The Key Learning Points:

1. Experiences of sexual assault and the challenges around speaking up, driven by the inner conflict many women face

2. The importance of recognising the wider context, and how this drives gender norms and poor behaviours

3. The approach organisations can take to shift away from treating the symptoms to actually addressing the causes

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're lucky to be joined by a former guest, Emily Shaw, founder and CEO of Pineapple People, and Clare Knight, an independent consultant in the London insurance market. The ladies are here today to talk to us about speaking up, and why it’s important for us all to remember the context around poor behaviours and the need to treat the cause, not the symptoms.

Clare started her career as a lawyer in London, focusing on insurance litigation as a professional indemnity defence litigator working in the Lloyd’s of London market. After 6 years she moved to work in-house at one of the big syndicates and eventually left to become an independent consultant, which she’s been doing for the past two years.

Clare has had to deal with a number of incidents of sexual assault and harassment during her career and offers to share three particularly hard-hitting stories. She recalls the challenges around speaking up, and after the first incident was disappointed by the reaction from the female law partner: “She rolled her eyes at me and said ‘oh, well it’s your fault for flirting.’” Feeling like she had nowhere to go, Clare found herself in a similar situation after the second incident and admits: “So what did I do? Absolutely nothing. Didn’t speak up, didn’t do anything about it.” She explains the role of programming in all of these situations but shares how she berated herself for not speaking up and calling out the poor behaviours she’d fallen victim to. 

The punishment and shame around not speaking up come from an inner conflict many women face, Emily explains: “The conditioning we’ve had our entire lives about our gender and how we should behave is at odds with our beliefs and our values and our need to protect ourselves.” She adds that this is why there’s a struggle - it’s not about being brave, having courage or feeling strong, so women shouldn’t punish themselves for not calling these things out. “The idea of speaking up in itself represents something quite problematic - what we’re doing is saying ‘this problem exists. Let’s not worry about the perpetrator, let’s make sure that the victims are doing everything they can to stop themselves from being victims.’" Emily believes that we need to look at the wider context and step away from the bad behaviour for a moment.

We are taught so many messages about gender, even from a young age, which inform our beliefs and create stereotypes. Emily shares some shocking statistics around how the media plays a role in perpetuating the belief that women should not take up space, simply demonstrated by how little speaking time females get in films, even when the leading role is played by a female character. Emily adds that we’re giving these messages to children about how women take up space, then we’re surprised that women aren’t represented in boardrooms?!

Emily believes that speaking up is not about teaching women to navigate this space while removing men from the narrative. The work is about recognising, unlearning and dismantling this culture. We need to start really looking for this stuff. Emily adds that when you notice it more, you understand it and you’re less susceptible to it. “Instead of holding active bystander sessions, or unconscious bias training, perhaps we should be having conversations about the wider context?” - Dealing with the cause, not the symptoms.

Catch our previous episode with Emily here.