Women At Work

“We will rise together or not at all.”

Jamila Rizvi is an author, presenter, political commentator, the newly appointed editor-at-large of Future Women, former editor-in-chief of MamaMia. She’s written two books, Not Just Lucky and The Motherhood, and signs off her emails Troublemaker At Large, which is a great sign.

We discuss:

* a series of hilarious but also scary statistics, like the fact that there are more men named Andrew than women running ASX200 companies

* Tips for negotiating, such as focus on what you want, not what you’ve got

* The structural inequalities that we live in, and the importance of understanding them so we can see it’s not ‘just me’

* Diversity is proven to shift the bottom line in organisations, so how do we make workplaces work better for women

* A glorious story about how Barak Obama’s female staff supported each others ideas and in being heard

* That we can all be part of the sisterhood and the feminist movement in whatever way works for us as individuals

* The importance of community

* How we all need to let go of the pursuit of perfection, and give ourselves a bit of a break

Resources

We mention some resources throughout the conversation, here is where you can find links to them all!

Future Women, where Jamila has taken the helm and is building an amazing community.

Jamila’s books, Not Just Lucky and The Motherhood

And her own website.

 

 

 

“We will rise together or not at all.”

Jamila Rizvi is an author, presenter, political commentator, the newly appointed editor-at-large of Future Women, former editor-in-chief of MamaMia. She’s written two books, Not Just Lucky and The Motherhood, and signs off her emails Troublemaker At Large, which is a great sign.

We discuss:

• a series of hilarious but also scary statistics, like the fact that there are more men named Andrew than women running ASX200 companies
• Tips for negotiating, such as focus on what you want, not what you've got
• The structural inequalities that we live in, and the importance of understanding them so we can see it's not 'just me'
• Diversity is proven to shift the bottom line in organisations, so how do we make workplaces work better for women
• A glorious story about how Barak Obama's female staff supported each others ideas and in being heard
• That we can all be part of the sisterhood and the feminist movement in whatever way works for us as individuals
• The importance of community
• How we all need to let go of the pursuit of perfection, and give ourselves a bit of a break

Resources

We mention some resources throughout the conversation, here is where you can find links to them all!

Future Women, where Jamila has taken the helm and is building an amazing community.

Jamila's books, Not Just Lucky and The Motherhood

And her own website.

“I remember those days were just so challenging. He was traveling for work, I was traveling for work…There was a moment where we were just hoping the various planes we were on weren’t delayed so that we could pick up the kids!”

Caroline Patrick is one of Australia’s most passionate marketers, ticking off a variety of achievements such as revitalising one of Australia’s most loved brands, launching a health fund, and winning Australian Marketing Institute Certified Practising Marketer of the Year Award. Currently, Caroline sits on the Executive Management Team at the Radio Rentals Group and is part of a team driving business transformation. Caroline has been making very deliberate choices aiming for a balanced and fulfilled lifestyle and career, and now  lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills, supported by her stay at home husband Iain and their two children Amelia, 11 and Cameron, 8.

What we cover:

Caroline’s background and how she accidentally moved to Australia from the UK

Why she had to become creative in her job choices and the benefits of bypassing the corporate ladder and pursuing a jungle gym career

The importance of having a sense of purpose and alignment of values in work roles

Being the only woman on the executive team

The process Caroline and her husband Iain went through to make the transition for him to be a stay-at-home dad

Making conscious decisions and changes to support those decisions, as opposed to just letting life happen

Caroline’s experience of Mother Guilt and the double standard for stay-at-home dads in our society

The important of putting judgments aside when making decisions that are right for you

Caroline’s advice to anyone who might be in the two-working-parents juggle right now

Why you should ask for what you want and question the status quo

The gift of giving yourself permission to outsource the things that make life easier

Resources

Caroline mentions the FriDads, a group of stay at home Dads from Alice Springs

"I remember those days were just so challenging. He was traveling for work, I was traveling for work...There was a moment where we were just hoping the various planes we were on weren't delayed so that we could pick up the kids!"

Caroline Patrick is one of Australia's most passionate marketers, ticking off a variety of achievements such as revitalising one of Australia's most loved brands, launching a health fund, and winning Australian Marketing Institute Certified Practising Marketer of the Year Award. Currently, Caroline sits on the Executive Management Team at the Radio Rentals Group and is part of a team driving business transformation. Caroline has been making very deliberate choices aiming for a balanced and fulfilled lifestyle and career, and now lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills, supported by her stay at home husband Iain and their two children Amelia, 11 and Cameron, 8.

What we cover:

• Caroline's background and how she accidentally moved to Australia from the UK
• Why she had to become creative in her job choices and the benefits of bypassing the corporate ladder and pursuing a jungle gym career
• The importance of having a sense of purpose and alignment of values in work roles
• Being the only woman on the executive team
• The process Caroline and her husband Iain went through to make the transition for him to be a stay-at-home dad
• Making conscious decisions and changes to support those decisions, as opposed to just letting life happen
• Caroline's experience of Mother Guilt and the double standard for stay-at-home dads in our society
• The important of putting judgments aside when making decisions that are right for you
• Caroline's advice to anyone who might be in the two-working-parents juggle right now
• Why you should ask for what you want and question the status quo
• The gift of giving yourself permission to outsource the things that make life easier

Resources

Caroline mentions the FriDads, a group of stay at home Dads from Alice Springs

"If I give myself a vision of where I want to get to and then only identify the next step... I actually end up going to places that I hoped to get to but that seemed like a wild dream."

Summer Edwards is a Life and Leadership Coach, and the founder of Lead Mama Lead, a social enterprise that empowers working mothers to drive change in the workplace. With a background in community development programs, working in Indigenous Affairs and internationally in developing countries, she has a strong interest in gender empowerment work, inclusive economies and social enterprise development. After becoming a mother, Summer transitioned from employment into a freelance career in community development and the social innovation sector, working with social enterprises and NGOs to capture and learn from the social impact of their work. Still, she found herself called to do something more with her experiences and challenges with work and motherhood. The Lead Mama Lead community (based around a website and a Facebook group) was born, because engaged motherhood and an engaged career should not be mutually exclusive.

What we cover:

• The challenges Summer faced negotiating challenging work in a part time role as a new Mum
• How a blog side-project helped her find challenging, career-worthy work in her field of expertise
• The mission of Lead Mama Lead and how it came to be
• The power of small steps, incremental changes, and treating your leadership path as an experiment
• How to discover what energises you by asking reflective questions:
  • What have I really loved doing?
  • What kinds of activities have I got lost in?
  • Where have I found that sense of flow?
  • What activities leave me feeling energised and on a high?
  • What tends to deplete me and how can I do less of that over time?
  • What do I always ask for more of at work?
  • What has really worked for me in my career?
  • What challenges have I overcome before?
  • What can I draw on from those previous experiences?
• The importance of clearing space and avoiding distractions in order to create change in our lives
• The leadership skills we learn from parenting
• Why we need to change our views of success and transform the workplace to recognise that home and family life matters too
• Balancing the internal battle with the external (bottom-up and top-down) conversations, and power of community in supporting women's confidence to challenge the system
• The trap of internalising unrealistic expectations about parenting and working
• The two big problems impacting mums: Imposter Syndrome and Overwhelm
• The Overcoming Overwhelm program and other ways to work with Summer

Quotes

"I quickly found that a job that I'd loved and was so challenging, and gave me so much variety and opportunity, became very routine and pigeonholed as I returned to the office 3 days a week… I felt really dissatisfied and trapped."

"The solution cannot be for everyone to haemorrhage from existing institutions, corporations, public service agencies. We need to keep mums in these roles, we need their perspectives on policies and product decisions, and every facet of our economy, so we can't have everyone [become a freelancer]."

"Mums should be able to have a meaningful and engaged career, and have the time that they want for their family and to take care of themselves."

"If I give myself a vision of where I want to get to and then only identify the next step... I actually end up going to places that I hoped to get to but that seemed like a wild dream."

"We can't transform our work overnight but can we can do little 1% changes that will move us closer to where we want to go."

"We [need to] transform our workplaces so that they recognise that life outside of work is there and it matters and it doesn't get in the way of being a good, productive employee."

"We should never forget that great change often seems impossible before it happens and we just have to trust that every little thing we do to stand up for ourselves is going to contribute to the tipping point that will normalise a different view of mums and flexible workers in the workplace."

"Women are expected to work like nothing's changed in their life after they've become a mum, but they're also expected to be a Mum as if they don't have a job. And we internalise those expectations of ourselves and think that we are failing if we're not performing. We need to let go of unrealistic expectations that we have about ourselves."

Resources

We mention some resources in this episode, including ways to work with Summer:

The Lead Mama Lead Website

The Lead Mama Lead Facebook Group

Summer's Overcoming Overwhelm course

We also mentioned authors Brené Brown and Annabel Crabb, who you can find on Twitter.

 

Summer Edwards is a Life and Leadership Coach, and the founder of Lead Mama Lead, a social enterprise that empowers working mothers to drive change in the workplace. With a background in community development programs, working in Indigenous Affairs and internationally in developing countries, she has a strong interest in gender empowerment work, inclusive economies and social enterprise development.

After becoming a mother, Summer found herself called to do something more with her experiences and challenges with work and motherhood. The Lead Mama Lead community (based around a website and a Facebook group) was born, because engaged motherhood and an engaged career should not be mutually exclusive.

What we cover:

The challenges Summer faced negotiating work in a part time role as a new Mum

How a blog side-project helped her find challenging, career-worthy work in her field of expertise

The power of small steps, incremental changes, and treating your leadership path as an experiment

How to discover what energises you by asking reflective questions:

What have I really loved doing?

What kinds of activities have I got lost in?

Where have I found that sense of flow?

What activities leave me feeling energised and on a high?

What tends to deplete me and how can I do less of that over time?

What do I always ask for more of at work?

What has really worked for me in my career?

What challenges have I overcome before?

What can I draw on from those previous experiences?

The importance of clearing space and avoiding distractions in order to create change in our lives

The leadership skills we learn from parenting

Why we need to change our views of success and transform the workplace to recognise that home and family life matters too

The power of community in supporting women’s confidence to challenge the system

The trap of internalising unrealistic expectations about parenting and working

The two big problems impacting mums: Imposter Syndrome and Overwhelm

Resources

We mention some resources in this episode, including ways to work with Summer:

The Lead Mama Lead Website

The Lead Mama Lead Facebook Group

Summer’s Overcoming Overwhelm course

We also mentioned authors Brené Brown and Annabel Crabb, who you can find on Twitter.

 

“You can reinvent yourself, you just have to believe in yourself to do it.”

Fiona Hitchiner has over 20 years’experience working in the Diversity & Inclusion, Work-Life Balance, Recruitment and Human Resources sectors working for multi-national, private and government organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

She is passionate about working with organisations to truly support and engage their people, through the development of work-life, diversity and inclusion as well as talent management programs.

Fiona is the proud mum to two young boys, an avid reader, runner, swimmer and yoga enthusiast, and has most recently signed up to volunteer as part of the community visitors scheme – connecting with older and socially isolated people.

This ended up being a really deep, honest conversation about the beauty and the challenges of life, and the ways we can choose to overcome difficult times.

* The four areas she tries to focus on in her life:

* career,

* family,

* community and

* improving peoples’ lives

* The fact that your job really has to align to your values in order for you to be happy at work

* Big, spontaneous changes she’s made in her life and career

* The ‘profoundly negative impact’ on her at work for taking maternity leave, and tips to manage that if you’re thinking about taking maternity leave

* Fiona shares a really personal story, and the way she overcame huge challenge and trauma

* Great beauty comes out of the challenges we face

* Her life experiences led her to want to give a voice to anyone who doesn’t have one, because she knows first hand how it feels to be silenced.

* The choice we have, every day, to be a victim or to forge forward and take back our power

*  The ways we can look after ourselves, including a gratitude practice

Resources

We mention some resources throughout the conversation:

DCC Careers (now Work180) company checklist

WGEA Employer of Choice

FlexCareers for flexible work options

100Mums recruitment for working mothers

Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly

 

You can reinvent yourself, you just have to believe in yourself to do it.

Fiona Hitchiner has over 20 years'experience working in the Diversity & Inclusion, Work-Life Balance, Recruitment and Human Resources sectors working for multi-national, private and government organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

She is passionate about working with organisations to truly support and engage their people, through the development of work-life, diversity and inclusion as well as talent management programs.

Fiona is the proud mum to two young boys, an avid reader, runner, swimmer and yoga enthusiast, and has most recently signed up to volunteer as part of the community visitors scheme – connecting with older and socially isolated people.

This ended up being a really deep, honest conversation about the beauty and the challenges of life, and the ways we can choose to overcome difficult times.

• The four areas she tries to focus on in her life:
  • career,
  • family,
  • community and
  • improving peoples' lives
• The fact that your job really has to align to your values in order for you to be happy at work
• Big, spontaneous changes she's made in her life and career
• The 'profoundly negative impact' on her at work for taking maternity leave, and tips to manage that if you're thinking about taking maternity leave
• Fiona shares a really personal story, and the way she overcame huge challenge and trauma
  • Great beauty comes out of the challenges we face
  • Her life experiences led her to want to give a voice to anyone who doesn't have one, because she knows first hand how it feels to be silenced.
  • The choice we have, every day, to be a victim or to forge forward and take back our power
• Â The ways we can look after ourselves, including a gratitude practice

Resources

We mention some resources throughout the conversation:

DCC Careers (now Work180) company checklist

WGEA Employer of Choice

FlexCareers for flexible work options

100Mums recruitment for working mothers

Brene Brown's Daring Greatly

“We need to stop 'fixing' women, and fix the system.”

Peggy Vosloo is passionate about diversity and inclusion, employee engagement and cultural change. For the past 15 years, Peggy has applied her project management and strategic thinking skills to both the private and public sectors. In the private sector, she managed the implementation of complex people projects for a global company. In the public sector, she developed and delivered educational programs designed to create sustainable change in the gender equality space for Australian workplaces. For the past 2 years, Peggy has been working as the Creative Project Manager for Sageco, a career transition company committed to embed D&I principles in their services.

We discuss:

• Creating your village and making a commitment to the family
• How to determine whether a company has true flexibility available for employees, no matter what their policies state, because it comes down to executive advocacy
• If companies offer flexibility and work does not get completed, it's a performance issue not a flexibility issue
• Real scripts for having the conversation with your manager to ask for flexible working
• Pay transparency and its place in removing the gender pay gap
  • Australia Post completely removed its company-wide gender pay gap!
• Women are great at negotiating, and get better outcomes when we are advocating for someone else (rather than ourselves)
  • The broken system and unconscious expectations and biases mean there's a double backlash – if we negotiate hard then we're seen as masculine, if we don't negotiate then we get paid less
• You don't get what you don't ask for

Resources

We mention some resources throughout the conversation, here is where you can find links to them all!

Workplace Gender Equality Agency employers of choice

Australia Post eliminates the gender pay gap

NSW Equal Employment Opportunity Agency, NEEOPA