Another day another sense of wall meeting head!

Normal start to the day with Phoebe's walk in the park and then another day in the "office".

I am trying to be less  opinionated at work (I struggle to keep my mouth shut sometimes) on an "inspiring women" call.  I'm trying to campaign for running events/ activities for women to level the work playing field etc.

We talked about intersectionality and it was talked about in the sense of including everyone in the events and not making to overtly women only.   I asked if we could just check the definition of "Intersectionality" as my understanding of it is awareness and understanding on the combined/ cumulative effect of multiple social identities and groups that are subject to discrimination.  Anyways the Head of I&D then said well that's one definition.

Honestly I just about fell off my virtual chair.  It's the definition by the person who coined it and it's use in feminism (Kimberle Crenshaw) and in the dictionary so I struggle with this concept of different definitions.  If we can all just have our own definitions of words and meaning then how the hell do we communicate?

At the end of the meeting someone suggested that at the next meeting we invite a guy who is part of the wider gender equality network to give his opinion on what we are doing.  Queue falling off my seat the second time.  Are we really in a group talking about giving women the tools and techniques and support network to aid getting to equal and we want to invite a bloke in to get his opinion on what we are doing???

I am literally struggling to bite my tongue this time but conscious that some of the women in this group have been complaining about me being a source of conflict I was biting away.  I caved though and said that I actually didn't agree that that was the right thing to do and suggested that we continued to shape as a group first.  I actually think we should be then asking for the people we are doing this for what they think.

Perhaps it is me but some of these conversations just make me despair.

The rest of the day wasn't too bad - lots of work to do and I am also a bit concerned that maybe I shouldn't have booked the day off tomorrow.....I'll change my mind on that though in the morning :)