Many organisations and institutions now have a gender balance agenda, in which gender discrimination is actively pursued in a doomed attempt to balance the numbers of men and women in leadership positions. However well intentioned this may seem, it often does not produce the intended outcome.

The main reason for this is that a woman who is parachuted into a leadership position in a group of men often ends up behaving like those men, and to all intents and purposes has become a man. In some ways this can be even worse than having a man in the position as the woman may find it difficult to own and assimilate her own masculine energies.

These disowned energies and their potentially destructive aspects are then projected on to others with undesired outcomes. Usually the woman begins to lose the asset that was most valuable in the first place, her feminine perspective, and begins to behave like a Drag King.

The corollary of this situation also occurs frequently, and can be just as potentially destructive, where a man is challenged with voicing and recognising his feminine energies. A man’s skill in voicing his feminine aspects does not require him to be known as ‘Mandy’ at the weekends, or to join the increasing ranks of Travelodge Trannies. Instead, he should perhaps pay attention to archetypally feminine attributes such as intuition, empathy and compassion.

Carl Jung described a man’s feminine energies as his Anima, and a woman’s masculine energies as her Animus. For an individual to grow and develop into their most authentic potential, these energies should be in a healthy balance. Rather than decreeing target numbers based on external gender assessment, perhaps organisations should focus their energies on encouraging the inner balance of masculine and feminine energies. What happens inside, happens outside.