THE Women of Influence report commissioned by Westpac reveals almost a quarter of men surveyed believe their gender gives them an advantage at work while 43 per cent think women have to work harder to get the professional recognition they deserve.
“This research shows that men are well and truly ready to say, I understand this, and I am willing to speak out and say it’s wrong. To me that’s a big, big positive,” says Larke Riemer, the director of Women’s Markets at Westpac.
Only one in three people who took part in the research had heard of the term ‘unconscious bias’, with almost half of women surveyed admitting they’d experienced it once they understood the term.
Unconscious bias is when a person’s decision-making process is shadowed by stereotypes which lead to discrimination.
“It’s a new terminology that has come to the forefront [of the debate] in the last 18 months that is very much being given as the reason why we’re having [gender discrimation] problems,” says Riemer.
“Half the time people aren’t aware they are biased. There’s a few that do it purposely but there’s a large percentage that don’t.”
“It’s about opening employers eyes to the potential of changing the way they make decisions and being conscious of those decisions. It’s about working with them; how they can change, and the benefits of that change.”
Riemer believes training employers is the answer to lifting unconscious bias and through this, leaders will change their hiring process, their approach to projects and their strategy development.
“It’s about men and women changing. Men and women are different. And because they’re different, [employers] need to understand how we work.”
“Sometimes you don’t recognise your own behaviours. It’s the case of giving some training around the issues so it opens employers’ eyes up to their behaviours.”
This will increase the number of women in leadership positions, according to Reimer, who doesn’t believe policy implementation helps women break the glass ceiling.
“You don’t just throw women into these roles, because you want the numbers there and the quotas. You want to take everybody along with you, so it’s embedded in the business,” she says.
“We want women to get to Gail Kelly’s position, or into leadership roles reporting to her, because they’ve got the experience. And they’ve gone through all the different areas [of the business] so when they get that job, they’re not set up to fail. Because the big problem in this country is, when it’s a high profile job – like our ex-prime minister – when women fail, it’s the biggest splash in the ocean, whereas men fail in jobs all the time but they’re replaced with another man and nobody says ‘he couldn’t have done the job’.”
Reports before this show women are less likely to ask for a pay increase, a promotion and are risk adverse, so now women need to break this mould – and the glass ceiling – by speaking up to discrimination, be it conscious or unconscious.
“All those girls out there who think this is happening to them but are too afraid to tell their boss who is a man, he’s probably already aware.”
“But if you don’t call it out, he’s probably thinking you’re okay with it.”
