In which a sticker not only ignites the latent inner arts critic of your correspondent. It arouses her rampant, explicit feminist.

One of the four or five women I spoke to on the Web 2.0 Expo floor declined a “No man is an island” sticker with the rebuttal “I’m a woman.” I was dumbstruck, a rare occurrence when discussing Trampoline. Why did this matter so much to me?

First, it was a failure of a piece of work I’d done. That hurts. We created a material with which to engage people, and on this occasion it failed. A small minority of our target audience, admittedly, but it still sucks.

Now the second, overwhelming reason. I often ponder the disconnect between my personal and professional codes of conduct. On occasion the space between them is wider than I’d like, sometimes I am pleased by their convergence. Critics might argue that I should just be myself at all times – especially seen as Trampoline is meant to be an easy-going, do as you please type workplace, or be 100% corporate automaton – but that doesn’t fit here either. I do find the conflation of, or discrepancy between, work and personal behaviours interesting and a helpful lens at work: hardball for women, anyone? In fact, a core principle of Trampoline’s technology is that personal and work behaviours aren’t that dissimilar.

My current method is to push until I’m blue in the face about matters related to work on which I believe comment necessary. So I emit a constant mantra of “hire women, hire women” and try to call people out when they say something I consider offensive or derogatory to women. That’s because I believe having a woman-positive workplace is vital and that women-positive workplaces aren’t formed without effort from all involved.

But I am careful. I would hate anyone telling me to vote Boris (off topic, but it was very dispiriting to return from a Portland, Oregon so full of optimism for Obama, to a London run by the abhorrent Boris Johnson) so I in return I don’t ask anyone to sign petitions against the reduction of the time limit for legal abortion proposed in the amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. I would love it if you did, though. And besides, my begging quota is most effectively used at work for work stuff.

The Web 2.0 Expo stickers didn’t always bear the legend No Man is an Island. We mocked up an early version which read No man (or woman) is an island.

We nuked this version because:

a) it didn’t look clean enough

b) women were still an afterthought

c) it’s not a real quote

d) Donne’s habit of woman as land metaphor has always pained me

e) we’ve got the sisterhood, right?

I like to think that if we had used this version, the woman would have accepted the sticker. But, perhaps ironically, I still wouldn’t change it.

The use of he/she, man/woman is one crux of my personal and professional conduct conflict. I use “she”, rather than “he”, always in my personal life. In work, I try to use “she” first, then “he”. I don’t like “he” as a catch all but I’m not sure it’s right to use “she” throughout as our audience is primarily men and I don’t want to undermine the good impression Trampoline makes through a writing style that could alienate them. My compromise is to put women first. We’ve been second for too long. Incidentally, I encountered the only drop-down list of titles in online shopping I’ve ever seen at work. It was on Sainsbury’s supermarket. Depressing, much?

Moral of the story? I am glad that woman called Trampoline out and I wish I had an answer for her. Speaking up is always better than remaining quiet. At Portland airport on Sunday I saw a woman with a canvas bag that read “Speak your mind – even if your voice shakes”. These words are from Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Grey Panthers. I will now decline from the opportunity for a rounded, cosy “together we can change the world” conclusion. I’m not convinced it’s that easy, but I’d be pleased if you inferred that logic and acted accordingly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.