About the session
Places of business and education have changed since I entered the job market. Changed substantially for women. Gone are the days when I was regularly the only woman in the room as a physicist. Gone are the days when no one else was worrying about school holiday childcare and men behaved as if they didn’t have children.
But… there are still many places of work where women are systematically, although possibly unintentionally, disadvantaged, where ‘banter’ and worse thrives, and where women can feel excluded or unwanted.
All the problems used to be seen as women’s problems. That has improved, but much more can be done by involving like-minded men in the change that needs to happen. Inclusion should work for everyone. As long as women remain under-represented problems will continue, so we also have to worry about the pipeline.
We need to ensure children – boys and girls – see women doing extraordinary things across the sector, and get into schools to enthuse youngsters. Teachers should be challenged, just as much as employers, to see past stereotypes. Employers need to see past the conventional ideas of what an ideal apprentice looks like in a machine shop, for instance, to widen the pool of recruits.
We’ve come a long way. But there is so much more to do.
