A story of wasted talent and underpaid women. The WGEA report Wages and Ages: Mapping the Gender Pay Gap by Age is downright depressing with the pay gap growing progressively till at age 55+ it is a whopping 31.2%. Understanding how gender inequality is produced provides clues. It’s a bit like jigsaw pieces, you need all of them.
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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.
Are 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 MoreFlip your perspective on merit
Try flipping the switch. Assume the organisation is not a meritocracy and see how that changes our thinking. What might we do differently?
So what would women, men, minority group members, leaders, and organisations do differently if they based their actions on the assumption that their organisation is not a meritocracy, not even close. Until proven otherwise. Let’s reverse the burden of proof.
Read MoreSimply Good Practice: A Mantra for Gold
Aiming for fairness & excellence = aiming for Gold. Based on a presentation by Professor Sara Mole at Cambridge in May 2017. Titled Leading the way by simply good practice – cultural change at a departmental level, it reflects on the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London, journey towards achieving an Athena SWAN Gold in 2016.
Read MorePlaying the gender card
The phrase ‘playing the gender card’ has been used against women who raise issues of gender bias or discrimination, to discredit their claims. The implication is that by calling gender into play they are not only playing the victim but also directing attention away from their own lack of performance or fault in whatever may have occurred. Perhaps most famously in Australia this accusation was leveled at our former Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
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 MoreChallenges for men: The expectation to lead and succeed
‘We (men) are expected to lead’, one of the male participants exclaimed. As a woman so immersed in working with women’s leadership development programs I found myself somewhat taken aback. It was impossible for me to imagine a woman saying anything like it. For women the reverse could be said to be true: we (women) are not expected to lead. It was one of those moments when you are left in no doubt that gendering processes are alive and well. A moment when socialised gender roles, so often implicit become explicit. And, in this case, open for discussion.
Read More‘I never expected to be talking about men’s issues today’
Getting men and women together to talk about gender. Sounds ordinary enough. Might happen around a dinner table but when was the last time it happened at work? Maybe it never has? Tim Muirhead and I recently ran a full day ‘Partners for Change’ workshop where attendees came in male/female collegial pairs. Women mostly did the inviting, asking a male colleague to come to the workshop with them, with the intended focus of strengthening their capacity to work individually and together to tackle gender issues in their shared workplace.
Women undermining women and gender equality
Better behaved with male colleagues? While debriefing an experiential exercise in an all female leadership program, one woman suggested she would have behaved differently if men had been involved.
She would have treated men more seriously and with more respect. While hard to admit, this observation opened up a discussion about how they, as women, treated their female colleagues differently to men in the workplace.
Read MoreWhat about the men?
What about the men? I have heard this question asked in so many different ways. Men sometimes ask it, complaining they are being unfairly treated, missing out on something that is being offered to women, for example the opportunity to be matched with a senior mentor or participate in a leadership development program. Women on leadership programs often ask ‘what about the men?’ ‘Men need this too’, they say. Or ‘men need this more than we do, they are our bosses and they are the ones who need to change, not us’.
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