Good afternoon from a sunny Toronto. I hope this finds you well.

I am in the midst of a road trip over the next couple of weeks that takes me here, Saskatoon and Charlottetown. I’m writing from my hotel room in downtown Toronto, where I lived for a time 35 years ago. In fact I’m looking at the hotel where I worked part time during my time in acting school here. Talking to a front desk clerk about it as I checked in, she asked, “oh were you a manager?” I said, “no, I was a houseman.” And she looked at me as if I had said, “I’m from Mars.”

Obviously, I don’t know what was going on for her, but I suspect that the fact that I was wearing a suit, am a white male, and have grey hair, she assumed that I must be a manager and always have been! Little can be further from the truth! But assumptions are insidious.

And last night, my brother was talking about an interview with former President Jimmy Carter on the CBC Radio show, The Current  http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/03/28/jimmy-carter-on-what-he-calls-the-greatest-human-rights-crisis-of-our-time/ talking about his new book “A Call to Action” http://www.amazon.ca/Call-Action-Women-Religion-Violence/dp/1476773955 I listened to the interview during my workout today, and I was fascinated. President Carter argues that the single biggest Human Rights issue globally is the status of women and girls. And this is not simply about how women and girls are treated in the developing nations in the world;, it’s about how women and girls are treated here in North America and the rest of the western world. And the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right. I think about the amazing women I know; my partner, my sister and sister-in-law, and so many colleagues and friends, none of whom are quiet and demure, sitting at the gymnasium wall, waiting for some man to come and make their lives complete! But I wonder what the desk clerk might have assumed about them if it had been one of them in the conversation about working in this neighbourhood 30 years ago?  Would they have been assumed to have been leaders?

And how many of my female colleagues and friends have been sexually harassed and or assaulted?! The number would likely shock me as I think about the statistics, and remember the stories I’ve heard.

I fear that we have spent too much time assuming that issues like the glass ceiling, workplace harassment and worse are ‘womens’ issues. We worry about how women can break through the ceiling, we worry about how women can protect themselves from predatory men. This is a human issue; that in our workplaces many of the people we work with are often undervalued, misrepresented, and shunted aside only because they happen to be women. I know that we like to think we’re better than all that, but the bottom line is we’re not.

So, man or woman, next time you’re working alongside a rising star, male or female, give her a second thought. Push against the assumptions we all too often make. And if you are a woman reading this, give yourself a break, give yourself a second thought, you can do it. Don’t let the assumptions and traditions that we all can fall into determine your career. You owe it to yourself and to women and men around the world.