For some relaxation this morning, I was watching the movie “The Imitation Game”, and the scene where the character Joan Clarke is treated dismissively - disbelievingly - over being a candidate for a code breaking job because she is a woman, combined with re-reading Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy (see here, here, and here), the vile comments by misogynists of late along the lines of “your body, my choice”, and my lived experience of multiple forms of discrimination, and it all coalesced into an understanding that western societies probably acheive no more than 10% of their human and economic potential because of misogyny, white supremacism, genocidal bigotry, unmanaged unconscious bias and all the other personal character flaws that are ignored, tolerated, or even encouraged (especially in military, paramilitary, authoritarian, and management/business schools).
The next time I read of or hear a politician or economist or influencer shooting their mouth off about productivity, I’m going to try to find a way to challenge their rubbish.
As some initial thoughts:
- ~50% of the population is female, and the pay gap is typically 15 - 30% so there is indication that society is losing 7.5 - 15% of its potential productivity;
- racism is costing the economy at least 3% of its GDP. I suspect that is very low, and note that 3% of Australia’s population are Indigenous with a life expectancy ~90% of non-Indigenous people - or, to put that another way, 3% of Australia’s population are experiencing at least a 10% loss of human potential, which is 0.3% of the total human potential, so I am going to class that as at least 3.3% unrealised potential;
- given that ~30% of Australia’s population have been born overseas, and 11-17% (say 14%) are LGBTQIASB+, making a gross simplifying assumption that the effects of anti-LGBTQIASB+ discrimination is the same as racism, that is 14/30 * 3 = 1.4% further loss;
- there appears to be around 7.5% loss of life expectancy for being autistic, and - again, making a grossly simplistic assumption - assuming that applies to the ~15% of people who are neurodiverse there is another 1.1% loss of GDP;
- if my profession was less sociopathic in its go-go-go macho culture, I could have probably worked for another 4 years - which would have been another 10% of my working life, so I am going to class ageism and abusive work culture as costing another 10% of human and economic potential.
So, without trying much, and ignoring the additional loss along the way from unmanaged unconscious bias and all other forms of bigotry/discrimination and the problems of using GDP/economy to measure anything, society is clearly losing 23.3 - 30.8% of its human and/or economic potential.
My snarky initial comment of 10% is probably too low, but I would not be surprised if we are achieving no more than 30% of our potential globally - issues such as global inequity & poverty, and war, rob the greater portion of humanity of a great deal ...
In fact, the world average per capita GDP is up to around $14,000, compared with ~$66,000 in my nation (Australia), so ... globally, the GDP is 22% of what it could be when compared to my nation’s underperforming numbers ... so 0.22 * 77 - 69 gives 15 - 17%, so my 10% was actually not too far off the mark, perhaps ...
The world GDP is ~70% of ours, and we’re doing no better than 70% of what we could without discrimination, so the world is performing at around 15% of its potential ...
And all because our work-economic-political systems are - and apologies for the crudity - effectively all based on competitive ****-swinging ... (which is hated by a lot of men, incidentally)
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(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).#PsychicABetterWorld and candles for Viva La Résistance à Tr_ mp! and may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical BPM
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