The human race consists of – Men and Women. While women represent half of the World’s total population, they also share half the potential to make this world a better place to live. However, there have been quite a several cases of gender biases and gender stereotypes, particularly in non-Western countries.
To eradicate this notion, during many political discourses, policies were employed to achieve gender equality. The term ‘Gender Equality’ strives to overcome stereotype barriers giving equal opportunities to both men and women to reap benefits and contribute towards social, political, cultural, and economic developments.
Gender stereotypes evolved from the very idea of socially approved roles for women in private and public, living and working spheres. For instance, women were expected to take on primary responsibility for the household, while men were usually portrayed as the primary breadwinner for the family. This buries the deep notion of ‘Gender Equality’ and thus these pigeonholes are to be smashed.
While talking about breaking stereotypes, one must focus on ‘Radical Collaboration’ to move par with traditional competitive business models. Diverse viewpoints and an assortment of varied experiences help in recognizing the challenges faced by women but to successfully solve them we need innovative thinking, Radical thinking!
The World is evolving every second, at a very fast pace. And now gender equality is no more about just giving equal working opportunities to women or sharing meals at the same table at the same time. It is more than just women empowerment. It is about co-creation and collaboration.
Radical Collaboration is based on the key principle of ‘partnership’. It is inspired by the desire to learn from, offer and embrace various perspectives within the processes of problem-solving and finding solutions.
This should not be done to claim that ‘women empowerment is our prime devotion’, but to bridge the differences between (much talked about) gender equality practices and enabling women to achieve it.
For radical collaboration, being able to hop back-and-forth from a global and local perspective is necessitated. Womanhood is a brand itself and radical collaboration helps in brand collaboration in this case.
How does collaboration help?
Some successful examples of general Radical Collaboration put into practice are:
Starbucks and Spotify
Co-branding Campaign: First-of-its-Kind Music Ecosystem
Starbucks – a coffee shop scaled up to a premium experience with music around the coffee time. This phenomenal ambiance was created in collaboration with Spotify – a music-streaming platform. With almost 25 billion hours of listening around the world, Spotify forged an innovative co-branding with Starbucks to build a “music ecosystem”. This ecosystem offered artists greater access to Starbucks’ consumers and gave Starbucks access to Spotify’s expansive discography.
Starbucks employees get Spotify’s premium subscription, with which they can curate playlists through the Starbucks Mobile App to play music throughout the day in the shop.
A similar example would be:
Uber and Spotify
Co-branding Campaign: Soundtrack for Your Ride
We all know that Uber rides are monotonous and dull. It’s like, if you are not driving, how long can you just watch the road, right? But this is where Spotify ‘again’ saw the opportunity to collaborate and reap mutual benefits. Making the most out of it, Spotify garnered added traction to its app and entertained users for Uber. This is a great example of a co-branding partnership between two very different products with very similar goals — to earn more users.
How did it work? Well, when riders are waiting for an Uber ride, they’re prompted to connect with Spotify and become the DJ of their trip. And who would not want that, especially when you aren’t driving!
Without question, these examples demonstrate that healthy, innovative, and radical collaborations create active opportunities to promote the brand work in achieving the ultimate goals. Similar to that, gender equality is the radical collaboration that will strengthen our case.
Some examples of radical collaboration in action could be:
- Appearing for positions like Military Posts, Political Agendas, Driving Tests, etc.
- Increased brand advertising and promotion opportunities for women sportsperson
- Equal opportunities in decision making for the betterment of the stakeholders
- Demolishing subordination applied under the shadow of religious sentiments
- Increased enrolment in higher education for exciting levels of competition
*Picture Credit: Gender gap narrowing in higher education: HRD survey – Times of India (indiatimes.com)
A business can be run successfully if you focus majorly on the collaboration of performance and decision-making, but many companies struggle with this as they lack the understanding of these two.
While performance can be achieved with mental and physical labor, which is a strong point of men; a possible solution of decision-making can be female leadership, as there is evidence* to suggest that women are better at collaborative decision-making than men.
When we have two very strong brands in our discussion – Men and Women, it goes without saying that their radical collaboration can create magic. After all, it takes two to Tango!
