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Who gave the girls the Unicorns?

This post is an edit of the talk I gave at the Growing Inclusive Leadership conference I co-created for NatWest.

We wanted to focus on the solution and to get the most inspiring speakers to share and debate how we can create more inclusive leadership in tech.

We all know there’s a problem but I’m a great believer that we get what we see.

Also, as a mother to a 4 and a half year old boy, George, the future is personally really important to me, especially when the world feels so scary and uncertain.

We wanted to create a platform where we could acknowledge the problem but also debate and visualise the future, so we can mobilise towards that vision.

By the way, this is a working mum in action. This was taken last week when George was ill and I couldn’t get a babysitter so I had to bring him to the video shoot for the video you’re about to see.

And with that in mind I want to get personal for a second, as I mentioned I am a mother to George (yes, this presentation is just an excuse to share pictures of my kid).

This is him at the his first RBS hackathon, you can see Wincie in the background. He loved it although I’m not too sure if that was just the pizza and cakes.

There’s been a lot of talk about bias and often how they effect women’s choices and opportunities and that’s true. But these biases impact men too.

The second principle of the conference was a that it should be inclusive. We’ve been focused on gender diversity this week to address the specific issues with the tech industry and the need to get more women into technology, but to be truly inclusive that means all people regardless of gender, sexuality, disability or ethnicity.

And that includes middle class white men and boys.

So here’s George and his best mate Edit, who lives next door.

Edit loves to dress up.

And so does George, although here you can see here, that he didn’t get the memo about the dress code.

Now George went through a massive Spider-Man phase. He basically walked around like this for months.

And then this happened…

My Little Pony is a tale of love, fun and friendship with the odd rainbow thrown in.

How, as a mother, could I kick against that?

When you look at Netflix, I was shocked how quickly it stewards to gendered content and then, based on the algorithm, presents more of the same.

I grew up with broadcast childrens’ TV and relatively gender neutral programming.

But despite market forces, it is amazingly hard to find boys’ merchandise for Pony fans.

George thinks Rainbow Dash is a boy, and I’m not going to tell him otherwise. So he wants to look like him (or her). I did find this community.

A Brony is a male fan of My Little Pony:

Men who believe Friendship is Magic, men who are outside the target demographic of little girls.

Most Bronies are friendly teenagers and young adults who simply aren’t afraid to admit they enjoy a show which is innocent, colorful, and funny.

So I’ll finish up to explain the title of this talk. As a working mum I had a rare moment to do about a million tasks. One of those tasks was to get a new pair of trousers for George that didn’t have a hole in them or were “scratchy”.

So we ran in the nearest high street retailer to go shopping.

As we’re walking though the kids section George clocks this t-shirt.

This is a pink reversible sequin t-shirt with unicorn on one side and when you stroke it it turns to a panda. HOW COOL IS THAT????

You can also just make out the My Little Pony leggings underneath the t-shirt.

So a strong look I think you’ll agree.

Obviously George wanted this. Of course I bought it for him but if I’m really honest, I also bought a plain pair of black trousers because I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t pushing my own agenda. Liat on Wednesday talked about the importance of our early years. My mum was an amazing 1970's feminist and she encouraged me to play with Action Men because she wanted to avoid stereotypes and avoid prescribed female roles. I remember getting an ironing board from Father Christmas at nursery and being so excited; and my mum being horrified.

I didn’t want to implant my views on George and I’m as happy when he is playing PawPatrol as I am My Little Pony.

But I did get a few looks at the till. The clothes were from the ‘girls’ section although George didn’t know that and I wasn’t about to tell him. The boys stuff looked dull in comparison.

So I stood there and thought “Who gave the Girls the Unicorns?’

At some point in the life of this piece of merchandise, or even earlier at some focus group, someone made the decision that unicorns were for girls. They hard-coded that decision into the T shirt and then sent it out into the world. And it probably sold well, and 99 percent of the children who wore it were girls.

John Lewis got so much stick for being overly PC for non gendered kids clothing but this is the alternative.

This isn’t about gender or sexuality. And if it was that would be fine too. George thinks this is a T-shirt for him. He’s just a dude that likes unicorns. And lets face it as we saw on Tuesday night, lots of dudes want to be unicorns.

So why am I talking about this, other than to show pictures of my kid?

I was speaking to a male collegue who has come to some of these events. He mentioned how the first two speakers were men, Patrick and Ross. That was deliberate. They reflect our current structure as does the amazing Alison Rose. And both men believe and champion inclusivity because the see the value of it. HOW AMAZING IS THAT?

There was a comment yesterday from a brave guy from Microsoft, saying that he had been challenged on why he was going to a ‘women in tech’ event.

This isn’t a women in tech event, there are plenty of them and they are awesome.

Our title is GROWING INCLUSIVITY IN TECH.

We want the future growth to be inclusive of developing world.

We want future entrepreurship to be inclusive to reflect the world we live in.

We want education and careers to be inclusively to create and keep talent in great jobs.

We want to know ourselves and our own cognative biases so that we include all people into our teams.

We want inclusivity in our company structures and systems so they are flexible and fit the needs of all our talent.

But also…

I want inclusivity of our clothing rights and inclusivity for George to wear what the hell he likes and do a career that he chooses without it being labeled unmasculine.

I’m aware that, as a white middle class mother bringing my child up in the gentrified parts of Hackney, I have amazing privilege and being passionate about what George wears is the definition of a first world problem, especially when there is so much else going on in the world.

But I believe that a more inclusive society is for all and I’m determined to push for that in whatever small of big way.

One of my big motivations for this week was to get Plan International to speak about the very real opportunity that we have when we educate girls at a global scale economically, for society and for the environment.

A mythical, unique animal that is awesome,

Our unicorns may take different forms but we recognise them as the same.

WE ARE ALL UNICORNS!

And with that in mind I’d like to close the session by thanking these two unicorns.

Wincie has her inner unicorn going on it this picture, Burcu is well, just a unicorn.

A bit about this week and how it came about.

To both of you, thank you. Thank you for listening to my crazy plan to make this a 5 day thought leadership conference (yearh, sorry about that too) and thank you for everything you’ve done to make it happen..

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