Yes, I agree. Institutional change matters and the personal is political as well. I've been an active trade unionist for many years and am happy to discuss that as well.bagpuss wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:47 amThere's room for both, in fact both are essential. As BoaF said, a lot of the day to day crap really are things that individuals can make a difference in. And as EPD said, often starting with the small stuff leads to bigger things.lpm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:44 pmNo. Stop. This thread is heading in completely the wrong direction. Turn around and go back.
When there's the stench of sewage in the Victorian streets, the answer isn't to go round encouraging individual action. "Don't empty your chamber pot out the window on market days". The answer is institutional change and pressuring the powerful to build a massive f.cking sewer to sort the sh.t once and for all.
Same as with climate change: the status quo powers love it when all the talk is about turning one's central heating down a degree and recycling the bottles. Anything that fails to challenge the structure is very welcome to them. We all fell for that one for years, let's not do it again.
The task of forcing institutional change can't be done by amateurs. Workplace inequality needs heavyweight professionals to build the necessary infrastructure. Getting men to volunteer to take minutes? Come on. Face the true size of the mountain and fight the proper fight.
Trade Unions were once the force that moved mountains in the workplace. They were sometimes notoriously sexist though. But that's the scale of the force that needs to be brought to bear. United pressure that challenges the very top of the organisation every single day.
Of course we need the top down too. It is hugely noticeable in my company how things are improving for everyone, not least women, under our current and relatively new CEO (a man, the female CEO we had before this one was a classic example of a woman getting to the top and doing the square root of f.ck all for all other women in the organisation). We now have a much higher proportion of women in senior and middling positions than in any company I've previously worked for, and many of them are the ones driving company strategy. We're still depressingly white dominated but I'm starting to see more non-white faces doing the presenting on all-company video calls so that's beginning to change too. The speed of change we've seen could never have been achieved without being driven from the top. But the day to day crap, that can definitely be changed by individuals just deciding to do things a bit differently.
BoaF's point about cigarette ends and bins is a good one too and I've seen similar myself with rubbish and litter bins in the park/on the beach. One person behaving better can pull others with them, especially people who want to be good and decent people but don't really bother thinking about stuff like this so would never do it themselves without an example in front of them.
Would people like a separate thread on what they can do to help achieve institutional change? I started this one with an emphasis upon what an individual reading the thread could start doing immediately. Unless someone here is actually one of the senior management institutional change is likely to be lengthy and more complicated. So to me it seems to deserve its own thread.