Comments on: Is gender an issue in Transition?

By: Inez Aponte

Inez Aponte — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:37:34 +0000

Thanks for this insightful post. It touches on a very important issue and I am glad you have created an opening to begin addressing it. Traditionally feminine qualities have been demeaned and devalued for so long that it can be very threatening to even raise the issue for fear of seeming irrational. We need both the masculine and the feminine to work together. We need a balance between being and doing. We receive a lot of messages that value doing over being, leading to the kind of workaholic behaviour that causes burn out as well as serving to make access to our inner life inaccessible due to time and relationship constraints. I recently wrote a post about this which – though not explicitly about gender – may be of interest. http://somesmallholding.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/bridging-the-divide/

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:54:18 +0000

I’m a middle-aged, middle class white man heavily involved with Transition. One of the pleasures of working in Transition has been coming across so many good people doing good work. It is only articles like this that cause me to consider their gender, race or any other stereotype. Perhaps because I am who I am (and can’t help it) I find it difficult to imagine anything other than appreciating people for who they are and what they do. I can’t get too excited about “gender issues”. If I felt someone else had an issue, I’d try to help as best I could, but is gender really as important in Transition groups or leadership as the problems we are jointly, collectively, trying to tackle ? Having said that my local group has a predominance of very able, articulate and capable people who just happen to be female, so what does that mean or say ?