New women's network at work

[jakeyboy1]

Questionnaire on nee womens network to be formed at work.

Question 1: "How can we get more men to join?"

FFS!

Men are always welcome at the women in business and finance events in Australia, but the presenters and topics are squarely women and business oriented. That works (& men centring men would get short shrift) It doesn’t work for just within the company or for topics like miscarriages.

@Guineapigbridge

Digression but...

In my view the very first question for these women's groups should always be, How can we get women over 40 to join.
I'll tell you why. I was in these groups in my early twenties and I genuinely thought there was no sexism in my workplace. Women in their 40s, 50s and 60s have come out the other side of the childbirth, breastfeeding, career-juggling, part-time juggernaut. They KNOW what sexism at work looks like.
So I'd start there.

Yes. This. At twenty I thought I was treated equally- I probably was other than my starting salary. By 55, I couldn’t cope with the sexism and discrimination and retired. Worse thing is that I don’t think it was entirely deliberate- mostly the unconcious bias, but so steeped in it they couldn’t see what they were doing

I had much the same experience. The Women's Network became the Gender Equality Network, I hear because of one very senior woman. Her main concern? How can we can men involved. She also wanted to know how we can encourage more young men to join the company in junior roles (majority women, although a significant gender pay gap as all the men are at the top). I was just sitting there, screaming inside my head, HOW ABOUT PAYING WOMEN MORE AND PROMOTING THEM?

Did all these people go to the same seminar?

I believe the answer is more paternity leave, as young women have outearned young men for at least 15 years now and continue (according to The Economist) to keep outearning them if they forego motherhood.

The problem is that none of the women I know personally were happy to do that. They all wanted to maximise time spent with the newborn, and quite a few then went part time as their husbands salary meant they didn't need to slog it out five days a week in the office to live well (husbands usually being a good few years ahead in career as most women marry slightly older men and also prioritise partner's earnings more than men do).