Marina Go on publishing’s diversity problem: ‘I look back and it just hasn’t changed’
The media suffers from a lack of diverse thinking and recycles the same ‘blokes’ over and over again, company director and author Marina Go has told an audience of publishers.
“It’s not just women, it’s diversity,” Go told the audience during a session on leadership at Mumbrella’s Publish conference on Thursday. “The problem with media is diverse thinking, so there’s a lot of recycling of the same dare I say ‘blokes’. I sit outside the media and I look back and it just hasn’t changed. So that’s the challenge.”
Company director and author Marina Go, Storyation co-founder Lauren Quaintance, Pacific Magazines CEO Gereurd Roberts and Isentia CEO Ed Harrison
Unfortunately for Marina Go all the stats on diversity in media say otherwise. So dare I say she recycled a cliche to sell a few more books.
She looks back amd it hasn’t changed? Ummm. Unless you have a time machine…you cant change the past.
Amd here is an idea for my fellow females (oxymoronically)
Stop the man bashing. Start tour own businesses. Ans seee what quotas balnaces and skills you need. And then…and onky then youbwill realise..the so called patriarchy is a distant myth..
Most modern businesses know what to do.
Byeeeee
As someone who has worked with Marina in the past, and who has only great respect for her and her abilities, I do find her comments a bit disingenuous, as I watched as she had one great opportunity extended to her after another that many of us – male and female – never did. She had a very fortunate run and is one of the luckier ones in our game. Marina is very talented, but her comment about recycling of the same ‘blokes’ is just not accurate. Most of the men we worked with across those years are no longer in the mag business, but many, many of the same women are. If she is sharing her insights, it might help if she was a bit more accurate.
Every man working for an organisation should be deeply concerned when their CEO confesses “But the reality is that it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is how [women] feel”.
An organisation either gives equal opportunities, according to objective criteria, and in the absence of adequate evidence to the contrary, or it doesn’t.
And leaders by definition put up their hand without needing to be 100% sure that their qualifications and experience are adequate.
How can you expect people to have the confidence to follow you into an uncertain future if you’ve prevaricated and required their re-assurance of your capabilities?
If you don’t believe in yourself why would others?