Matriarchy? Patriarchy? Is there REALLY a difference?

Welcome to (un)leaderly, the podcast that looks at the world through a leadership perspective. In this episode, host Barbara Iverson talks about the differences between Matriarchal and Patriarchal systems (spoiler: they're not the same system just led by different genders). She tells stories of her experiences with people who misunderstand the goals and who deliberately try to hold others back. 

Barbara tells stories from her life and looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. Every week she offers a challenge or task for listeners, to prompt reflection or growth. This podcast is the perfect listen for someone who feels like they don't quite fit to the typical leadership profile. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In a nutshell, we need to do better. Hello and welcome back to Unleaderly, the podcast that looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. My name is Barbara Iverson, and I'm your host. Today we're going to talk a bit about the differences between patriarchy and matriarchy and some of the traps that women, even with the best of intentions, fall into, and also men falling into those, uh, with a misunderstanding of the differences between patriarchy and matriarchy. So let's jump right in to the differences. And I took a look at a page written by Gretchen Lakshmi and appreciated very much some of the visuals and wording that she used. So I'm going to be referencing that a bit. My perspective comes from a lot of reading, a lot of listening. And if I get something wrong, please do send me a note, let me know. This is something I think a lot of us have become certainly more aware recently of naming the patriarchy. It was always there. This it's nothing new, but it's more of a topic of conversation now than I feel at any other time during my lifetime, at least that I'm aware of. And I know that cultural pieces like let's say the Barbie movie have raised this question a bit. And I know that there's a lot of misunderstandings. So I want to try to clarify some things for you. And if you're really interested in this subject, find out what's out there. And I don't mean ask AI. There's a lot written on the subject. There are a lot of books. Educate yourself. But I'm going to go through it now because I don't want to gatekeep this and I want to talk about it. Patriarchy and matriarchy are not the same systems, simply run by men or women. That a system run by men is a patriarchy and a system run by women is a matriarchy. That's not the case. I think that is one of the biggest misunderstandings. And it comes from the naming. Because of course, patriarchy stems from the word father, and matriarchy stems from the word mother, Latin. There's a bit of a misunderstanding about that. But let me break it down a little bit. If you think how can patriarchy be represented by a shape, it would be a triangle with the smallest point at the top and the widest point at the bottom. And that represents a system that relies on dominance, control, a lack of accountability, and in many cases abuse because of the lack of accountability and all the systems of control and dominance without compassion. So you've got a small number of people, generally men, at the top, and then it gets to be more and more people near the bottom. It doesn't mean that there are no women near the top, but generally speaking, there are not women at the very top of patriarchal structures. There are women who get near the top through marriage, inheritance, or what she may believe to be more masculine behaviors, becoming one of the guys at work or insulating herself near those sources of power. But generally speaking, patriarchal systems do not tolerate women getting to the top on their own. And one way you can see this is the fact that in the United States, it wasn't until the early 1970s that, for instance, a woman could have a bank account or a credit card in her own name without a man's, specifically a father or husband, attached to it. So women were not able to build wealth in their own names in the United States until very recently. So power moves from the bottom to the top, from the many to the very few. It's exploitive. Again, it's dominating without compassion. Hierarchy is normal, and strength, specifically male strength, shows no vulnerability. Now, here's where some of the traps lie. I think this system is pretty easy to see how it dominates women, but it also dominates men who do not display this control, power at any cost, power without compassion, this power over idea, and also abusers. So people, men who are not that way, do not find themselves in the top echelons of a patriarchal system. And in fact, many men who do reach the top, if they're not sociopaths, they don't have an outlet for those feelings of vulnerability or those emotions. Boys are taught from a young age not to show emotions, almost as if they don't have them, which becomes very confusing because emotions are not something we can generally control. They come up and then we have to deal with them before they become behaviors. But emotions are really natural parts of our human existence. So men in the patriarchy are also trapped by the expectations of what manhood or masculinity look like. Women are exploited and dominated in this system. Men who do not fit the stereotypes of masculinity are exploited and dominated in this system. And anyone, of course, who does not fit into the typical male-female binary of gender, also gets lost and is in and is dominated. This is not a fun system to find yourself in. And it is not a fun system that we find ourselves in now. And that's why there's a lot of pushback and a lot of questions about this. But let's compare it to matriarchy. So a matriarchal system, if you think of a shape to represent it, instead of the triangle of patriarchy, think of matriarchy as a circle. That the power instead of dominance comes through inclusion. That leadership does not mean domination, but it means reciprocity and responsibility. So there are accountability structures built into a matriarchal community or structure. There is caretaking, there's mutual accountability, there's resource resource sharing. So people are not fighting their way, clawing their way to the top of this triangle. Instead, they're looking at the people to their left and their right, and they're saying, What do you need? How can we make sure that we provide for you? I've heard this described as a gift culture. Whereas capitalism, colonialism are great ways to understand patriarchy because you have power over a gift economy is one that says, What do you need? How can we provide it? It is a redistribution of wealth, but not this idea of simply taking from others as some kind of punishment. No, it's the idea that everyone has that what resources we have we share. It doesn't mean there aren't people who have more or less than others, but people have what they need. They have ways to reach their potential. The power isn't hoarded, it's circulated. So there can also be power that someone has more at one time and less at another. It's shared with the belief that people are there to take care of each other, and the person who has and can exert some sort of power or authority at that moment is not looking to lord it over others, but is using that power and authority to do good things for everyone because they can. Which is also something that you see very often in nature that there are interconnected systems, they thrive off of each other and they support each other and they anchor each other. I did some reading a few years ago into trees and how trees in a healthy forest behave and grow. And it was so interesting because their root systems connect them, the water and the sugars that move through the trees, they can essentially talk to each other and they know what's happening around them. And when a tree grows old and is taking up a large part of the canopy because it has so many branches and so many leaves, it's actually time for that tree to die in the sense of no longer reaching toward the sky, but instead become something that lies on the ground and feeds not only the other trees, but also insects, animals, fungi, other organisms within that healthy forest ecosystem. So you have this idea, and also when when a tree comes down, then there's room in the canopy for sun to come in, and those younger trees can then grow and they can grow quickly because they suddenly have more resources than they had before. So if we think of matriarchy more like that, it's about everyone is equal. It is not about women over men in a matriarchal system, by the way. It's not that you have these, there's not a sense of inequality. There's not a sense of holding one people group back because of their gender or because of the color of their skin or whatever. So I think it's important to consider at this moment that when discussing matriarchies and patriarchies, first of all, many people, usually probably men, will stumble on the names. And I had a discussion with my partner yesterday about this. And he said, couldn't we just use different names? Because I feel like these names are not really helpful. And I said, Really? Like having something moving toward a society that's named for a woman is somehow super problematic. And he was like, Well, okay, no. I think it's also natural when people have never lived or seen this kind of system to have the question, okay, are there any matriarchies? Like we have this definition. Do any exist? Where's my example? And the thing, first of all, that you have to remember is patriarchy is supported by colonial and capitalistic systems. And that is what we have in the Western world. There are tiny little pockets here and there of indid of indigenous groups that had or have matriarchal or more matrilineal, meaning like the line of succession goes through women. Societies that are more, let's say, have more women at the top, but it's not actually truly make matriarchal. And to that I want to say, of course we don't. This the patriarchy is a system that most all of us have grown up with, and it's the only one that we know. And if we're gonna change it, we don't actually know what we're going toward or what we can go toward as a matriarchal system. But we don't have a clear example. We don't have something to say, like, yeah, they did it and they were super successful. Wow, look at how great that was. Because that's just not our reality. We have to have the courage to say this is what we want and we want to move forward with it. And the only we can way we can do that is to shatter what we have and start over again. But isn't it great that we have a blueprint? I was also thinking recently about the the fact that there have been, of course, women leaders of countries, national leaders on the world stage. And some of them lean more toward the patriarchy, like leaned way into the patriarchy, embraced it, and others went about things a little bit more toward the matriarchal side. So, one example that I would say very quickly came to mind for women who made it in a patriarchal system to the very top, and that would be Margaret Thatcher in the UK. But if you think about her, if you know anything about her, the nickname was The Iron Lady. She was not known for looking out for all of the people in society. She talked about the medicine, the ways that the company or the sorry, that the country had had to go through some hard times to get to the other side, but she did that through a lot of destruction, and she did that through breaking down systems like unions that had existed for a long time as a way to provide equity, equality, and more meeting the needs of more people. And she was very much embracing the more patriarchal, colonial, capitalistic systems and power through force and authority by taking. As a sideline, I of course did not really know her, but I know from biographies and from things that I've seen that she didn't really like women very much. She really wanted to identify more with men. She aspired to be like men, maybe not in every area of her life, but certainly in her career. She's one I would actually say when I think of Hillary Clinton, I I kind of put her more toward the patriarchy than a matriarchy. And I'd I'd love to hear from people who are like, no, absolutely not. She's all the way on the other side. I just my sense from her is that she sees this patriarchal system and is trying to work within it, but she's still playing by patriarchal rules. I'm I would be interested to know what you think about that. On the flip side, the person who first came to mind as someone who has been on the world stage and governed in a bit more of a matriarchal way, would be Yacinda Ardarn in New Zealand. And she was a lot more collaborative. She, at least from the outside, hey, New Zealanders, if you want to disagree with me and tell me I'm all wrong, please do so. But from the outside, she seemed to be a woman who is extremely capable and extremely uh collaborative in her work and really interested in having systems of accountability and I think leaning a little bit more toward the matriarchal way of thinking than the patriarchal. Please, New Zealanders, tell me what you think. I also Googled this because I was curious what uh Google and AI would tell me, and they all they listed, or it listed, it's not an A, it's a that, it's an it. It listed Angela Merkel from Germany as a matriarchal, which I would not say from my experience of her. I think she was nicknamed Mutti, meaning like mom or mother by the Germans. She had a humble approach in the sense that she was willing to change her mind with new and better information, and she often took a much longer view than a shorter view. Hmm. But I'm not sure that I would say that she leaned into matriarchal systems. Germans, I'd love to hear from you on this. That's my take on it. And of course, she was in a more conservative party that is very male-heavy, um, and not always concerned with the seeking to elevate the potential of women and seeking equality. Anyway, those are a few examples to try to shift your mind a little. And again, we can't examine a matriarchy that works because the world has been controlled through colonization and capitalism for a very long time. If you Google this, you will find a few. There's one in China, one in Costa Rica mentioned, where it's a more women-led, but it's not necessarily a matriarchy because, again, I'm sure that they're feeling pressure from like unless they're completely, completely isolated, they would still have pressure from colonialist and capitalist systems breathing down their neck and insisting on the hierarchies and power over structures that we all suffer under. So I've had experiences where I think a misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding of patriarchy and matriarchy was at play. And I want to tell you about a couple of them to illuminate the problem that we have even among people who desire change. So at one of my jobs, I was part of a women in the workplace task force, uh a women's working group. And there were I was a senior manager, and there were directors and other senior managers and also senior individual contributors. It was a group of women who had a lot of experience, a variety of ages, and it uh we had come together and the CEO had blessed it, given us a small budget. We had come together to try to figure out what was going well and what needed attention in the company. So we went about it with our own ideas. We also took a survey. Some of these things really led to some tensions because when we did the women's survey, there were people who were like, we should be asking the men these things too, if they feel safe. And I was like, uh, yeah, I think that's worthy, but I think we have to start like if we start as a women's group with a survey for everyone, won't that be a little bit confusing to women? Like, we don't, we don't not want men's voices, but we need to, why shouldn't we start with the women? Anyway, we had this group of there were seven or eight of us. We decided to have a workshop day because it was really hard having Teams calls with finding a time for all of us. So we planned multiple weeks ahead that everybody would come to that to the city where the headquarters was and we would spend a full day together. And then, you know, we would have dinner that night and make it sort of a full day fun. Let's really get to know each other and look for ways forward together. So we sat together in this room and we were there for a full day, and we'd actually invited the founder of the company, who is a woman. This was never advertised, either internally or externally at the firm, which really boggled my mind. I remember my first interview with a recruiter when he mentioned it to me. I said, This is not on the website anywhere. Why? And he said, uh, I don't actually know. Very, very confusing. But she had left to pursue other interests, and her husband had taken over as CEO. So that was the one who we were reporting to as a woman's group. But we we asked her some questions about what some of her goals were when she was the CEO and even in founding a company that was a tech company. So we asked her a bunch of questions, and she said that during her time, they had gotten close to a 50-50 women to men ratio. But she had left the company at least five years before, and that was the time of massive growth. And it was primarily men. So by the time I was working there, it was about a 65-35 male to female ratio. And if not, if not actually more on the male side. Okay, so let's talk about what we are wanting to do. And the thing that we heard time and again from women just in casual conversation or in interviews or through our survey was there was a feeling of a lack of representation at the highest levels. There was no one in the C-suite who was a woman. And there were two direct, there had been two female directors, but one had left the company and there was only one left. And that woman was actually in this task force, although she wasn't present at the workshop that day, but that doesn't really matter. So women had said they wanted more representation. So at that point, there were about there was about one woman for around 12 directors, if not more. And that was simply unacceptable. So okay. Then the question became what do we want to aim for not only from a director or leadership level, what do we also what do we want for an employee ratio? So we were at 65, 35, generously. What what did we want to aim for? And the women all said, um, yeah, 50-50, yeah, 50-50. And I said, um, okay, but what if we aimed for forty-sixty men to women? When I tell you that room exploded, that is an understatement. Because suddenly all of these women who I thought were serious and knew something about systems and structures and equity and and all those things, suddenly they all turned on me saying, We can't possibly do that. Are you kidding? Then we would be just like them. They were horrified, and I was shouted down immediately. And I found myself sitting there saying, What are we even doing? What is happening? That a room full of accomplished, intelligent, by any measure successful women in a tech business, not all tech positions, but in a tech business, what's going on? That we are so I say we generously because I don't include myself in this, but that we as a group are terrified to push the envelope and say we want to move past 50-50 and at least aim for 40-60 in favor of women in this workplace. Why are we so afraid of that? And I think the clear reasoning that was trapping them was exemplified in the comment: if we do that, we'll be just like them. And to me, that crystallizes the misunderstanding between a patriarchy and a matriarchy. When women run things, they tend toward systems of circles and accountability, compassion, empathy, and inclusion. Not all women. But when women as a group take over, that is definitely the tendency. And especially when they understand matriarchal systems and they have the power to enact them, they tend to. Keep in mind when I say this, I'm thinking of not nations. I'm thinking about organizations, I'm thinking about communities, I'm thinking about much smaller scale. So if you're thinking to yourself, wait a minute, I thought you said these don't exist. They do on a very small scale. So that's what I'm referring to. Women who don't are usually caught in those patriarchal systems and are just trying to claw their way as close to the top as they can possibly get. And no man really is gonna let her, but she's gonna try. So she will step on women and men on the way up there, but she's playing within a patriarchal system because she has no choice. So here I was in this room full of women who truly seem to believe that if women were in control or had, I'm just saying higher employee numbers. I'm not even saying we weren't even talking about leadership numbers. We were simply talking about talking about the number of employees in the firm. And because my feeling was if you want to be able to promote women into these leadership positions, you need to have more women available to you to be able to do that. Because otherwise, you do run the risk of promoting somebody who has a lot less experience. And then what happens? Well, all the men who are still in control point and say, huh? See, we shouldn't have done that. She wasn't ready. All I wanted was even to aim for higher, believing that a greater pool of people, of women available for those promotions into higher levels would be necessary to actually find them. And that was scandalous. And it comes out of a complete misunderstanding of what happens when women actually have the opportunity to be in charge. And honestly, that isn't even what I was talking about. So it was so wild to me. And I wish I could say that I talked to all of them and explained how matriarchy and patriarchy were different. And even the fact that I actually wasn't even talking about a matriarchal system. I was actually just talking about having a greater pool of candidates. But sad to say, I didn't. I didn't feel confident in my own knowledge of those systems to actually be able to push back. And it still seems like a missed opportunity because I think what many of those women actually needed was some education and some understanding because there were women in that room. And I learned this even more over time. When this workshop took place, I'd only been at the company about six months. Over the next months, I actually discovered that one of the women on that task force was actually nothing close to a feminist. She was terrified of excluding men. And she was actually one of those women caught in a patriarchal system, completely unaware of it, but so concerned for saving her job, so concerned for looking out for herself that she was not actually interested in the voices of the people whose voices like she was her position in the company was to listen to those voices and to make change happen, to push transformation. But did she do it? No. She was just like a like a homeroom teacher, like a like a powerless marriage counselor who nobody really trusts. And she would just hear problems and gossip about them. But you know what? This isn't about her. It's simply that you never know what's going on, and how women can actually cut each other off at the knees, whether it's intentional or not. Because they simply are not aware and they're afraid. And I think that's normal. And what it takes is what I didn't do then, but I'm trying to do it now. And that is a bit of education and a bit of saying, hold up, everybody, before we panic. That's not how this works. If there are more women than men in this company, it is not automatically some sort of screwed up version of a women-led patriarchy. No, that's not what is going to happen. It's not the natural occurrence were there to be more women than men at this company. Alongside that, let's also agree that a majority women company is not an abomination. Women have worked in majority men companies from the beginning of working. And somehow a women-led a woman-led company, a majority women employee company is this thing that men should be terrified of. Why is that? Is it because they think that we would we would suddenly do to them what they've been doing to us, and that's why they're so afraid? Huh. Well, that's interesting. So they know that they've been treating us and other people in their community poorly, and they're so afraid of losing power because they think that we would reciprocate and do to them what they had done to us. Wow. That means that they know that they are doing harm and they are terrified that harm will be done to them. But most women I know are not interested in enacting punitive behaviors or structures or actions onto these men. They're not. They're interested in benefiting everybody and seeing potential and helping everyone rise because that's what happens. When women are elevated, everyone is elevated. And you know, as if a company is saying we are going to focus on hiring qualified and excellent women into these positions. We are actively actively going to be looking for women for these positions. Men can choose to stay or not. If you work at a company and you decide that it's not acceptable, some of the practices, some of the missions, some of the values of the company, you are always able to leave. And I know when you depend on that paycheck, that's a very hard decision to make, but it's one people make every day. And if these men are so amazing, shouldn't they have an easy job finding something somewhere else? I would think so. A guy I know used to work at the at the UN and he worked in the section that was setting up and running refugee camps. I don't actually know the name of the section of the UN he worked for. And um, as I tell this story, if you know more information about this, or again, if I'm completely wrong, but if I'm completely wrong, you're gonna actually need to talk to him. But I tried to look online for information about this, and I think it was probably partly because I didn't have all the terms that I might need have needed to be able to search for it. There also may not be a lot of external information written about this. It may be mostly internal at this part of the UN. But anyway, what he told me was that the UN, this section looked around, I think in the 80s or early 90s, and they said, we have a problem. There are a lot of women in this section, but they are all or primarily in the secretary or assistant category or title. And we want there to be women at more levels of leadership in our section. So they came up with a plan to say we want to promote from within and we want to develop these women to give them opportunities within the section, but we're gonna train them, we're gonna give them learning opportunities, whatever coaching they need. And we will only promote a man if a woman is also being promoted at the same time, not into the same roles, but within the section. So say there's 10,000 people in this section. If a man is ready for a promotion, but there's no woman who could also be promoted, they will wait. They would they did wait to promote that man. And what they saw over time, now this took a big commitment, but what they saw over time was that it worked. There weren't fewer men in getting promoted, but there were more women getting promoted. Men weren't being denied promotions, they just had to wait. So those men actually had motivation to have women promoted as well, because they couldn't get promoted without a woman being promoted. So everybody had to work together in order to achieve this. And they did. They found it took a while too. He said, I think it was either five or 10 years for it to happen, for this, for it to become a much more equal, equal gender leadership within the section. Took a lot of time, but it happened. But it's because they decided on a system and took the heat that I am sure they received on some levels. But the guy that was telling me the story said, you know, we were really fortunate because the director was fully behind this system and said, This is what we're doing, and I'm not gonna hear any no's. This is what we're doing. And they did, and it was successful. Amazing. On the flip side of that, I worked at a university where there were a ton of different boards and advisory panels and whatnot associated with the university. And it seemed like around every year another one of these panels was revealed, and they usually were male-heavy. And I remember there was an unveiling of one directly after a big all hands sort of coached session where a lot of the women were saying, I don't feel seen, I don't feel heard, I don't feel comfortable, something needs to change. And then within a couple of weeks, this panel was revealed. And it was all men. And it was founders. It was not just local in Berlin, it was around the country. I think it actually was beyond Germany as well. And I had to go to the founders and say, you know, the optics of this are not great, especially considering the what came out in that recent meeting. And they said to me, Well, you know, we looked for women, but we have standards and there just aren't women founders who meet those standards. And I looked at them and I said, then maybe it's time to change those standards. Now, hear me well. I didn't mean lower your standards, I meant change them. Because if no woman can fit into your standards, you've probably created standards based on your experience as a male founder. Because that's what they were. Three male founders. And there had been women founders who had consulted, who'd taught, who'd been part of the university in some aspect, and many of them were extremely frustrated. And I remember one telling me, we had a great conversation, and I said, I hope you're gonna be around here longer. I think you would be really inspiring for the young women who are studying here. And she said, I won't be. I know that they're not gonna renew my contract. And I was really surprised and said, Why? And she said, Because I'm not their kind of founder. I went about things a different way. I've been successful, but I don't look the way they do. I didn't do things the way they did, and I don't look how they do. So they're not gonna renew this. And that was one of the things that came into my mind when they said they don't that there were no women founders who met their standards. And they were, of course, shocked and bothered that I would say change your standards, but that is what needs to happen. If you can't find enough diverse voices for your panel or your board, maybe you need to ask yourself, are we actually looking for people who look different than other than us so that we have a variety of people seated at this table? Or are we only looking for people who look, sound, think, and behave like we do? Because the chances are that's what you're doing. And by the way, this is what happens when people start talking about a meritocracy. Because this is always the word that gets trumpeted when you talk about standards or when you talk about giving people a seat at the table, making sure all voices are there and can be heard, and people will throw around the word meritocracy. But you know what? Meritocracy is bull crap. It's nonsense, it's absolute nonsense because a meritocracy is based on a set of standards created by someone. And you have to ask yourself: were those standards created to find people who look like them, think like them, sound like them, behave like them? Most likely, yes. Because they think of themselves as having merit. And so, of course, they will want people like themselves because if they look for something else, wouldn't that mean that they don't have merit? I mean, do you see how circular this is? It's a bit bananas. But all of these are systems to keep certain voices out and to justify them. And you know what? It's not justified. Last quick story a company I worked in was asked to do the compensation and benefits section was asked to do a report on what did the gender pay gap at this company look like. And by the way, this was a company that had announced the year before that there was no gender pay gap. And so therefore, you know, just because you say it doesn't make it true. And n there hadn't been any actual numbers published before, so the women were saying, we want to take a look at this. A report was put together, and there was a woman at a high level in the company who looked at it and said, There's something wrong with these numbers because it's listing only one female director, and that she's making more money actually than any of the men. She said, And I'm the only female director in this company at this moment, and I am not making more than the other directors. Huh. So I went to the comp and Ben department and said, Hey, I need someone to explain this to me. And the manager sent me to the guy who'd put the report, the spreadsheet together. And he said, Oh, yeah, well, so that director is actually not the one who's still at the company. Um, that director is actually the head of HR who doesn't work here anymore, but it got a massive severance package because she was making a lot of noise about being fired without cause. And I said, So where's the other director? They said, Well, they've she's called director, but with our new bands and definitions, she doesn't actually fit that. I said, Has anyone told her that? Well, no. Okay. I said, so how come this so the so what you're telling me is this is wrong? And he said, Well, I did the report and the numbers looked really bad. And so I went to my boss. So this was a man, went to his boss, a man, who said, Ooh, this looks really bad. Let's go to the head of HR, the current head of HR, also a man, who said, Ooh, that looks really bad. We need to change that. So they did. They fudged the numbers, they redefined titles, and they came up with something that they thought, look, this shows how well women are doing at this company. But also because they did things like making separating executive assistant from chief of staff, even though it was women in the executive assistant, far worse pay than the chief of staff, always a man, always better pay, even though their tasks were exactly the same. Cool. So this is what you also have. Companies who are willing to fudging numbers is a really kind and generous way of saying falsify information and provide misleading, outright false information and data. Changes come very difficult when s when companies and organizations behave like this. So what do we do with this? Well, it does start with educating ourselves about things like the difference between matriarchy and patriarchy, to understand that matriarchy isn't the same as a patriarchy just run by women, and that patriarchy damages everyone caught in its web. And also to say we need to educate each other in those moments of poor information or misleading decisions about information. In a nutshell, we need to do better. We need to do better for ourselves and for the all of the people in our organizations because everyone is affected. It's not just the women, it's not just the men. So your challenge today. And oh, by the way, I did say to the guy who put together the spreadsheet, you know, there are problems in this company, and we can't actually fix anything if we don't know what the true numbers are. To which he nodded and said, Yeah, you're absolutely right. Great. All right, so your challenge, think about ways that you have seen similar things. Either women fighting against movements to elevate other women or even themselves, where you have seen women caught in the net of patriarchy and making poor decisions or trying to hold other women back. Or men who've created what they would call a meritocracy that instead is simply reward a system to reward people who look like them, sound like them, think like them, behave like them. Think about those times for yourself. And maybe you're like me and you missed an opportunity to say something that might change things. That happens. But what will you do in the future now that maybe you know a little bit more than you did before you took a listen? Or maybe what I've shared with you isn't enough, but you are interested and you're gonna look into this some more, fantastic. But how is your response when these things come up gonna change? Because once you know better, you need to do better. And I say that to myself as well. I know better now. I know how to talk about patriarchy and matriarchy in a way that could call out that sort of fear and unwillingness to take those important risks for what they were. So that's your challenge for today, and it's a challenge for me as well. What are we gonna do different now that we know better? Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, big thanks to Lilia Keys for our intro and outro music. Till next time. Take care.