In some ways , I feel like I have been prepared from a young age to “ hang with the boys ”. When I was seven years old my mom remarried and with that new marriage came an additional 3 older brothers to the one that I already had . ( I also have two amazing younger sisters , but this article is not about my expansive family tree ). If I wanted to be included in the games of my siblings I had to figure out a way to fit in . I used to spend my individual time practicing Mario Kart so that I wouldn ’ t be eliminated in the first round of the tournament with all my brothers .
Over the course of my educational and professional career as a worship leader and service producer , I have frequently found myself around tables where I am one of the only females . I was even told by a male colleague once that he sometimes would forget that I was a girl because I was just so good at hanging with the boys ( a nod to my youth ). As I experienced and absorbed the challenges of gender bias in my own career I started to advocate for the females around me , asking questions like “ who is the female on stage for that ?” or pointing out , “ there are all-male voices leading here , what women can we invite into this ?”
START A CONVERSATION I wish that I could say that all of these questions were met with excitement and an openness to change things up , adjust a decision , and make intentional space for the voice of a female leader around the table , but that frequently was not the case . So , I began to have more oneon-one conversations with the male leaders ( whom I respected very much ) about what I was seeing reflected in how we “ staffed ” what we were leading . One of them commented to me in one of these conversations that he just didn ’ t see many qualified females in the pool of people to choose from - a valid point of view . He asked what he could do about that - my challenge to him was to begin to do the work of coaching and training women so that the leadership landscape would be full of both qualified men and women . It is important that women don ’ t find themselves to be the only ones advocating for their own voices , we also need the men around us to advocate for a fuller representation of female voices .
What I have learned over the last two decades is that we all need to be doing the work of being more and more aware of the biases we carry when it comes to gender ( and race ) and how those biases influence how we see people and make decisions . These biases are sometimes obvious , but many of them are subconscious - reinforced by the culture around us , the