International Women’s Day. A day to not only celebrate everyone who identifies as a woman but also help drive gender equity in the workplace. Alas our Masculinity in the Workplace report shows that there is still so much more work to do and that starts by ensuring we engage more men. And that means getting far more than just turning up to a IWD event once a year. International Women’s Day must act as a platform for sustainable culture change. Here are 10 things you can do on Wednesday and beyond to help make this happen:
- Survey your female colleagues – The first step to change is to listen. Yet I still find it amazing how many senior male leaders have never asked the female members of their team how they feel. Easiest thing is to send out an anonymous survey and here are some questions you can use: How inclusive do you feel our business is out of 10? How diverse do you feel our business is out of 10? What do you think the biggest barriers are for progression of women in our business? Please share any micro-aggressions you have received, or have witnessed in the last 12 months in the workplace. What’s the one thing that men could do differently to ensure the workplace was more inclusive for everyone?
- Show your appreciation – if I had posted this earlier, I would have suggested you give something more thoughtful than flowers like a book (e.g. Becoming by Michelle Obama or To my Trans Sisters by Charlie Craggs) or a Kokeshi doll of a female artist. But given it’s Monday, flowers will still work
- Educate yourself – one of the biggest barriers to inclusion and diversity is ignorance. And it’s our responsibility to teach ourselves. So commit to building your cultural intelligence. A good place to start may well be going to watch the brilliant Oscar nominated Women Talking, a feminist film which mixes harsh realism with allegory and gives down-to-earth dialogue a slightly fairy-tale quality. You can also find additional resources below. It’s also important to be aware that the issues women face are not the same for all women, especially for women of colour. So educating yourself by speaking with them and listening to their perspective will be hugely valuable
- Tell your female colleagues what a good job they are doing – When Google saw that not enough women were putting themselves forward for promotion, they asked all managers to encourage their female employees to put themselves forward. There was still no change. However when they suggested they just tell their female employees what a good job they were doing in the run up to promotion, far more women put themselves forward and got promoted. Feedback is a gift that we need to keep on giving throughout the year
- Read our IWD research on the Things People Say – This research, to be published on Wednesday, will provide you with a much better understanding of the statements and beliefs that are getting in the way of gender equity. Top examples of statements that get in the way of gender equity include “If women want a higher salary, they should ask for it like men do”, “Of course I support gender equality, I have a daughter” and “Everyone in our organisation has an equal opportunity to succeed.”
- Call in bad behaviour – Often it is much easier for an ally to point out behaviour and language that is inappropriate but part of our responsibility as leaders is to also make sure that it is not left unchecked. Where the behaviour is causing obvious harm to the person in the room, you need to call it out. But if not, there is no value in shaming the person who behaved badly. Often this behaviour comes from ignorance and you are best pulling someone aside and helping them understand why their behaviour is exclusive.
- Be more vulnerable – Five years ago, I wrote this piece about men’s vulnerability on IWD and alas it feels like we have still not moved forward. Our latest Masculinity in the Workplace research shows that only 35% feel their workplace values vulnerability while 40% felt that their workplace rewards and promotes those who armour up. The ability to be vulnerable in workplaces is key to building trust and psychological safety, without which equality in the workplace cannot exist.
- Take primary or equal care responsibilities – One of the positives that has come from Covid is that fathers have got to spend far more time with their children which we know has helped them form a closer bond. A recent study by The Centre for Progressive Policy, showed that nearly half of working-age women are providing an average of 45 hours of unpaid care every week, while 25% of men provide 17 hours, according to a study highlighting the gulf in unpaid care work. Clearly we need more fathers to step forward and take an equal share of the responsibility if we are going to have any chance of staving off a crisis in gender equality in the workplace.
- Buy a gift for your daughter, niece or god daughter, or other females in your life. Making systemic change starts at a very young age so anything that will help educate girls, is going to have a long term impact on change. I have always found Rebel Girls as a good source of inspiring content and I absolutely love the beautiful Who’s She Board game. This could also be an experience, like taking them to a Girls in STEM event or an empowering movie.
- Become an agent of change – if you want to do even more and help change the system, then we recommend that you check our Men Leaning in Matrix to work out what more you can do. We would also recommend that you read our Men Leaning in Report which you can download HERE.
And if you would like to get more involved with Token Man, then please do get in touch with me. We are starting to recruit new partners for this year’s Masculinity in the Workplace and would love to hear from more men.
Additional Cultural Intelligence Resources on Gender
Read our Masculinity in the Workplace Report – download HERE
TED talks:
Recommended Podcasts:
Recommended TV programmes:
Youtube videos:
- Redraw the balance
- Do you know what gender inequality looks like?
- 5 Non-Binary People Explain What Non-Binary means to them
This article was previously published on LinkedIN
