Shefaly Yogendra, PhD
About My Guest
Shefaly Yogendra, PhD is an internationally experienced strategist with experience of building organizations, brands, and culturally diverse teams. She has broad fiduciary and governance experience, and is also a trusted advisor with the experience of shaping the executive conversation on technology, risk, branding and growth.
Shefaly is a Non-Executive Director of JP Morgan US Smaller Companies Investment Trust (LSE: JUSC) where she chairs the Remuneration Committee, and of Temple Bar Investment Trust (LSE: TMPL). She is also an independent Governor of London Metropolitan University where she chairs the Audit Committee and earlier chaired the Governance Committee. Earlier she was the COO and an executive director of Ditto AI.
Shefaly was among the “100 Women to Watch” in the Female FTSE Board Report 2016 and holds a PhD in Political Decision Making from the University of Cambridge. She trained earlier in engineering, management, and technology policy.
Shervin Talieh:
To begin with, can you just introduce yourself?
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yes. I'm Shefaly Yogendra. I don't know how I'm qualified to talk about this except as a person who exists in this world as a woman. There is bound to have been a lot of experiences of misogyny. Some I registered, some I didn't register. I am occasionally told by my women friends that I don't register misogyny and sexist experiences, I do. But I am by temperament a more abstract thinker. So, I look at a situation and I try and understand it rather than be offended by it as my first reaction. So that's how we are talking about misogyny and sexism.
Shervin Talieh:
Well, and specifically, I think it's important that people understand the origin story. I had posted a question, and maybe we could talk about that, and how there's some connection between you and I through this small little online community called Telepath. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yeah. So, of course, you and I met on Telepath where you asked a question about wanting to understand and read more about sexism and misogyny that women experience. And obviously, as a very keen, always ready to teach person, I suggested to you that you ask some of the smart women on that community to talk about it in an experiential form. Because the lived experience is as valuable as the frameworks that people have put around this topic. And while we could all recommend a lot of books to you, it could be more interesting and more real I feel for you to hear from women like us whom you see as being articulate, educated, professional, doing well in life and everything, and still experiencing life in a way that is probably going to be difficult for you to imagine.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Because it's like oxygen, it's everywhere. And we just kind of walk through it, and we just function within it. And sometimes we are ready to fight back. And sometimes we just say, "Okay, this is what it is." We just have to ignore it. And sometimes we ourselves don't know that we are operating in a way that advances the cause of misogyny and sexism. It was with that kind of thought in the back of my head that I suggested you start this project and here we are.
Shervin Talieh:
I have to say before we get too deep into the actual content that I've received some feedback that the idea of a man hosting a conversation on this topic is sort of part of the problem itself. And I'd like to get your thoughts on that because in one of the exchanges that you and I had, you said something interesting about how... And I'm paraphrasing so you can correct me if I'm wrong here. But that there's sort of two schools of thought around sexism and misogyny and in one school men are strictly the perpetrators, and probably in another one, men are both the victims and the perpetrators, potentially. So, maybe we can just sort of, I'll leave it as an open ended subject. What are your thoughts about just me as a man asking you to help me understand this?
Shefaly Yogendra:
I think, for me, pretty much everything in life is a moment to teach and to learn. Whether someone's teaching us or we are teaching them. So I really don't think anyone has any monopoly on having a conversation. In fact, if anything, I hate groups that exclude people. So, for instance, there are loads of women in business kind of groups, which all get together and try and think about how to break the stronghold of men on C-level jobs or executive jobs or boards. And I say, "Well, actually, don't you want to get a man in the room so that they can tell you what is possible and not possible? And what we could do better? What we could do differently? How they could be our allies?"
Shefaly Yogendra:
So I find this idea of trying to solve a problem where two parties are involved, and only one party actually thinks it's worth their time to talk about. If men don't talk about sexism and misogyny, they are not going to be able to help challenge it. And equally, there is a lot of research which says that the minute men have daughters, they kind of their eyes are open to a very different world. Whereas, a more uncharitable way of putting it would be that they realize there is finally now somebody that they want to protect and the world they live in is full of people who are not going to treat that person very well. So, that's how men then turn some... They start to turn allies, but they are completely hamstrung by not really understanding what it means on a day to day basis to experience something like misogyny. They don't have the vocabulary to describe certain things that are happening, that they see.
Shefaly Yogendra:
If they do have the vocabulary somehow, they don't know what the right way to interrupt a situation might be. Because I have seen situations where somebody is being rude to a woman and another man steps in. And both the man and the woman in that interaction turn on the person who stepped in. That's a really hard situation to be in. You're trying to do the right thing. And you have no idea what their dynamic is. You just know that it doesn't look very good and healthy. So you step in to try and defuse the situation, and you get caught in the crossfire.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, I think from all of these perspectives, and I'm not one of those people who feel that the entire way we are going to solve this by pretending that men are the enemy. I don't remember who said this, but there's a very interesting line I read that the battle of sexes is never going to be resolved because there is too much fraternizing with the enemy. And I think it's the same with sexism and misogyny as well. There is not enough fraternizing with the enemy, so they don't remain your enemy any longer. So, as I probably said in our email exchange that I have a very... I have a fairly abstract view of this for various reasons.
Shefaly Yogendra:
One of them being that I was primarily socialized by my father. So I have a fairly benign view of men's ability to be kind and charitable and good listeners and affectionate and engaging and curious, and so on, in a way that people who are probably socialized by their female parents don't always have because where both parents are out there and alive they probably get given gender defined roles. I've seen with my friends families when they were overly out of control, or noisy, and their moms would say, "Wait till your dad gets home." It is that dad had the role to be a disciplinarian. Whereas, mom just declared that I wasn't going to be able to do this. So, he would be an escalation mechanism.
Shefaly Yogendra:
I really didn't see that dynamic growing up. So I have a very different view of the kind of possibilities men can bring. Whether they are parents or siblings or friends or colleagues. And I prefer to appeal to that possibility. And I also see this entire thing as a systemic construct rather than something one person perpetuates on another person. Because one of the other things I I feel strongly about is hurt people, hurt people. There is somewhere that difficult thinking comes from and it just gets perpetuated. Somebody has got to stop that cycle. And if not us, then who? That's the way I look at this. So to me, a man asking this, having this conversation with women to try and understand their points of view. It's a perfectly good conversation to have. I see no need to segregate the conversation as a women-only topic. This is a conversation that needs to involve men.
Shervin Talieh:
I really want to dive into a few things that you said. But before we do that, tell us, tell me, you just referenced your father. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where do you live today? What do you do? Maybe some more context.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yeah. So I was born in India. I grew up mostly in North India. But then my studies I did engineering and then management degrees. They took me to different cities across India. And then I was working in Calcutta and Bangalore and Bombay and then Delhi, before I took off for Europe. So I have lived in a fairly large number of cities in India. And then when I came to Europe, I moved around a little bit. And then I moved to the UK, where I've lived in six different cities, which often doesn't happen with migrants. Migrants in my observation kind of settle 20 miles where they first came.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, having gone around the houses, so to speak in these little islands, I'm now living in London, and I'm quite happy. This is my kind of city where you can get all the food you want. See all the art you want, have sufficient greenery as well as modernity, literally living cheek by jowl. And that's kind of like my journey of coming to London where I now live. But yes, I grew up mainly with my father being the primary parent because my mother passed away when I was four years old. So I'm very much my father's child. I know all girls like to say I am my dad's daughter. Yes, but I am really my father's child [inaudible 00:11:21].
Shervin Talieh:
And what is the thing you do professionally?
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, at the moment, I am a portfolio board director. I serve on two listed boards and fund management. And I'm also on the board of a university, but that role is called being a governor where I have also just started to chair the audit and risk committee. So those are the things that keep me busy. My background is in the tech industry where I started with corporate venturing. And then built a portfolio of work working with startups and mid-sized companies with their growth strategies and strategic investments looking at due diligence and digital leadership challenges.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Worked on projects for the European Commission, I did a fellowship in the parliament here. So quite a diverse range of private sector and public sector clients. And I also on the way collected a masters and a PhD from Cambridge. My master's is in technology policy, and my PhD is in decision making. So at the moment, I serve on three boards, and I haven't quite decided whether I want to be doing only boards work now or go for my preference, which is also to have an executive career for the next few years before I fully become what people here called plural.
Shervin Talieh:
What does that mean?
Shefaly Yogendra:
So plural generally means people build a portfolio of board positions and nonprofit interests and so on. The thing is that my entire career has been plural. So I kind of find the word very funny because to me it won't be a step change. It'll just be more of who I am, you know?
Shervin Talieh:
I see, I see. You said earlier that you referenced it, it being sexism and misogyny as sort of oxygen. It's all around you. And you sometimes you challenge it, other times you just sort of... I wouldn't say accept it, but just sort of work your way through it. What is it like to be... What does sexism look like to you today? How do you experience that today?
Shefaly Yogendra:
So today, I experience sexism in a very differently from what when I first noticed its existence.
Shervin Talieh:
When did you first notice?
Shefaly Yogendra:
Okay. So, as I was saying earlier, I was kind of socialized by my dad. And I was very used to doing things that a lot of other people don't get to do if they're girls growing up in North India. So if my father was doing some summer project, and in the middle of the day, in the middle of the project, his cigarettes ran out, he wouldn't hesitate to ask me to go get him some cigarettes. That's not common. It wasn't common then anyway. I used to go to the corner shop, get cigarettes, and that guy would duly write it down and my dad would go and settle accounts and so on. So, I kind of never thought that this is not something girls did.
Shefaly Yogendra:
I also grew up in a community where women always drank alcohol and the family didn't frown upon it. So that was also a different unusual thing. The family is made up of mainly female siblings, not mainly, entirely female siblings. So when you have only daughters, you are not going to be able to afford to not ask them to do some things for you. You can't do all the heavy lifting and outside work, and so on. Your daughters have to help you. Also, crucially, my father was very much about ensuring we became very independent in every sense of the word. So he didn't really discriminate very much between this is girl's work and this boy's work. I mean, there were no boys basically other than him.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, I arrived, I sort of learned about institutionalized sexism, that was my sort of first introduction. And I was at school leaving age. I wrote a highly competitive entrance exam to attend an engineering college. And when I arrived there, I learned... I mean, we had a final interview stage, it was called counseling. And when I arrived there, I realized that the college I was interested in had a women's quota of a certain number of seats. And I said, "Look, my rank in the competitive exam is high enough. I don't want to take a women's quota seat. This way, there'll be more women."
Shefaly Yogendra:
Although I was quite shocked that there was something like a women's quota. But then nonetheless said, "Well, I just want to be treated as a neutral person." So my rank was high enough for me to negotiate this. And finally, when I arrived in college, I found that the guys in my class were very dismissive of all women because they just thought, "Oh, but you came here because there was a girls quota. You were not good enough otherwise." And I remember very early on arriving in college headbutting some seniors and telling him that the quota was for 20 women. And our class had, I think, 25 or 26, which means at least six women were not on quota seats. And my rank was high enough. So I did not take a quota seat deliberately.
Shefaly Yogendra:
But it was a futile conversation because they had decided that we were inferior because somebody had to give us a seat out of a quota, which was just weird. The quota was created because they weren't enough women in engineering. It was not created because we were dumb. And now you fast forward to today's age, there is a huge hot debate whether women on boards need quotas in order to make it to board positions, and so on, and so forth. So anyway, back to the college thing. I experienced institutionalized sexism on both sides. One, of course, that I just described, but the other one was that women's hostel used to shut down at 8:00 PM. We had to be back because if we didn't we had to go around to the wardens entrance and apologize, and she would dress us down like we were two year olds. And then she would let us in. And then there would be a lot of gossip next day that you came back late, and so on, and so forth. Whereas the men's hospitals were open all night.
Shefaly Yogendra:
There was also an interesting thing that the library was open till 10:00 PM, whereas the women's hostel shut at 8:00 PM. There was a curfew at 8:00 PM. So women used to complain about the 8:00 PM door shut policy. Men used to complain that because their hostel shuts at 8:00 PM they come in and they take all the overnight issue books and clean out the shelves by 7:45. So we don't get any overnight books from the library. So both parties were experiencing something which was discriminatory, and which was entirely based on treating women as something delicate to be protected, and so on, and so forth.
Shefaly Yogendra:
But nobody was actually seeing that they were caught in the system, which while treating women as being something delicate to be protected, also treated the men as dispensable. They were also the same age as I was. I was 17. A lot of my classmates were 17. Are 17 year old boys not somebody's child? Did their mother's not worry that their sons were roaming around late at night without any protection? The idea that only girls can get hurt and boys can't get hurt. I mean, the entire thing should have been visible to people as a whole systemic thing that was hurting both men and women, but somehow also pitting them against each other.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So in the end, the library question was settled by shutting the library at 8:00 PM. Not by extending women's hostel's hours, mind you, because why would we? We are still trying to protect them. So the system left both parties worse off. They had fewer hours of library. We didn't get extra freedom. And we were still thinking of each other as the enemy. We had to be up against in arms. And it just that was really, and I was 17. As I said I was still quite a random abstract thinker and all and I was like, "This is just not on. This is wrong." That was my first taste of how institutionalized and structured sexism is around us. And because I had benevolent views about what men can offer and do offer, I saw both parties as kindly as I could, as victims of the same system. And I knew that even in my peer group, these views were radical at the time, and I sometimes feel they're still radical when I articulate them the way I just did.
Shervin Talieh:
Do you feel a sense of pushback on how charitable you are?
Shefaly Yogendra:
Sometimes because when you say men are also victims, there are two kinds of reactions. One is, of course, a reaction from women that men are not bigger victims than we are. But there's also pushback from men because they have been taught by the whole patriarchal system not to see themselves as weak or needing help or as victims of anything. So you get a pushback from both sides while you're trying to make a very different point saying, "The system that tells women that they are weak they need protection is the system that tells men, you are not allowed to be weak. You are not allowed to seek help. Here is your box, stay in it." Just as much as they put women in the box, they put men in the box as well.
Shefaly Yogendra:
That point is really very difficult to come in communicate in say, a social chitchat. But whenever I've had a stage to speak, so for instance, maybe a panel that I'm speaking at or a keynote I'm giving, I always make that point. And it does get noticed when it's put across that way. That's what keeps women behind what they can achieve. What keeps women, holds women back also holds men back. Because what frees women, that's the flip side, what frees women frees men. If women are free to indulge their ambition, to take big jobs, and earn lots of money without being penalized for their ambition, or their wealth, or their prosperity, or their search for excellence. It also gives men the permission not to have to be the sole breadwinner, or the person who must earn more than his spouse, or who must be the main bread earner. And who should never take a career break who should not enjoy his paternity leave.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, to me it's basic for people to understand what frees one party frees the other party. But this idea of men and women as counterparties in a fight is I think so deeply entrenched that when I do get pushback, it doesn't surprise me. I almost expect pushback. And then of course, there is the other line of argument. If you think you're equal, why don't you work in the army? Why don't you cut trees? Why don't you take a job at a construction site? Well, if I were a person who was going to do all of these things, I would have started along that line. I didn't set out to be a construction worker. I didn't set out to be somebody who breaks rocks for a living.
Shefaly Yogendra:
It is not that people who go into certain lines always have choices. But yes, those choices are also constrained by the agenda, people don't see that. They only want to hear the other side. So as fast as women could get into the army, loads of women did get into the army. I wasn't going to survive. I once tried to learn to shoot a rifle. I gave up after I had a blue shoulder because I don't have the body mass for the recoil. I learned the hard way that I wasn't going to make a very good soldier although I was quite old when I learned that. I was maybe 32 or something. But it was very quick for me to learn that I could not handle a rifle. The recoil was too much for my body size, just wasn't going to work. So there are those peculiarities, but at a serious level there is pushback from both sides.
Shervin Talieh:
How do you experience sexism today as a professional, as an executive, as someone with power and and title and authority? Because I would imagine there may be a misperception. I'll just speak for myself that as women go through life their experiences on some level probably never change, maybe like the cat calling and things like that. But there may be even more sinister or subtle forms of sexism that exist in ways that maybe it's even harder for someone like me to even understand or be aware of. Can you maybe touch on that?
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yeah, so that happens even now, definitely, and it's kind of amusing to me. I remember I attended a... There was some kind of event about technology boards or something in the offices of a big four consulting company here. So people were wearing their name badges. And within minutes of my arriving one random guy, I had no idea who he was. Of course, I could read his name and stuff had taken it upon him to tell me that on my badge it said Shefaly Yogendra, non-executive, JP Morgan US Smaller Companies, so I serve on the fund board. He said, "You realize that JP Morgan only hired you because you're not white, and you're a woman?" I said, "Well, then you are never going to get the job, are you? Because you can tan yourself. But I think [inaudible 00:25:55] operation are quite expensive and time consuming. And I turned on my heel and I went away.
Shefaly Yogendra:
But this kind of stuff, I can only deal with it because I have really cutting real time, real party, and a gift with insults, which I think I've mentioned one too often, or once too often on Telepath as well. So people say these kind of things, and they want to get a rise out of you. They wouldn't say this if this were another guy. But somehow they see that a woman with a job that they desire, or a company that they want to work in, somehow must have got it because she is a woman. And not because she is more educated, more qualified, more experienced, speaks more languages, has more worldly wisdom. All of that doesn't occur to them.
Shefaly Yogendra:
The sheer entitlement of I must get better things because I'm a guy, who are you taking things away from me, is everywhere. It's pretty much everywhere. So you are in the queue. As you probably know, the joke is that in Britain one person forms an orderly queue of one. So people are big on queuing up. But every now and then we come across as just too uptight about it. But also there are people who are queue breakers, and everybody just makes noises or raises their eyebrows. Nobody challenges queue breakers. But I recall being in the queue where somebody just cuts in front of me and says, "Oh, I didn't see you there." I said, "You clearly did because you are talking to me now."
Shefaly Yogendra:
But most of the times this kind of stuff happens more easily to women. If you just sit somewhere, say at a railway station somewhere just observe how many people cut queues in front of men. How many men cut in front of a man versus a woman? They will do it sooner to a woman. This kind of always present aggression, which is sexist in the way how it manifests is just quite tiring and very annoying. As I was saying earlier, some days we want to fight. Some days we want to fight for the whole of humankind. And some days we just don't want to do it because we have something else better in our mind. We don't want to spoil our mood, we don't want an argument with somebody we barely know. But it's quite common.
Shefaly Yogendra:
But in professional contexts, it mostly happens when a random man will come and do a drive by comment, make a drive by comment on me and my capabilities. Because what he sees is a non-white woman is quite frequent. I went to an NED award ceremony and I afterwards put that person's name down with the organizers to say, "Do not invite this man again if you want to keep this place welcome and open." There was a guy who came up to me, said similar stuff, and then gave me his card. The cheek of it, gave me his card and said, "Well if somebody is looking for a board position, board director with lots of experience of PR and communications, maybe you want to introduce me." He never asked my name. The lighting was poor, so he couldn't have read my name. At any rate, he wouldn't have remembered my name. But he had the gull to give me his card and say that I should recommend him to people after just insulting me. What kind of behavior is this? I don't understand.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So I took his card. There was somebody there who might know very well who's part of the organization that runs these awards. And I told her, "This is the person who just said this to me." And that person took the card, had a look at it and said, "Oh, I know who this is. Right. That's him off the guest list forever." So that did him a fat lot of good, didn't it? This entire thing. And this is so common that is not really worth fighting, but we are also aware that every time we don't fight we encourage someone. So sometimes it's not necessary to fight the person. It is better to go and do something systemically to ensure that that person's opportunities are curtailed because that's the only way they'll find out how they have hurt themselves.
Shefaly Yogendra:
I have no doubt that he has found a board position somewhere with similar people. But it is not going to be like the boards that I serve on because I know that these tables that I sit at now, I sit with people who are smart, who look past my gender, and my age, and my ethnicity, and look for my contribution. Otherwise, it would have been apparent to me in the first few weeks or months of working with them. And then I wouldn't last in those places. So I get to that table, I continue to sit at that table and make contributions and value addition at that table. Because I'm working with a set of people who don't have these views, which means there is a whole lot of other tables where I will never be invited, and I will never know that I'm not being invited. But it's persistence.
Shefaly Yogendra:
I don't feel very taken by it, by the way. Just, I mean, I also write quite a lot on Quora. And somebody asked a question on Quora Hindi. What is your key competitive advantage? And I answered it in Hindi, and I'm roughly translating it here. My main competitive advantage is self confidence that doesn't depend on external reward or criticism. So criticism doesn't break me and external reward, and medals and trophies don't make me feel any bigger of myself than I already do. But I know that that's rare, and that's not something everybody grows up with. But while I have it, it helps me cope with all of this nonsense around us.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, yes, I think the vocabulary is important. And I'm kind of more, I am about using words correctly. So sexism, while it has come to mean something that affects women is essentially about centralizing people's roles in society and life, etc, to their agenda. So sexism affects both men and women. Activities or roles or expectations can be sexist for women and for men. The expectation that the man will always earn more than the woman is a sexist expectation against the man. Because it limits him to what he can do, what freedoms he can exercise in his life and career choices and so on. An expectation which says that the mom is the one who always plan the childcare and dentist appointment, that's a sexist expectation of the mother, of the woman, and they both limit what each gender can do.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Misogyny as we know is implicit in the name is essentially hatred of people, hatred of women. So, to me, they are two different things and they are products of the same mean tree as it were. They're branches of the same tree called patriarchy, and patriarchy, although the roots are based on like they should mean about the dad or about the father. It is a system that values certain behaviors over other behaviors. So nurturing is less valuable than going out and winning wars. You would have noticed this as well. In business, a lot of the language and the metaphor is about warring and fighting and winning. And strategy itself is a word which has military roots. Whereas, anything that has to do with mentoring and people development and negotiation, we call them soft skills. They're really hard things, but we clearly put more premium on certain behaviors, certain attitudes than we do on others. And implicit in all of that is a patriarchal system that teaches us that these gendered behaviors are good. These are not good.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Of course, the way Coronavirus has been handled, for instance, has done a number on people because the countries, most of the countries that have coped with it very well have women leaders, or women are in charge of dealing with the Coronavirus response. And a lot of other countries that have very chest thumping, gorilla-like, very authoritarian, hyper masculine leaders, and that includes your country and mine, by the way, and we are not doing very well.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So who's to say where the actual value is? And of course, things are changing. There is enough evidence now to show that organizations that have more balanced leadership teams, more balanced boards, they do well. They make profit. They make profits more responsibly. They are more engaged in their community, their employees are happier. All those metrics are now available. So the case is being built. But we have to still remember that the economic case needs to be built because the value of women, core women, as human beings is something nobody is willing to build as a default in the thinking. That's why we have to make the economic case for having women on boards, having women in executive teams, or retaining women in the workforce. We don't hear these arguments about retaining mediocre men in large numbers in organizations. Because we assume that if a man is negotiating a pay hike or wants more money is because he's providing for a family. You see what I was saying about sexism trapping both people, both men and women?
Shervin Talieh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I was reading some of the topics on Quora that you are associated with and that you contribute to, obviously, it's a very wide range. But I came across this notion of the fourth wave.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yeah.
Shervin Talieh:
Could you... I think I described to you. I'm slowly sort of walking out of a cave here. What were the first three waves and what is the fourth wave?
Shefaly Yogendra:
So now I think you have kind of stumped me a little bit. The challenge for me for fourth wave feminism is that I didn't experience the waves the way the West has experienced. The Indian feminism is a very different school of feminism, as it were. And when I moved to live in the West, I had to kind of learn this lingo. I wasn't very bookish about reading on feminism. I still am not. So I've had to kind of learn things. But fourth wave feminism, and there's a boat called fourth wave, I think on Quora is essentially about the empowerment of women, but it focuses on intersectionality. And intersectionality is, of course, as you know the idea that nobody's experience is about one aspect of their individuality.
Shefaly Yogendra:
They have both social and political identities. And what they experience life as is an outcome of how all of those aspects of their personality experience life. So for instance, if I am a cisgendered woman, but nonwhite, my experiences are different from a cisgender woman who is white. But if I am a cisgender woman who is disabled, my experiences are also likely to align with the experiences of people who are disabled who are of either gender. So intersectionality is big in the fourth wave of thinking.
Shefaly Yogendra:
In the first and second waves people were... Women were mostly concentrating on the idea that women have individuality, they need freedom, they need equality. And they need equality as individuals. So those were the dominant ideas in the first and second wave. You will note that I have skipped the third wave because I couldn't possibly comment on something, which I have not deep degree of academic knowledge about. Most of my feminism is lived experience, and it is also gender inclusive. And it's basically an inclusive intersection of feminism. And I really count men in that as well because I really don't think that we can solve any problems that hurt women structurally by ignoring both the role men play and the impact it has on men.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, I think, if I recall correctly, my topic bio on feminism on Quora relates to this, that I'm not against men. I'm not about hating men, I'm not about excluding men from these spaces. I am about both men and women having to deal with this together to find a system that allows both men and women to excel and realize their potential and their desires and their wishes as they would want to.
Shervin Talieh:
So, maybe a tactical question along the lines. That was a really powerful framing. And I also appreciate how you just did something that I don't think... I'm going to make a generalization. I think a lot of men struggle with is sort of saying, "I don't know something." I know I struggle with that a great deal. And just hearing you not wanting to give what would not be an answer that they would pass your own scrutiny is very powerful. When I hear women talk about needing safe spaces where they can come together as women only to be able to address a topic. And for example at some companies, I know at our company there's a Slack channel, and for a while it was open. But recently there was a discussion about asking the men to leave that channel so that the women could work freely. What are your thoughts on that?
Shefaly Yogendra:
I think this idea of safe spaces is... Obviously, it's overarchingly contentious in some ways because there are safe spaces, which are our bubbles, or our cocoons, and we all find those spaces. So that we can take time out from the challenges of real life, recharge, think through things more calmly, and so on. I understand the need for safe spaces people have. And at the same time, I can see the argument against things such as trigger warnings, right? Trigger warnings are not to... They're just to warn people that something there is going to upset them or hurt them or remind them of something they have experienced and so on. But the fact remains, then unless we fix the world, we can create all the safe spaces we want, we will have to leave them at some point to deal with the world as it is, namely, an unsafe space.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So, I don't have any very firm views on it. But I am temperamentally more open and inclusive about problem solving. So that the problem solving doesn't happen in isolation. So one of the things that the whole Me Too Movement brought out was that I think men realized for the first time women operate whisper networks. It's like, if there is somebody, let's say in the VC community, or in politics or in academia. If there is a horrible professor or a terrible VC or a badly behaved professional colleague, all women will tell each other. They are not going to put it down in writing, they will just tell each other. They will step in and protect other women if they can, if they have the power and the opportunity. But we all know.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So when we are talking of safe spaces, we are probably talking more spaces that people are venting. They don't want to be restrained by, we mustn't say this because it will hurt somebody or it can create legal problems, and so on and so forth. But in the end, we do live in the unsafe space called the world. We can create the bubbles all we want, but we are not going to solve the problem inside the bubble. The bubble has to be left. We have to solve the unsafety problem in the unsafe space and make the whole space safe. And I know this sounds very idealistic and nonsensical. But we can all aim for something better.
Shefaly Yogendra:
If we make some progress every day, like this conversation we are having, you initiated it by asking for reading recommendations, right? So you took the first step. I then said, "Okay, why don't you consider this?" And you considered it. So we are already on our way to improving the spaces we occupy, and we don't even live in the same country. So we are already influencing the spaces that we occupy. I think we are reducing the unsafety in the world. We are making the spaces that we dwell in safe by default. And I think that's my goal. I don't want to create false assurances inside safe spaces. I want to make the whole space I occupy a safe space by default for everyone.
Shervin Talieh:
Wow. That's inspiring. I wanted to touch a little bit on just maybe a little bit of some open ended. Tell me something I don't know. Tell me as a 52 year old Iranian man living in the United States, CEO of a mid sized company. And I have been told recently that I really don't know anything.
Shefaly Yogendra:
[inaudible 00:45:09].
Shervin Talieh:
Yeah, no. Obviously, at first I was very defensive. But the more it has been pointed out to me, the more I've come to not necessarily fully accept or understand, but to be curious, at least, right? Because some of it, I think, for me comes, it could be cultural. Some of it is through my generation. I experienced privilege in my own ways. So given that what sort of immediate blind spots do you think I have? Or things that I don't know that I should know? And I'm asking you to sort of personally coach me a little bit here. What can you share with me?
Shefaly Yogendra:
This is an interesting thing where I think all of us are guilty of it to some extent. We don't always know how to calibrate correctly our impact on other people. And this cuts both ways. So for instance, I don't think most men realize how uncomfortable a lot of women feel when they're walking under a bridge, for instance, or they are the only person walking and the only person other person walking is a man walking behind them. I don't think men realize how that makes most women feel. If you're ever in that situation, maybe cross the road and be somewhere she can see you. I'm guessing you had not thought about it.
Shervin Talieh:
I had never thought about this until... It was almost 18 months ago I was at a hotel in DC. And I was seeing my son off to college and my oldest son and when I got back from dinner with him, I got into the elevator. And right after I got in another guest walked in. And as I turned around, I noticed that she was a female. And as luck would have it, we both press the same button. So we're both going to get off on the same floor. I noticed that when she figured out that we're both getting out on the same floor she positioned herself in the elevator in a way where she could see me at all times. My first read of that moment was, "Oh, I wonder if she recognizes me or she knows me," or something like that.
Shervin Talieh:
It was only as we were about to get out of the elevator that it dawned on me that this was a defensive posture. And then it was a question of who gets out first, and she wanted to know where I was going to be going on that floor. I thought about that night not so much because that night was any different from probably hundreds of other occurrences that I just was not aware of. But I thought about the night because it was something that I wish I'd known when I was 18.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Yeah. So, I think the meta point here is that the unsafe world we live in women expend an inordinate amount of mental bandwidth, energy, time, and money on assessing the safety of a situation. You might wonder where money comes into it. It's a very small thing. If I came back very late at night, I live in a very safe area. It's not a big deal. Loads of people walk back from the station. It's a seven or eight minute walk on foot. But I know that after it is around 8:38, 45, especially in the winter, in winter probably the cutoff is even seven o'clock. I mean, I could be making excuses for the cold but it's darker sooner.
Shefaly Yogendra:
So pretty much after sundown and a little bit of dark I take a cab. It's not a lot of money. It's five pounds. But think of how many such cabs I have taken over my lifetime. It adds up. And why are we doing this because while we are about to get off the train, you're thinking, "Okay, if I go is like this time. It's raining, then you wait outside for a cab. Sometimes you wait 15 minutes for a cab and you feel increasingly foolish that it's a seven minute walk, you're waiting here 15 minutes for a cab." So we're wasting time, right? But the amount of mental bandwidth that we spent trying to figure out if it is safe to do this or that is enormous.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Imagine if we built that safe world for everyone where we didn't have to spend all of this money and time and effort and energy, how much more productive and free all of us women would be? I have had this conversation occasionally with a few friends of mine. And to each of them, it came as a surprise. And then they recall the ones who have sisters, they recall, "Oh, yeah, my sister has said this to me before. I had never given it enough thought." So they wait for a friend to tell them because they are dismissing their own sisters and moms and aunts experiences as being unrepresentative, and they hear it from a completely unrelated party. They realize, "Oh, it is common. It happened to this person. This person who we see as bolshy and bold and courageous and everything. It happens to her as well."
Shefaly Yogendra:
So that would be my meta takeaway. If you just consider in every situation how unsafety, lack of safety arises for women, for instance, and for a lot of other people. For instance, we've been reading so much about racial brutality at the hands of law enforcement for young black men. There are situations where they are unsafe, where I'm not unsafe, and you are not unsafe. So when we think about, say intersectional experiences, we have to remember that there are places that are not safe for some people, they are safe for other people. Whether we cut that across the gender line, or we cut that across the race line or the age line. This is why I said earlier that I would rather not have safe spaces because my aim is to make the whole space around me as safe as I can. And if that means engagement, challenge, persuasion, arguments, protesting, all of it, then we bring it.
Shervin Talieh:
That is a profound and inspiring place to sort of wrap this conversation up, and I want to thank you for the gift that you've given me today. I didn't know what to expect, frankly. But you've given me a lot to think about, and I want to thank you for your time. And yeah, thank you so much.
Shefaly Yogendra:
Thank you for the conversation. I really enjoyed it. And I hope that we can bring these messages to people who would otherwise not have these opportunities. We have an opportunity because we know each other. We can talk to each other without feeling the need to be defensive or even offensive, really. But people don't have these opportunities. Good conversation, authentic conversation where people can be calm and collected about naturally more exciting conversations, questions are rare. Good conversations is rare. So I do hope that you will have more fun through the series and I will look forward to hearing the conversations you have with others. But thank you so much for asking me as your guest.
Shervin Talieh:
Of course, thank you.