Or in common Poker parlance ‘four aces’.

Equality of the sexes has a long way to go in the UK. It has come a long way, but there is work ,yet to be done.

However, with the appointment of a female head of the metropolitan police, a second female  Prime Minister, and of course the Queen (even though she has nothing to  do with equality, more to do with the inequality of birth) nevertheless there are three females at the pinnacle of UK society. 

Yet only 7% of the CEO’s of the UK ‘s top 100 companies are female. It is similar figure for the total number of women engineers. Within the STEM  job statistics(science, technology,engineering and maths), the female representation is about 12%. 

Consequently, we have two opposing pictures. At the very pinnacle of power, we have women but just beneath that, the movers and shakers are still predominantly men.

So what ? We are , or indeed have, entered a period of much social and political change. Nobody is very clear in what direction we are going . It is not a new phenomena. During the twentieth century, much changed after both world wars. In the nineteenth century , the industrial revolution quite literally revolutionised for good and bad, much of the world. 

Much of what is happening today has one overriding common factor the main players within this change have been men. I am not arguing whether these changes are good or bad, the point is who are the driving forces. Ironically, one of the ‘players ‘ participating in this change (albeit unintentionally) Hillary Clinton, lost out probably , in part, due to her connection to a male dominated political history.

There are only four heads of government in Europe who are female , if you extend that to the entire world you can add another three. Despite two hundred years of  rapid social change , there are times when it may seem that the underlying forces remain unchanged.

So back to the four aces. We have,maybe, 2 aces and a Queen (after she is only a Queen, and there by dint of birth). If perhaps we had a female head of the judiciary and maybe a female Archbishop , we could lay claim to the full set. And the point would be? Perhaps, there would be a more balanced and less hysterical approach to the way in which we organise society. 

I say ‘perhaps ‘ because we don’t know the outcome. We don’t know the consequence of a more equal gender based hierarchy. Some would say that women who attain power, assume the negative trappings of men, in that ego, vanity and the corruption of power take over. Maybe they do when women are in power on their own, maybe they have to , in order to maintain power. Yet despite this, a hand full of aces has got to be worth a try.

I am sure every poker player gets over excited holding two aces. For the more cautious among us we can see the benefits of holding on for the full set. Whilst politically the aces may not suit all, but as the  other various UK political parties fail to offer female alternatives , we should accept what we have and seek to encourage the rest of our society to embolden other able females to seek out their futures as aces. 

Rightly, we are told to learn from history. With the odd exception, it repeats itself. The one thing history cannot teach as what would be the consequence of an equal society. We have never really had one (occasional small matriarchal communities). Until we do, we won’t know what it can achieve . What we do know , and what cannot be argued is that it would be equal.