 |
 |
|
|
 |
| MAILBOX |
|
Diverse group of men, not diverse group of 'people' On page 11 of the August issue of Rotary Down Under, there is a picture of 15 Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Gosford, N.S.W. The caption tells us that a membership drive conducted by that club “has resulted in a diverse group of people from a variety of ages’’ becoming members of the club. While membership drives are good things for Rotary and rightly deserve recognition, it is noticeable that there is not one woman in the photograph. I do not know whether the Rotary Club of Gosford made an effort to recrit women to the club. Their membership drive would, of course, have been a perfect opportunity to recruit a group of women together, which would have alleviated the difficulties experienced by some clubs which have tried to re cruit one or two women at a time. The facts are unclear – there might have been other initiatives being taken by the club which sought to include women, or it may have been that no women wished to join the club. While the article does make a reference to the opportunity to join Rotary being extended to the “sons of former Rotari-ans’’, it doesn’t make any reference to daughters, partners , sisters or mothers of former Rotarians. The problem with the article (or, more properly , the caption to the picture) was the simple, but important, misuse of the word diverse to describe that group of people . Those people were all men. It may have been true to say that they were a “diverse group of men’’, but the reality is that they were not a diverse group of people. This is not a question of semantics. It is an important point about the way that language is used. Language like that can sometimes give the impression that real Rotarians are men Rotarians, and women are just really a bit of an afterthought. Of course, there will be those who say that my comments are just making a mountain out of a molehill. But this is an important point for that precise reason – because assumptions like the one behind the caption form part of the ordinary business of Rotary. It wouldn't be necessary to make the point if the principle of inclusiveness wasn’t so often and unthinkingly breached. Is my service as a Rotarian less valuable because I am a woman? It is no answer to the deeper point being made here to say “of course we don’t mean that’’. The article is also important given the wider issues being deb a ted in Rotary at the moment. As a pure question of the well-being of our organisation, I do not believe that it is h e a l t hy for clubs to want to make deci-sions about membership based on narrow-minded and old-fashioned views about the contribution that women can make to our society. Equally unhealthy are well - meaning activities which unthinkingly and accidentally work against being truly inclusive of prospective members. I believe that it is a moral wrong for our organisation , which prides itself on its ability to do good in the world, to deprive our communities of the service that a group of people can offer because of an i rre l evan t consideration such as gender , whether that is done directl y and inten-tionally or indirectly and unintentionally. I think it is our obligation to lead by example , and to show what is possible when people are inclusive and generous. I believe that as long as Rotary continues to display behaviours which operate to exclude people from feeling welcome, we will continue to have real issues with membership. Far from rewarding membership drives which directly exclude certain groups of people who otherwise qualify to be Rota-ians, or which achieve the same end by failing to target them with equal fo rc e , I belie ve that Rotary should take the view that such recruiting is unhelpful to our organisation in the long term. There
is a lot of talk in Rotary Down Under about making people feel welcome.
Sometimes I don’t feel welcome in my own organisation. I have, for example,
long stopped doing make-ups in other clubs unless I know that they welcome
women. Both I and a male friend, who accompanied me as my guest to one
Rotary club meeting, were uncomfortable about the patronising and otherwise
women - unfriendlyy comments and behaviour on display. This is, sadly,
sometimes not all that uncommon in Rotary. This has got to be a problem
for Rotary in the long term. Rotarians need to think more about membership
and how we deal with that. And we also need to think more about what
we value and how we portray ourselves to the world. Otherwise, I think
that the enduring stereotype of the white, mid-dle-aged male Rotarian
will self-perpetuate itself out of existence. Editor’s note: It is estimated that approxi mately 10 per cent of Rotary clubs in Rotary Down Under’s circulation area have not yet seen the light and moved to welcome females to their membership. Bulletins by buttons best I was dismayed to read the letter fro m Past President Don Allen, of the Rotary Club of Bendigo South, Vic . (Mailbox, August , 2004), relating to his preference for club bulletins to be sent as hard copy via normal postal services. For the past 20 years, the argument has raged as to which method of provision of a club bulletin is best; whether to continue in the old-fashioned way of type, print, collate , fold, enclose in an envelope or wrapper, address and post, usually by sticking on a postage stamp, or if you are lucky enough to be sending a very large number of bulletins , using the slightly cheaper form of bulk postage. Compare this with the ability to type script, add graphs and tables and coloured pictures and then send several pages to members with the push of a button. There is no doubt in my mind which I would rather do and over the years I have used both methods numerous times. Let’s look at the problems with postal services. They are costly to provide and the cost is always increasing . Delays in deliver y and the loss of articles has not been addressed, nor rectified. Third and finally, the often threatened and sometimes enacted possibility of strike action. Next, let’s consider the cost of a written and posted bulletin. If we are serious in trying to achieve an overall reduction in the cost of Rotary to the individual Rotarian, then using electronic means of provision of a weekly bulletin is the way to go. We all
know the cost of receiving Rotary Down Under at $A33 a year a Rotarian.
Whilst I agree with some of the concepts of the Rotary Down Under editor
that a bulletin is essential in conveying information from R.I. and
letting Rotarians know what is going on, I do not agree that hard copy
is the only way of providing this information. Believeit or not, many
of my fellow Rotarians do not read Rotary Down Under at all and only
a small percentage read from cover to cover. It would certainly be cheaperr
to place the contents on a website and for those interested in a particular
article to down-load and print their own copy. Saving paper, an expensive
resource , and postage, even more expensive, could then be passed back
to the individual Rotarian. The same applies to the weekly club bulletin.
Let’s take a hypothetical example of the club with 25 members. Cost
of paper, envelopes and ink to print 25 copies, for 50 weeks containing
four pages (double sided) is conservatively |
M | M |
|
|
|
|