How not to give women (or anyone) awards

At a time when entrepreneurship is being promoted, and women’s entrepreneurship is particularly highlighted, there are new awards being instituted for women every day. Across organisations, everyone has their own selection of awards for women.

Considering that women need to participate more in the workforce, and be fairly represented at truly decision making senior levels it is easy to see why this is happening. Except, the manner in which it takes place, once in a while, leaves me speechless.

So it happened once I turned entrepreneur, and hit a particular milestone in my journey I was approached by someone who said they could manage an award for me. At the very least, a ‘Woman of Substance’ award, is what they said. Now this individual does not represent the organisation from whom they intended to get the reward. They have a third party affiliation of some kind with them, which I now forget the details of. And this happened not once but twice. Needless to say, from the word go, it sounded like such a questionable proposition that I did not encourage the conversation.

But, more recently, the world became even more brazen.

Again, I have been approached not once, but twice since the start of 2017 (and we are not even done with two months yet) for an award in the women’s category. One, which wanted to put me on an esteemed list of influential women and the second, which wants to recognise me as a woman icon. Now as you can well imagine, all this is most flattering indeed. Except, not.

Because both these organisations are looking for me to ‘sponsor’ the award, where ‘sponsoring’ is a euphemism for we know what! The first of these organisations told me that while they were considering me very seriously for a place on the list, a ‘sponsorship’ would secure my place there. The second, actually told me that I have won the award already. But, the sponsorship in this case, is about getting a small (or large) entourage with me for the awards ceremony, which needs to be paid for. And, payment for this entourage is mandatory.

I have of course, declined any such deals. And I very much doubt I will either get a place on the list of influential women or see the actual award that I have ostensibly won for being an ‘iconic’ woman. An award as I see it, is meant to honour the individual concerned. In this case, it is doing exactly the opposite.

Consider that you do indeed decide to ‘sponsor’. Would you feel any bit good about it? In the words of Groucho Marx: I don’t want to belong to any club that accepts people like me!

But more seriously, if we truly want to recognise people’s work, we need to do that fairly. I don’t see why any organisation cant get outside sponsorship for any awards that they have instituted. Bigger opportunity to obtain advertising after all, is also one of the positive fall outs of promoting entrepreneurship. And considering that female entrepreneurship is at such a nascent stage, we really need to get this piece right. It is not just about giving awards. It is about doing so for the right reasons.

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