Working with several female clients this week reminded me that we have a way to go before women feel comfortable owning who we are in the workplace. Women have been working in large numbers for decades, and a great deal has changed. A great deal has not changed.
Laurie
Laurie was hired over a year ago at a large Silicon Valley tech firm; she is sure that her hire was part of their diversity program and attempts to bring women into tech. Credit to the companies who are making these efforts but hiring women does make room for females. Laurie works with five designers and developers in a collaborative teamwork model. She loves collaboration and their projects. It engages all her skills and has the potential to be enormously fulfilling with one exception. Laurie is the only woman on the team, and she is middle aged while the rest are young men. One team member, in particular, is dominant and will usher the team into an undisclosed location to work without including Laurie. Being dismissed like this has presented an enormous challenge for her and is making an otherwise perfect position, difficult. Laurie started to have medical concerns for the first time in her life. Not surprising, she has the earliest stage cervical cancer and lumps in her breasts both female conditions.
From an intuitive perspective, I see how Laurie’s work situation caused her to turn down the female creative energy in the body so not to upset her male team, to fit in better, etc. When women turn off or lower their female creative energy, the energy we use to create life, our bodies become unwell. The energy becomes too low not to mention the emotional stress of not expressing our femininity.
Kathy
Kathy was hired two years ago at a prestigious company in her dream position. She had moved across country so felt lucky to have created a perfect professional move. The first year was exciting and filled with success; then she started to experience the competition from her male colleagues. She was too young, too smart, too enthusiastic and too feminine. Kathy began to lose her enthusiasm for her work. Her relationship with her boss was not as it was before. Not coincidentally, Kathy was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue and chronic digestive problems. There are medical explanations for these conditions but as an intuitive, I saw the energy of her work shutting her down. The all-male team she worked with was not comfortable with her high-level female creative energy though they respected her enormously for her work. There was no one better with her skills. They just wanted her to fit into the culture (male energy level) established long ago. After a year or so, this resistance to her female creative energy began to affect her physically and emotionally.
I could tell more stories about professional women in work environments that respect their professional knowledge and experience but resist their femininity and the level of their female creative energy. The resistance to female energy (not women) is taking a toll on our health and our wellness. I do not have a solution except to raise awareness so that each of us, in her own way can create space for female energy in the workforce, to be able to bring all that we are to our work.
Women do have a unique creative energy that is not better or worse than male creative energy. Every family, community, government and business benefits from a balance of both male and female creative energies, we just not there yet. More importantly, for women to be well in body, mind and spirit, our female creative energy is essential, so we must create space for women to be well as they create the life they desire.