Here’s my belated post commemorating this important day
Last week week we celebrated an important and urgent topic. Treating women equally. International Women’s Day. Treating women equally to men is the goal, and I’ve written about what I think that looks like.
But every day we see what it doesn’t look like. And this is easy for me to write, because I’m a man, and I don’t see and feel the many ways women have it harder to make it through their days. I saw something recently, last week, that reminded me of the importance of this topic, and why we have work to do to achieve equality.
I ran right into that last Friday. I was listening to a new podcast about legendary business rivalries. The podcast is called Business Wars (I’m not linking to it because I don’t want to inadvertently send them traffic). During an episode on the Nike/Adidas rivalry there was a sponsor ad for Plated – one of the many meal delivery services.
The host of this podcast is a man. And this is how he described Plated’s offering:
“I was so impressed by the quality of the delivery, and my wife was blown away by the step-by-step instructions, the whole family was knocked out by the flavor…”
I had to skip back 30 seconds to listen to it again. Did I really just here this male remark at how his wife, and only his wife, was surprised by how easy this meal was to prepare? Isn’t that one of the gender stereotypes we’re trying to remove from daily life? The wife in the kitchen, the husband standing by?
I dashed off an email to Plated (the only address I could find was their customer support contact – help@plated.com) and to the podcast’s publisher, Wondery via their PR firm (jon@RLMPR.com also the only email address I could find). Here’s what I sent (could have edited it better, but I was pissed off and impatient):
And guess what? I got a machine generated auto-reply from Plated, and nothing from Jon Lindsay Phillips, who is the Executive Director of RLM Public Relations, listed as the media relations contact for Wondery. It’s been a week now.
I held off on writing this post until now to give either Plated or Wondery a chance to respond. Hoping to hear them acknowledge the mistake and vow to fix it. That was disappointing.
I’m no longer subscribing to Wondery’s podcasts and I have no interest in supporting companies like Plated who promote gender stereotypes.
The surprising thing is I had been pointed to Business Wars by Reid Hoffman’s “Masters of Scale” podcast, which is outstanding. And Reid Hoffman is someone who is a strident supporter of women’s equality. My next stop is to drop him a line. As an avid listener of his podcast, I expect to hear back pretty quickly.
Women have a hard enough time being treated fairly, without companies like Plated putting more obstacles in their way. Or rather, perpetuating obstacles that urgently need to be removed.
In the meantime, men and women can make dinner. And do. And men and women can support each other at home. And do.
Open Ambition 