Did you hear? Women CAN support women - Women's Agenda

Did you hear? Women CAN support women

Q&A last night raised a lot of interesting and salient points around being a young woman in the workplace in light of the recent sexual harassment and subsequent comments regarding young female surgeons.

But what I really think the panel highlighted for me, was that women can help other women by standing up for them and standing with them when it comes to institutionalised sexism.

As a young woman myself, in the work place, I have had experience with the unique set of challenges that many of us face. What Dr Gabrielle McMullin said to her female colleagues about their situation has also been said to me and my friends in different guises and forms when we’ve raised issues of bullying or harassment; “Just stick your head down and get on with it, pick your battles”.

The problem with this advice is that it perpetuates the expectation that young women should have to change, not the predominating culture of institutionalised sexism.

Young women should not have it “just as hard” as the generation before them. Yet cultures of silence normalise the offensive and inappropriate actions of men, and sometimes women, allowing them to persevere despite women demonstrating their competence at every level in the work place. In a generation where more women are being promoted into higher positions and becoming successful in their chosen profession there comes a power to change the status quo.

Holly Kramer on Q&A last night talked about how we should be creating a culture where women support other women and not perpetuate the destructive “women don’t support other women” stereotype. I agree. Established professionals should be using their positions to challenge cultures of silence around sexual harassment and the undermining of a woman’s abilities.

The belief that there are only so many positions for women in leadership roles and that young women need to work harder to obtain their credibility in the work place than a man should no longer be an issue for the new generation of working women. We should be encouraging female job security, ambition and leadership, and this doesn’t necessarily mean through “mentoring” or “sponsoring” them. Women can work with women by being their voice when they have none. Female support for younger women is a valuable asset that the previous generations didn’t necessarily have.

That’s not to say that successful career women have it “easy”. Germaine Greer, also on Q&A last night talked about this institutionalised sexism in our corporate structures, where there are ingrained systems of oppression. The still present institution of a “men’s only club” is one example of this institutionalised sexism. Men can still talk about business and politics without allowing their female peers to be present, effectively excluding them from the decision making processes or essential information that may be pertinent to them doing their job properly. Calling men out on this behaviour at every level is a vital step towards changing these “norms” and supporting other women.

The onus for change should be on the men who are intimidating women. If they can “get away” with making sexual remarks, women should not fear their jobs for calling them out. As Roxanne Gay summarised, a woman “shouldn’t be telling her younger colleagues to just lie there and take it, she should be telling them to bite it off”. With more women in the workplace a cultural change can start happening if every woman creates a culture where gendered bias is not tolerated.

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