Jenean Merkel Perelstein is a Sociocultural Anthropologist who has implemented change strategies that have saved lives and made fortunes – from the prisons of India to the boardrooms of the United States. In this work, she has discovered a lot about how the male-defined structure of the workplace has stifled women’s creative genius. As she says, the way we force women to prescribe to an environment that was not built for their success is “like taking a champion swimmer and asking them to go swim a race with one hand tied to their side.” And companies are missing out… on revenue, on productivity, and on experiencing the true power of female leadership.
We had such a lovely chat. There is such a beautiful intersection between my work and hers.
Click HERE to listen to the interview
Some of the topics we dove into are:
- the validation and relief of realizing and understanding Patriarchy Stress Disorder
- why confronting the patriarchy is the only way to level up from surviving to thriving
- how we are grappling with the wounds created by the women before us not being allowed to realize their complete potential
- how patriarchy manifests in the subconscious of companies and organizations
- how the idea of professionalism is created around masculine ideals and how feminine traits are labeled as unprofessional
- how women are subliminally instructed that they cannot show up as their true, authentic selves in the workplace
- how to identify where you’re playing the old game, and imagine what playing the new game will look like
- how successful hormones oxytocin and adrenaline shows up in the workplace, and how this chemical affects women vs men
- how workplace structures have been built to support men but not to support women, and what the optimal workplace situations are for women’s success
- how patriarchy flies under the radar of well-meaning male leadership and why it’s such a loss to companies when they don’t support women’s authentic gifts
- the mechanisms that lead women to adrenal fatigue and how to shift the tide, and why women aren’t necessarily aware of the effects of patriarchy until they burnout
- the unique pressures of being the token female in a leadership position at a given company
- how Jenean is successfully shifting and balancing workplaces, decreasing burnout by introducing an emphasis on emotional intelligence and soft skills
- how companies can increase revenue by valuing women more (and putting them in leadership positions) and becoming less toxic
- what psychological safety – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – in the workplace plays out, how it is undermined, and how companies can create it for their employees so those employees can fly
