diverse workplace. They are women who dare.
01:40 Analisa: You know, I grew up in the Philippines. I had really strong female role models. My mother and my grandmothers, we had a female president Corazon Aquino when I was growing up and I grew up as an empowered girl, you know, as part of the YWCA of Manila as one of their teen leaders when I was 13 and I started organizing leadership conferences for girls when I was 13 and then so when I left the Philippines to come to school, I left the Philippines as this empowered girl. And then I went to Mount Holyoke college, which is the first ever and oldest college for women in America, which has a strong tradition of educating female leaders that would change the world. And right out of college, when I was working at Goldman Sachs, I was part of launching the, uh, investment banking women's network for Goldman. And so all of these experiences really, you know, allowed me to appreciate the importance of having strong female role models. And women leaders all around.
02:37 Kweilin: I think there's a surprising number of similarities. I also grew up with a very strong mother who set a wonderful example of how to work hard and achieve your dreams, but also how to have a clear opinion and share that. I also went to an all-women's college, so Wellesley and it was a really powerful example for me to see all the leadership roles filled by women because that was just the assumption. Why wouldn't the leadership be filled by a woman? I think a couple of differences. I grew up in a lot of other countries as well. You came from the Philippines. I grew up in China for three years in Japan, in Ecuador and France, and so seeing gender equality quite differently in all of those countries and comparing that to the United States was a real surprise for me. It was, it was so different from country to country. In China, for example, there's saying that women hold up half the sky and that struck me as clearly women would, would have half of the opportunities would be just as strong and through both school, but then also work. And now I have three young daughters, a six year old and almost four year old twin girls. And so I care about gender equality even more. Um, but this has been with me from as far as I can remember.
03:43 Analisa: We need to accelerate gender equality so we can have it in your daughter's lifetime.
03:47 Kweilin: Exactly. We'll have to accelerate that quite a bit. Actually at the rate we're going.
03:51 Analisa: I know.
03:52 [MUSIC]
03:56 MJ Rodriguez: The whole world stands to benefit if women participate in the economy identically to men. According to Kweilin's research at McKinsey, it would boost the world's economy annually by $20 trillion. That's the size of China and US economies combined. If all countries align their gender equality efforts with the progress made by their most impressive neighbors, the world's economy could grow by 11%. That's $12 trillion. Our remedy for inequality is a daunting task and it starts at home.
04:30 Analisa: The United States may seem like a developed nation, but the United States for the last decade has been ranking in the twenties to thirties and the global gender gap report. And so there is a lot of progress that needs to be achieved and one of these areas is in economic empowerment. So the gender pay gap still persists here in the United States. The gap has narrowed since 1980 but it's been stable over the last 15 years and as of last year on average, women have earned only 85% of what men earned. And based on this estimate, this means it would take an extra 39 days of work for women to earn what men did as of last year. There is also the perception that this gender pay gap is imaginary. The latest survey shows that around half of the men believe that there is no gender pay gap. So this is very much like half of the men are denying climate change. You know, it's the same principle of denying a reality that exists, which makes it even more problematic to solve. When we think about the intersection of race and the gender pay gap, it gets even worse. With African American women getting paid the least on average. A second area around economic empowerment for women is access to capital for women. Women receive less than 10% of venture capital funding. And on average, as women are starting more and more companies, access to capital is not as easy for women as it is for men. If you're a woman of color, the probability that you'll get funding from a venture capitalist is less than 1% so there is a lot of work we need to do around economic empowerment of women.
06:23 Kweilin: It's interesting, what we've seen on the US level is similar themes. And so we were talking earlier about gender equality on a global basis. At the US level, there's still a big economic opportunity. So the US share of that $12 trillion is $2 trillion. And that's basically the size of the economy of the state of Texas. So if you were to add the state of Texas, uh, again to the US economy, that's the economic opportunity from greater gender equality in the workplace. But that $2 trillion opportunity is similarly linked to societal gaps in the United States. And there are six impact zones here in the US that we have found where variability or variation across States is the greatest and the six of them are first and foremost representation in leadership positions. So around the country for every hundred men in leadership roles, there are 66 women. We'll talk a bit more about this when we get into, you know, the typical Fortune 500 talent pipeline and what does that look like. Time spent in unpaid care work is a second impact zone here in the United States. So women do twice the amount of unpaid care work as men. And you know, as the mother of three girls, I thought, wow, I want to spend more time with my daughters, I want more unpaid care work. But actually about 85% of that time is the shopping, cooking, cleaning. It's things that if they were shared more equally eliminated altogether or or recognized, um, we wouldn't miss them. Right? And only about 15% of that is time spent with kids. The third impact zone is single mothers. So in the United States, since 60% of families in poverty are led by a single mother and it's that intergenerational cycle of poverty with mothers having kids too early, not being able to graduate from high school or not being able to complete college and not being able to get the job they need to support their families.
08:15 Kweilin: And that intergenerational cycle that is so challenging and it's related to the fourth impact zone, which is teenage pregnancy and every year here in the United States, 600,000 girls between 15 and 19 get pregnant. That's not counting the girls at 20, 21, 22 who get pregnant too early and of all the impact zones this is the one where we've seen the most improvement over the last 10, 20 years and it comes from two sources, maybe some surprising sources. The first reason that we've seen improvement in teenage pregnancy is MTV Teen Moms. And when this first came out in the eighties and I remember watching this as a young kid, there was uproar around how can you be glamorizing teenage motherhood? We're going to see a huge spurt in teenage mothers and turns out that when you show this TV show, you can actually do the closest thing to a scientific experiment. So you showed MTV Teen
09:54Kweilin: So in Georgia, the state of Washington, we're seeing significant improvements. So a lot of great news on teenage pregnancy. That brings us to the fifth impact zone here in the United States, political under-representation. And so for every hundred men in political office on a national level, so governor, house of representative Senator, there are 30 women and actually it's, it's improved. This data was actually before the last election. So I think there's been some improvements since then. But there's two main things that we know about women in politics. One is that women come to politics typically later in life than men, and they typically come for a very specific reason. So they might come because I want to change politics or safety for my kids or healthcare for my family. And men are much more likely to come to politics earlier in life and are more likely to have always thought of themselves as a politician since a young age. That's the first difference. The second difference that we see for men and women in politics is actually picking themselves up from a loss and running again a second time. So actually when women and men run the first time around, they win and lose at the same rates, which I was really encouraged by. The difference though is after this very public loss, men are much more likely to pick themselves up, take what they've learned that first time and run again. And if you think about most of the politicians on a national level who have been successful over a career, they have had to at some point pick themselves up from a loss and run again. And so how do we learn what we know about women and men and politics and how they both enter politics differently, but also move through and advance in politics differently to change that game.
11:32 Kweilin: And that brings us to the last impact zone here in the United States. The sixth one, violence against women, women in the US in about one in three experienced violence from an intimate partner. Interestingly, our neighbors to the North, so in Canada, only 6% of women experience violence from an intimate partner. And there's two big differences in how Canada this one is. The police are much more likely to treat this as a public safety issue. It is not a personal private matter. It is a public safety issue and they will intervene. The second is that the court systems are quite different. Here in the United States, violence often is accompanied by financial and other issues, so maybe purposefully ruining somebody's credit so that they can't get an apartment and live independently and get out on their own. And the court system here in the US is not set up to help victims or potential victims move through it quickly. So it can often be a multiyear ordeal to move through the court system. And the state of New York has probably been the best at this in terms of streamlining the system to help victims and potential victims of violence. But that experience is also very challenging. And so those are the six impact zones we've seen here in the US. Leadership positions, time spent an unpaid care work, single mothers, teenage pregnancy, political under-representation and violence against women. And if we were to tackle those six societal gaps, we would both empower women but also enable them to much more actively enter the workplace.
12:59 [MUSIC]
13:04 MJ Rodriguez: The US is the only industrialized nation without a paid maternity leave policy. Only 14% of civilian workers have access to any amount of paid parental leave. How can American society work to fix this? What types of initiatives should we expect and demand from lawmakers and our business leaders?
13:25 Analisa: I think that it's important for us as a society to recognize how important mothers are and how important it is to ensure that both parents, mother and father have the same opportunities available to care for their household and their homes and that mothers that are allowed the time, that they need to actually properly care for the child, give birth care for the child, end up becoming more productive employees and more productive leaders in society. I think there is a lot of misconception we need to change around mothers and how mothers are perceived. For some reason women are perceived to become liabilities the moment they become mothers. And that's just not true.
14:20 Kweilin: It's interesting. We've seen a few things in terms of maternity leave on the state level. So the state of California actually created a bit of a pool across small businesses to better ensure for maternity leave because it is hard for a small business with a few employees to cover for a maternity leave if they have 5 or 10 employees. But this small tax was able to pool that across a number of different businesses and was very successful. The other thing that the state of California did was make it illegal to ask for your previous pay history. And what we see around pay equality is that compounds over a woman's career and the fact that you were underpaid in your last job may very well continue in your current and future jobs because of that transparency. And so making it illegal to ask for that pay history can stop some of that pay inequality. And at the company level, what we've seen internally, McKinsey recently increased their paternity leave and the amount of time that fathers are able to take and when mothers and fathers are going out for maternity and paternity leave and it's seamless, you know, everybody is figuring out the on ramp and the off ramp and making that just a much better experience overall. Everybody gets better at it. So leaders better understand how do I support a father going out for paternity leave, but also how do I support a mother? And when I'm bringing on team members or thinking about who might be the best fit for this project, there's no thought around, Ooh, is that a woman who might go out for maternity leave because every man might go out for paternity leave as well. And that more consistency and just strengthening the muscle of "How do I support people and colleagues and their families?" is I think strengthened.
15:59 Analisa: I think there's also a case to be made around creating more caring workplaces in general. To your point around thinking about your colleagues as a whole. Um, I think it's important for America and companies and companies all over the world to create more caring environments for their workers. That's a long way to go. [laughs] Sorry.
16:20 [MUSIC]
16:23 MJ Rodriguez: There is a clear and compelling business case for gender diversity. In a McKinsey report that looked at hundreds of companies globally, research has found that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity are 21% more likely to outperform their peers. Those in the top quartile of ethnic diversity are 33% more likely to outperform competitors, but the current landscape does not reflect that opportunity. At Fortune 500 companies surveyed by McKinsey women make up to 48% of a company's entry-level intake. That figure then drops 10 percentage points at each promotion level. From first level manager to senior manager, vice president to senior vice president, all the way to the top. Only one in five people at the executive level of companies worldwide is a woman.
17:12 Analisa: There is a lot of work that needs to be done around eliminating unconscious bias that comes in hiring and in promotion.
17:18 Kweilin: It's interesting because we've seen so much research in this space and even in this day and age where we feel like diversity is so sought after and so critical. You can do tests, on resumes, exactly identical resumes down to the words, even the font type, the font size. And if you have Jane Doe and John Doe, both men and interestingly, even women will ascribe higher leadership and higher potential to that John Doe resume, even though everything is identical. And if Jane Doe puts exactly identical resume but active PTA member on that resume, 80% plus less likely to get called back for an interview from both male and female resume reviewers. And if it's John Doe versus Jamal Doe, that's worth eight years of experience and 50% less likely to get called back for an interview. And John Doe versus Muhammad Doe, three to four times less likely to get called back. So even in this day and age where we want more diversity in our workplaces, we can prove that with exactly identical resumes, there is both conscious and unconscious bias that is deeply at work. And that's even just on a piece of paper, right? That's not even when you're in the workplace and working and interacting with different cultural differences and working through a system that wasn't created by diverse leaders. How do we change that and make it more equal, but also more inclusive? So not only do we have diverse leaders in the workplace, but we're getting the full benefit of their diverse perspectives, experiences across their lifetimes.
18:49 Analisa: Can you share advice you would give the companies, given you have done such extensive, amazing research, what else can companies do to actually accelerate gender equality in the workplace?
18:59 Kweilin: I would say the companies that have made the most progress focus on one or two things and they execute the heck out of it, right? So pick two things. Do them really well. Don't try seven to eight initiatives and track them over time. Typically those two things are flavors of a sponsorship effort. So one company I've seen had their CEO sponsor five women at that senior level, that C suite level, asked those five women to sponsor five women at the next level, those 25 women to sponsor a number of women at the next level. And you can see how this cascades, and they had a combination of both formal events and informal events to let some of that natural chemistry happen. The other flavor I've typically seen, if you're picking one or two initiatives to execute well, is around unconscious bias training. And there's a big difference. Most companies in this day and age have a couple of our unconscious bias training. But to really work that into your people processes is a very different matter. So having external observers observe how you review and promote people to identify the most common biases that you might have and you know, have even trigger words so that you can better recognize them and make sure that you're asking tough questions in a people review to say, well, Analisa, would we have had that same conversation if this weren't a woman coming back from maternity leave? Or would we have had the same conversation if that weren't a man in the very strong leadership style of his mentor that we know to be successful? Let's really break down what we're seeing, what the impact is on their work, on their professional impact, and ask some of the tougher questions both in the room of the people reviews, but also outside that room.
20:41 Analisa: So I think when we, when we talk about unconscious bias, there is a lot of that that is a result of the culture that we are surrounded by. And so when we think about reshaping the culture, we need to think about what are the different levers that feed into that culture. One thing I can think of that has scaled impact very quickly is media. And so I talked about how I grew up as an empowered girl. It wasn't just because I had strong female role models around me or the president of my country, but I also grew up on Nancy Drew, Pippi Longstocking watching Wonder Woman, saw all of these superheroines if you will. And when I was a kid shaped my consciousness and my expectation around what I could achieve. And so it's really heartening to see that, you know, there are all of these great TV shows with strong female leads that are coming to the fore. So Shonda Rhimes, whether it's Annalise Keating and How To Get Away With Murder or you know, movies like the Hunger Games or Star Trek now has Michelle Yeoh as its captain, Madam secretary with Thea Leoni. I think these shows that have strong female role models and characters will go a long way towards shaping our expectations of what women can do and how women can lead. And what's even more interesting is when these shows blend fiction and reality and actually move over into reality, into reshaping reality altogether. So one of my favorite super heroines in my mind is Mariska Hargitay, Olivia Benson in Law and Order SVU. Beyond being this bad ass, you know, superhero in Law and Order SVU, fighting violence against women and protecting special victims, In real life she also founded the Joyful Heart Foundation to, you know, help abused women to fight against violence against women and has launched this amazing movement called End the Backlog. End the Backlog is a reshaping how violence against women is treated and as a result of the end the backlog movement, which she has led, there have actually been a number, a good number of serial rapists that have been captured and convicted throughout the United States. This is a really important initiative and I think that having leaders like her who are looked up to by the public, implement initiatives like this that actually helped change legislation and help protect victims and help convict criminals has important repercussions in society. The CW has come out with TV shows that promote gender equality, not just, you know, between women and men, but also across all genders. So when you look at the Flash, when you look at Super Girl, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, you'll see strong female leads, but you'll also see leads across all genders and their ensemble cast. And what's amazing is that the female leads actually jumped out of their fictional universe to create this online community called Shethority that is promoting women's empowerment, you know, in real life and gathering women and promoting empowerment actually across all genders, which I think is very inspiring. So I think when you have movements like that in the media, it's easier for us to, you know, media reaches billions of people all over the world. And so our consciousness there, there is, um, a reshaping of our expectations and our consciousness that hopefully leads towards positive conscious bias.
24:26 Kweilin: Absolutely. I love those examples. It's interesting as the mother of three daughters, if I ask my six year old to draw a picture of a genius or to draw a picture of a scientist, she will like most other kids her age draw a man. And how do you change that as a parent, both as a parent of girls, but especially frankly as a parent of boys and bring this next generation in with broader exposure to media and great role models of all forms.
24:55 [MUSIC]
24:57 MJ Rodriguez: Sponsorship and mentorship are proven to have profound effects on women's advancement both inside and outside the workplace. But what's the difference between the two and what does the genuine attempt at sponsorship or mentorship look like?
25:15 Kweilin: Are you the kind of woman and leader who once you climb up the rope ladder, you extend the hand down and you bring up that next generation and the next set of leaders? Are you the type of woman who pulls up that rope ladder behind her so that nobody else can get up? It's an important distinction. What does sponsorship mean versus mentorship? When I say sponsor, I mean somebody at work who is senior to you, who can create opportunities for you. Typically that means risking their relationships or political capital to create a real opportunity, that could be a project, that could be getting a promotion and getting a new role, but sponsorship creates real opportunities in the workplace. Mentorship is different. Mentorship is giving advice. It's giving you thoughts on how they charted their path. You can mentor a lot of people. You can only sponsor realistically a couple of people and create those opportunities that are so critical for advancement. I make sure that on my calendar there are times blocked every couple months so that I'm reaching out to sponsors that I'm working with actively right now, but also sponsors who have been sponsors in the past and I might not be working as actively with. And the more you invest in staying in touch in those relationships, even if it's a, you know, "Hey we haven't seen each other for three months, would love to get your thoughts on how I might think about this or what advice you have for me in this new role." Those things so that you're top of mind when an opportunity comes up. But just so that they can also help guide your path are so important.
26:41 Analisa: And then outside of the workplace, sponsorship could actually mean that if you are a woman, entrepreneur and investor that's taking the chance in you and actually financially investing. Or if, say, if you're a woman business owner and you have services and products to sell, sponsorship could mean a company or a leader in a company that takes a chance in you and buys from you. And I think it's important for women to cultivate sponsorship relationships with senior women, but as well with senior men because there are many more men that can invest and they can actually buy from you and that are leading companies that could purchase your services and products.
27:17 Kweilin: There's been some interesting research done on how women and men think about relationships in the workplace and women in terms of sponsorship are much more likely to either have a sponsorship network that is all women or majority women and men are much more likely to either have majority male sponsorship networks or more mixed. And as we saw in a Fortune 500 talent pipeline where as you get more senior, more and more of that pipeline are men. If you have a gender skewed sponsorship network that is more women, by definition that will mean both a smaller sponsorship network but also more junior people who are less able to make those opportunities and create those opportunities. And so how do we think about broadening that sponsorship network to men and women?
28:00 [MUSIC]
28:04 MJ Rodriguez: Women around the world carry a double burden. They are much more likely to be primary caregivers than their male counterparts. Caregiving includes child and elderly care, but also daily household tasks like shopping, cooking and cleaning. In the US, 54% of women do either all or most of the housework. In comparison, only one in five men does all or most of the housework.
28:33 Kweilin: And I thought, originally, well maybe we can look to millennials and gen Z to sort of grow our way out of these challenges. And it's true that millennials and gen Z are better than previous generations in terms of being open-minded, supportive, thinking about equality in a more equal way, but they're not going to be the solution. I think on their own they're better but not quite fully there. And we still see some of these gaps persisting in terms of roles of women and men, even in gen Z and millennial households.
29:06 Analisa: You think that this is solved at the policy level or should the private sector intervene and set up, you know, day care so that they take some of the unpaid work burden away from women?
29:21 Kweilin: I think all of it is required. So to your point, the government and the policy level needs to be there supporting equal rights, better daycare, family leave for instance. Right. The United States is one of two countries globally that doesn't have that family leave. Um, but then also at the company level, there's a lot that's being done in terms of onsite childcare, more flexible work hours, just more thoughtfulness for women and men to juggle dual career households. And then at the individual level, I would say set expectations early about what you both want to do, the roles that you might want to play in the household, whomever you choose potentially as your spouse and that equality and equal sharing and there will be different chapters over time.
30:04 [MUSIC]
30:06 MJ Rodriguez: Gender equality is not a zero sum game. Everyone has a role to play. This includes leading by example at home and encouraging children to become champions of gender diversity. It also involves giving young girls and women the confidence to pursue the career of their choice.
30:26 Kweilin: It's interesting, Analisa, that when you raise daughters, the importance of instilling a strong sense of self in them and helping them understand and deeply know their self worth. So that in their relationships, whoever they choose as their partner down the road, but also their friendships, they have that strong sense of self and they're grounded in that, in respecting themselves, in advocating for themselves, but also defending themselves should they ever need to. And I think empowering girls and eventually women to do that is such a strong foundation that we can have across the society. It's interesting, in my relationship with my husband, there's been quite a bit of research done on the role of mothers and fathers and how that shapes both sons but especially daughters. And some of the research is around daughters who see their fathers doing the dishes at home are actually much more open minded about gender roles and gender equality. And so interestingly, my husband will wash the dishes, but he'll make sure he gets credit by saying, Kyla, Hannah. Alexa, do you see me washing the dishes? And interestingly, what mothers do at home also matters. So, for instance, if I am always being subservient or not expressing my interests and preferences for what we do on the weekends and say, Oh, you know, whatever you Dave want to do is fine. My children will see that over time. And also internalize that their opinions, their preferences, their needs are not as important as whomever they might choose for their spouse. And so the messages that we send subconsciously as we raise our children, but also societally in terms of your worth, knowing your worth, expressing your opinions is so critical.
32:05 Analisa: And I think that this notion of a girl's self worth and woman's self worth it really changes depending on where you are in your journey. And so when you think about interventions, there are actually, I think several interventions. I think it's really important that this begins at home. But then absent that, what if you're not in a home with parents that are balanced? It's important for educational institutions to mirror the equality that we want to see in society. And that means achieving more equality within academic institutions and educational institutions. This means having, you know, equal number faculty, this means equality and leadership, because when you're going to a school or when you're attending university, you know who you see as your professors and who you see as the leaders of that institution shapes your perception around what genders lead in society.
33:02 [MUSIC]
33:04 MJ Rodriguez: Technology shapes the future and women need to shape technology. A more diverse tech workforce will reduce gender bias, informing the products and solutions critical to our daily lives. But the technology industry has doubled down on the sexism and gender based discrimination rampant in the industries of the past. Women hold 25% of computing jobs in the US according to Pew research. Female founders only received 2.2% of venture capital funding in 2018.
33:36 Analisa: Um, if you really think about it that the state of the world of gender equality is the result of historical forces and institutions and really mostly men shaping the world as we know it. So in order for us to have gender equality in the future and accelerate achieving gender equality, it's important for us to think about how more women can create the future. And so at our mission actually at Womensphere is to accelerate gender equality and empower women and girls to create the future. Along a couple of lines. So when we think about the forces shaping the world now, one of these forces is the fourth industrial revolution. And this is the confluence of exponential technologies. You know, women have to be directing how artificial intelligence is, you know, created. Women have to be directing how blockchain is being used and implemented. All of the technologies that will reshape the world. Women need to be half the architects of these technologies and half the leaders of driving these technologies. Kweilin, we've talked about the issues. We've talked about some of the solutions. What do you think are the sources of hope for the future around gender equality?
34:47 Kweilin: You know, what makes me really hopeful is two things. I see a lot more women using their voice really boldly, whether that's on the political spectrum or personally and in their communities. And I love that. I think there's such power in claiming your voice, but also as you were describing, uniting with other women because we are so much stronger in a united way. And the other thing I take hope in is it's not the fact that Me Too occurred, but the fact that things that were acceptable 10 or 20 years ago are no longer acceptable. And there's a piece of this which feels a bit of, you know, two steps forward, one step back, right? There's a lot to celebrate that Me Too has sort of rooted out. And then there's a lot of men who are, I think today more scared to be real sponsors and have one-on-one conversations and deep mentorship with women than they were before. And so there, there's the notion of the two steps forward. The one step back piece I think we do need to address. But overall I'm very hopeful that things that we used to accept are no longer acceptable.
35:53 Analisa: What I've learned visiting college campuses is that there is now a spectrum of gender identities, and so as I think myself about gender equality, I think it really is around equality, you know, that each person must be able to experience regardless of whatever gender identity they have. And I think we some ways from being able to achieve true gender equality, but I think it's important to move towards a state and a place where we respect the rights and the dignity of every human being, regardless of what gender they have.
36:28 Kweilin: Absolutely. Thank you. Analisa. It was such a joy to speak with you today.
36:32 Analisa: It's amazing being here with you today and being here with all of you.
36:36 [OUTRO MUSIC]
36:38 MJ Rodriguez: This episode was produced by Steph Colbourn and the team of womxn and gender non-conforming producers at editaudio. To find out more about our conversation, check out our show notes at Harper'sBazaar.com/DareISay podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and rate us on Apple podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode where we sit down with Jameela Jamil and Jennifer Ashley Wright to talk about toxic masculinity.