📣 We should aim to do the right thing always, not only when it makes us look good.
A number of high profile UK creatives, from Sting to Stephen Fry, wrote a letter to the men-only Garrick Club ahead of its Tuesday vote to permit women to join for the first time since 1831. As they put it, "we write as Garrick members who produce/co-produce and manage over 35 current productions in the West End and regionally. The current very public controversy over this issue has put us all in an untenable position. Our relations with female artists, co-producers, authors, cast members, members of our creative teams, backstage and front of house theatre staff have all been jeopardised by the recent publicity to the point that, without serious progress being made to finally address this anomaly, we won’t feel able to continue as Garrick members".
Setting aside the question of why such exclusive bastions of elite privilege exist in the year 2024, the gentlemen's letter implies that this exclusion is somehow wrong because the world is now watching, thus making these individuals' existing association look bad, and not because the club was always problematic in the first place. One should not only care about equity when called out by others; being humans of principle means we care about it always, including most notably when it is requires standing up to friends.
This is especially the case when you are already privileged AND doubly so when it pertains to something you *chose* to associate with. This is not their place of employment, which may have made them fearful about speaking up against its principles lest they compromise their livelihoods. I fully understand the difficulty of such situations and how much harder it is to do the right thing then. But these men had a choice whether or not to align themselves with the Club's values - which have been starkly obvious for centuries now - and they still made it. Writing about it now in this way is disingenuous in the extreme.
Beware of 'allies' who cannot even stand with you when the choice is easy.
#leadership #ethics #equity #inclusion #womeninbusiness #gender #garrickclub #exclusion #ally #allies #women #dei
