Course Outline

Understanding workplace gender issues

• Understanding the gender equality attitudes in your workplace
• What is the motivation to change gender equality attitudes in your workplace?
• What are the targets and quotas for women?
• Does your company have an active diversity management policy?
• How do women in your company seek promotion and receive feedback from colleagues on their organisational fit and career options?
• Is your workplace an environment the enables women to perform well, stay well and progress through the company?
• Are your managers’ ethical leaders that promote Equal Employment Opportunities?

Gender: How men and women see the world differently

• Know that gender differences in brain structure and biochemistry affect behaviours, verbal communication and emotional responses
• Are women in your organisation often ‘labelled’ as emotional, overly assertive or aggressive?
• What is the corporate culture belief system around ‘heroes’?
• Are women rewarded for effectively building teams and relationships with colleagues?
• Are men viewed as more effective because they speak up at meetings and manage their emotions at work?
• Understand the difference in male and female communication styles and language patterns
• Women collaborate more and men promote their points of view more effectively. Learn what is viewed as important in your corporate culture
• Are men seen as being more effective leaders because they use a more characteristic masculine promoting style over a collaborating style?
• If women approach problem solving through collaboration, does the business recognise their individual contribution?

Unconscious Bias

• Understanding ‘unconscious bias’ or ‘invisible barriers’ and the effect on female leadership
• Seeing the world through the ‘bias’ lens in decision making, reinforcing stereotypes, and misconceptions about women’s ability
• Do male leaders (unconsciously) recruit and promote people like themselves – the ‘affinity bias’?
• Do men in leadership roles prefer working with others whose style is similar to their own and so ‘unconsciously’ not select women for the job?
• No-one likes to give up power – it is a human condition to hold onto what is traditionally ‘yours’. Is the status quo maintained by appointing male leaders?
• Women are stronger in EQ skills (consulting, rewarding, supporting, mentoring, and networking). Are these leadership attributes less valued and rewarded in your workplace?
• Meritocracy – the system for promoting according to talent and ability – is skewed in favour of men with little succession planning for women
• Unconscious bias has an impact on the gender equity gap that effects a woman’s life time salary and her retirement funds

Off ramps on ramps – mothers, careers, partners and valued employees

• Supporting and managing work/life balance with women friendly policies to retain female talent
• Implementing workplace redesign and flexibility enabled by the digital environment – work from anywhere at anytime
• Keep diverse workplace capacity by assisting women to work with competing priorities: managing work and family; prioritising family over work; choosing a balanced lifestyle over career progression.
• How to personally manage on flexible work arrangements and how to manage staff on workplace flexibility
• Career trajectory – support the women’s arc-of-career with flexibility – able to return to work after children without loss of promotional opportunities
• Know that a lack of meaningful flexible work options and affordable child care excludes women from career choices and companies from retaining high potentials.

How to promote gender equity

• Explore ways of achieving gender equity by applying the framework of the seven Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) developed by UN Global
• Compact and UN Women
• Workplace flexibility – measure achievement through outcomes rather than hours spent in the office
• Measure goals for progressing gender equality in performance reviews
• Link gender equity to measuring management’s performance goals
• Establish support for managers to meet their gender equity targets
• Implement unconscious bias self-awareness programs
• Set up a diversity committee to facilitate change in the organisation

How to accelerate female talent in your workplace

• Structure position descriptions that are based on criteria that predicts
  performance and not on out-dated-ideas on what the applicant looks like
• Encourage women in the workplace to promote their capabilities and not undersell themselves
• Appoint senior sponsors to promote or speak up on a woman’s behalf
• Invite women to informal networks – normally the closed ‘men’s club’
• Promote networking for strategic advantage with company ‘champions’
• Establish mentored networking across the organisation
• Assist women to build their sphere of influence

Why gender equality matters – are you fishing in half the pool?

• Don’t fish in half the pool – know that women in Australia make up 45% of the paid workforce and over 60% of graduates in bachelor degrees (EOWA, 2009)
• Know that women are over-represented in tertiary education but under-represented in senior roles in nearly every profession – a brain drain in organisations
• Support family friendly policies because 63% of mothers are in paid work (Baird, 2010)
• Women want to work for an organisation that supports them
• Research indicates that companies with gender-balanced leadership have improved corporate performance and better insights into their consumer market
• Statistics show that profits are higher when women are in senior leadership roles
• Have structures in place to retain talent and support ‘real life’ in the 21st century for both men and women
• Attract the talented women because your corporate values are aligned with gender equityn