There is nothing that gets me more riled up than reading magazine articles about women in watchmaking, like these talented individuals are only interesting because they have made it this far in a female body! Do you think political journalists ask Ursula von der Leyen, Christine Lagarde, Kamala Harris or Giorgia Meloni what it is like to be a woman at the top? Of course not, these women are where they are because they are the very best people for the job, period.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not out to lynch all my peers who have been posting about International Women’s Day last week; this is an extremely important moment to celebrate women and promote gender equality in an industry where most of the top jobs are still held by men. Hey, even I have written “Women in Watchmaking” pieces in the past, but I think it is time to rethink how we do it.
We have interviewed some pretty kick-ass women in watchmaking recently – check out our interviews with Audemars Piguet’s Ilaria Resta, IWC’s Franziska Gsell, and Vacheron Constantin’s Sandrine Donguy – and many of them often ask that we avoid such lines of questioning – so I am obviously not alone in my fatigue.
In my humble opinion, one way to help the gender divide is to treat watch experts exactly the same, regardless of gender. So, ask yourself, have you ever seen an article entitled “Men in Watchmaking”? Of course not, it would be utterly ridiculous. Every time I compose my questions for an interview with a woman in the industry, I always double check them, asking myself whether I would ask the same questions to a man? Even I mess up sometimes, our gender conditioning is sometimes hard to break!
At WorldTempus, we have decided to not make a song and dance about women in watchmaking. Instead, we want to go one step further and make a point of interviewing the female movers and shakers in our industry about the importance of what they do, just like we would do with men. The best way we can promote gender equality in the watch industry is truly shine a light on these incredible women individually so that the next generation of women can dream big.
And talking of the next generation, we will be participating again this year in the biennale science event called Expand Your Horizons, which aims to inspire girls to consider science and technology as a future career. For those of you with daughters between the ages of 11 and 14, this is a date that you are going to want to put in your diary – 16th November – as we will be hosting a mechanical clockmaking workshop to encourage girls to think about watchmaking as a career.
And if you know any inspiring women that you think should get some of the limelight, drop me a line at sophie.furley@worldtempus.com because even if I am not talking about “women in watchmaking”, I am still promoting them!
