Who’s tired of hearing the words women’s empowerment? Who actually knows what it means to be a feminist? Who’s attended a women’s circle, a lioness circle or a hear-me-roar circle? Anyone taken a course on ‘How to be an assertive female leader without being labelled a b*tch?’ How many of us have mum guilt for being a working mother and not being able to attend their child’s swimming gala? Raise your hand if you’ve had your chakras balanced, tapped yourselves with EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique], been healed by lights and crystals, worn an evil eye pendant, bathed in flowers, discovered your Enneagram personality type, tried watsu water therapy, gone to Bali to Eat, Pray, AND Love, or had reiki done remotely by a healer in Australia? Are you tired of group hugging and singing Kumbaya, too?

So, yes, I am tired. And that’s not just because I am tired of working to fit into corporate cultures that, on the whole, are still geared towards rewarding traditionally male qualities; or because at home I do two times the housework (even with an army of housekeepers) and three times the childcare; or because I still see my friends and colleagues facing discrimination. I am tired of doing all this work to fix myself when what we really need is to fix the system.

It is true that we are all human beings and we have that as a common thread. It is part of human nature that we feel a deep need to be included. We are prejudiced against people who are different from us. Paradoxically, however, we are all different and come with different stories and experiences. We have a preference to surround ourselves with people who are like us, who talk like us, walk like us, act like us. So even if our mouths are saying “We want a diverse workplace,” our minds are saying, “Please, not too diverse.”

Equity, on the other hand, is easy to agree with. We all want to be treated fairly. We all innately understand how to spot a glimmer of injustice. If you do the same work as your colleague and get paid less than him, that is injustice. Our brains categorise equality as a core need, and whenever our core needs are threatened, we go into stress mode.

Although equity and equality sound similar, they are not synonymous. Equality seeks to provide all employees with access to the same resources, regardless of the pre-existing barriers they may face, but it often fails to address problems of underrepresentation or an unfair status quo.

Equity is distinct from equality in that it doesn’t provide the same resources and opportunities to everyone. With equity, an organisation will recognise that each employee has varying access to resources and privileges. And those with less access may need more support in order to take fair advantage of opportunities within a given company.

Women have evolved in ways that the system has not. Hence, there is a reason why so many women seek self-help, self-care or self-love. We know deep down that the system doesn’t support us.

But, with the current focus and pendulum shift towards focusing on women in the workplace, I’ve realised that the limitations are not only within us. The limits are imposed upon us by society and our beliefs in traditional, narrowly-defined gender roles. The root cause of gender equality is our collected belief of what it means to be a woman.

What we really need are leaders who understand and empathise with the struggles women face. More importantly, we need leaders who have the power to make changes within their organisation, not because it’s the human thing to do, but because doing so has been statistically proven to increase productivity, profitability and happiness. Leaders need to view gender equality as a business imperative that increases profitability, not simply an initiative. They can then redefine corporate governance to create frameworks supporting both women and men.

To drive a company culture that celebrates and embraces true gender equality, you need to hire employees whose core values are consistent with this goal. We need to start by creating a higher level of awareness through training on unconscious bias. We have to make the unconscious conscious, through more than just a one-and-done training session. The only way people learn is if we train them. Gender equality is not just about women. We need to start fixing the system too.

This opinion piece is part of a collaboration between Front & Female and Asia Gender Network, the first pan-Asian network committed to mobilising capital for gender equality, whose influential members include Pranapda Chirathivat, founder of dragonfly360, a gender equality movement to mobilise society towards empowering women and girls economically, socially and politically through stories that educate and inspire people to take action.