Mentors bring great goodwill to their role as mentors. But that doesn’t mean they are skilled. It doesn’t mean they have thought about the different approaches to mentoring. It doesn’t mean they have thought about alternative ways of doing careers. It doesn’t mean they’ve had the opportunity to reflect on or mitigate their bias. It doesn’t mean they’ve had good mentoring experiences themselves to draw on.
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Creating more gender equitable and inclusive cultures is high on the agenda for many organisations. However there is often a disconnect between existing staff development activities and efforts to create the desired cultures. More explicitly linking individual development to organisational change can make a big difference to the return on investment when developing staff. The ‘bifocal approach’ translates this ideal into reality through clear principles and program design.
Men have been neglected in our work for equity, diversity and inclusion
Men have been neglected in our equity, diversity, and inclusion work.
This assertion can lead to responses such as ‘Yea, poor men, they’re doing just fine”. And indeed it is hard for those working furiously (mostly women) to tackle gender inequality and who are tuned into men’s privilege in the workplace, to want to focus on men. But the longer I work in the gender space, the more convinced I am that we need to put much more effort, and resources, into working with men. That is, if we really want to create change.
Read MoreAre we there yet?
Men have not been showing up in the gender equity space. And without the engagement of men, change will continue to be paralysingly slow. Yet men in our Partners for Change workshops relished the opportunity to discuss their gender issues with other men and to engage in courageous conversations with women about gender.
I believe men will show up if we stop doing gender equity work without them and if the invitation is to work in partnership to create more humane workplaces for all, workplaces where we can all thrive, without undermining the private sphere of community and family.
Read MoreOnly women need apply
Women only appointments signal strong support for building gender equitable workplaces. But what are the pro's and cons? Several universities advertised women only academic positions in 2016, perhaps with more to follow. I suggest that there are some lessons to be learnt from the affirmative action appointments of the 1990's and ways of proactively working with the inevitable backlash.
Read MoreWhat is sponsorship and why is it so important for women?
What is the big deal about sponsorship? A few years ago we didn’t even talk about sponsorship. Women were being urged to find mentors, and now this advice is being replaced with women being urged to find sponsors. This change in tack is nicely encapsulated in the title of Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book (Forget a mentor) Find a Sponsor. Her subtitle The New Way to Fast-Track your Career also provides some insight into the positive hype surrounding sponsorship.
In this blog I want to talk about the research that brought sponsorship into the limelight, and why it is important, particularly but not exclusively from a gender perspective, to distinguish between mentoring and sponsorship.
Read MoreMen's work; Women's work
I’ve worked for about 17 years to help improve Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations. Jen de Vries has worked even longer to improve gender equity. In both of these fields we are in a time of transition – about 40 years old and counting – from an era of unambiguous and socially sanctioned disparity in rights, dominance and power, to an era of genuine equity. That transition is hard work. And in both of those fields I’m in the dominant group. I’m white Australian, and I’m a bloke.
Read MoreThe 'Bifocal approach': Linking individual development to organisational change
Creating more gender equitable and inclusive cultures is high on the agenda for many organisations. However there is often a disconnect between existing staff development activities and efforts to create the desired cultures. More explicitly linking individual development to organisational change can make a big difference to the return on investment when developing staff. The ‘bifocal approach’ translates this ideal into reality through clear principles and program design.
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