........ Tennis has always been one of my favourite sports and I remember when I was about 25, I worked at Dr.Reddys and signed up for tennis coaching classes in my neighbourhood. It was a 6 a.m. batch - perfect for me to play, get ready and leave for work. 7 months in - I saw a notice saying the ladies' coaching batch had been pushed to 9 a.m. and the gents playing time was now scheduled from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Mind you we had 2 courts - one was designated as a coaching court and the other for people to play.
I went to the sports committee - some 6/7 men - most of them at least twice my age and they without blinking asked me why I really needed tennis coaching. I will never play professionally anyway and if I really need a coaching spot - why don't I just come at 9 a.m. or join the kid's batch? They said they needed both the courts to get in their tennis time as they have to leave for work.... and there were waiting times for turns at the court - the easier option for them was to change the ladies' coaching time and occupy the second court. When I said I worked as well - they immediately suggested joining the kid's batch (which had an age-wise division and a restriction of 18 years maximum) would probably be the best for me.
I then just marvelled at how they could just decide what was the best thing for me to do. However, this was not the first situation of this kind I had faced - I didn't back down and after negotiations with them - I got a coaching hour for working women and even had them organize a women's tennis tournament to get more women from the neighbourhood interested, and change one of the playing hours to be called just 'playing hours' not 'gents time'.
What did not surprise me back then but pinched me was - I knew I had to do it alone which I did. What surprised me was when I was able to put up my point and argue my case, most of them realized what I was talking about and it was not that hard to achieve a compromise - we found a reasonable workaround which worked for me and them - after all the fact was that there were far more men than women interested in the sport in my neighbourhood. They just had not seen it from my perspective coz there was no representation/no one in their circle that spoke about it / and the other women in the coaching hour just adjusted or gave up the sport.
This is why being open to different perspectives matters.
You may not know you are not inclusive in your decisions because a different perspective is not in your experience.
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