Of women, politics and Machiavelli

“Truthfully speaking, the surest way to preserve such states is to ruin them. Whoever becomes lord of a city accustomed to living freely, and does not break down its political regime, must count on being overthrown by it, in the end”.

Nicholas Machiavelli.

For months I put aside a pre-sale book: Machiavelli for Women, by Stacey Vanek Smith. What do we have to learn from The Prince, in the workplace? One of the main lessons that Stacey Vanek collects, they take me to the workplace, but also to current politics and back, I quote it: Do not blink.

“Machiavelli thought that the inability (or reluctance) to see things as they were, was one of the main traps for princesses … to fully face reality is crucial, even for the smartest, or most prepared prince, because -the times are more powerful than our brains- “.

Just as we have seen today different governments, local and federal, tell stories that already sound repetitive:

• It is an inheritance from the past.
• They criticize / attack us because they are angry. (The same applies for the press as for the pharmaceutical industry or organized crime.)
• We are working, because every morning we have a meeting and we are on the lookout.
• Things are not like before.

No government or ruler is ever going to accept that he is doing things wrong, and Mexican men and women wonder how long the league of discourse will endure before the pull of reality: Zacatecas, Veracruz, Guanajuato, inflation, (no) purchase of medicines, the pandemic, etc … If we are not willing to see the horrible, both governments and citizens, things will remain bad, they will never change.

For women, Stacey applies it differently. We know that a very low percentage of women reach high positions of power. Those who arrive, despite recognizing what it took them to achieve it, tend to be uncomfortable with the discourse of the glass ceiling. They battled harder, they’ll tell themselves, but their male counterparts were highly competitive. However, data and studies support the horrible version: if there is a position that is applied for by two people with exactly the same experience with the only difference of gender, the job is more likely to be obtained by the man, and that the salary offer for him is greater. Understanding it is the only way to start changing it.

“To fight a monster, you need to know it,” says Vanek Smih, and with this sentence I close, because it keeps turning my head to how many areas of our life, personal and public, we could apply it.