Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to inclusion bites, your sanctuary
Joanne Lockwood: for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
Joanne Lockwood: your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and societal
Joanne Lockwood: transformation. Ever wondered what a true, what it takes to create
Joanne Lockwood: a world where everyone not only belongs, but
Joanne Lockwood: thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we
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Joanne Lockwood: and share stories that resonate deep within.
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Joanne Lockwood: to share your insights or to join me on the show.
Joanne Lockwood: So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time
Joanne Lockwood: to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: bites.
Joanne Lockwood: Today is episode 109 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: beyond binaries and I have the absolute honour and privilege to
Joanne Lockwood: welcome Cynthia Fortlage. Cynthia is an award winning
Joanne Lockwood: gender diversity speaker, consultant and writer, and when I asked
Joanne Lockwood: Cynthia to describe her superpower, she said she's one leader
Joanne Lockwood: with two genders of experience. Hello, Cynthia, welcome to the
Joanne Lockwood: show. Hi Jo. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm
Cynthia Fortlage: excited to be here with you today. Fabulous. So, Cynthia, beyond the
Joanne Lockwood: binaries and your. Superpower, tell me,
Cynthia Fortlage: you know, the work that I do today with organisations is
Cynthia Fortlage: focused on really dealing with all of the issues
Cynthia Fortlage: that cover the space of gender diversity. And it's not
Cynthia Fortlage: gender identity, it is how
Cynthia Fortlage: diverse gender is. And
Cynthia Fortlage: I talk about, from a historical
Cynthia Fortlage: perspective, 10,000 years of understanding
Cynthia Fortlage: language and history, where clearly
Cynthia Fortlage: 10,000 years ago cultures knew that gender was
Cynthia Fortlage: not binary. Yet we obviously have a lot of
Cynthia Fortlage: conversation today about, quote,
Cynthia Fortlage: the binary of gender, when in fact it's actually
Cynthia Fortlage: not. Even though in my own personal story, I
Cynthia Fortlage: always describe it as, quote, flipping my binary
Cynthia Fortlage: because that was what was right for me. And that
Cynthia Fortlage: insight coming from the place where I
Cynthia Fortlage: was, which was when I came to this life
Cynthia Fortlage: epiphany, I was a C suite working executive
Cynthia Fortlage: overseeing technology for a
Cynthia Fortlage: international organisation in North America. Hence
Cynthia Fortlage: my accent. And that journey to where
Cynthia Fortlage: I am today has been strewn with a whole bunch
Cynthia Fortlage: of leadership roles and responsibilities.
Cynthia Fortlage: In fact, it may interest the audience to know that I
Cynthia Fortlage: actually learned to fight for women's rights before I ever learnt to
Cynthia Fortlage: fight for LGBTQ plus or trans rights.
Cynthia Fortlage: And that very much influences the
Cynthia Fortlage: lenses by which I look at the challenges
Cynthia Fortlage: that organisations face. And those challenges that I
Cynthia Fortlage: talk about are not just within the LGBTQ plus or trans
Cynthia Fortlage: space. But the issues that impact women, that,
Cynthia Fortlage: again, relate to. For two and a half years, I was learning
Cynthia Fortlage: to fight for women's rights across all of Canada, not
Cynthia Fortlage: just the LGBTQ plus ones, but all women.
Cynthia Fortlage: And therefore, when I became national leader of
Cynthia Fortlage: that organisation, I was bringing a voice to all
Cynthia Fortlage: of women's issues. And so that gives me a very unique
Cynthia Fortlage: insight as well. Also the fact that I have
Cynthia Fortlage: never met another C suite level executive
Cynthia Fortlage: who has transitioned on the job. I'm still looking,
Cynthia Fortlage: I've met senior people, but never someone who actually has a
Cynthia Fortlage: C suite role, as I did. And there's some very
Cynthia Fortlage: unique characteristics that I find come with that
Cynthia Fortlage: role. That gives me a unique insight into
Cynthia Fortlage: corporate organisations and especially at the leadership level,
Cynthia Fortlage: that really needs to be factored in when we talk about roles and
Cynthia Fortlage: responsibilities of leaders and what does that look like when we talk
Cynthia Fortlage: about corporate cultures and how that transforms? So I've been very
Cynthia Fortlage: fortunate to do this work since about 2017,
Cynthia Fortlage: and I've been fortunate
Cynthia Fortlage: to deal with almost 500 companies in over
Cynthia Fortlage: 30 different countries to date. I am based here in
Cynthia Fortlage: London, in the UK, and I am
Cynthia Fortlage: slowly growing my network and my connections and be
Cynthia Fortlage: able to speak with diversity specialists, HR
Cynthia Fortlage: specialists and those that may have challenges within their
Cynthia Fortlage: organisation where gender is impacting their
Cynthia Fortlage: employees and they're just not sure what the next step forward is.
Cynthia Fortlage: And I bring that depth and breadth of insight
Cynthia Fortlage: in order to help those organisations move forward.
Joanne Lockwood: So you talk about gender. So for our listeners,
Joanne Lockwood: how would you define the term gender? What does that mean?
Joanne Lockwood: Because there's lots of misunderstandings around sex, around gender. So what
Joanne Lockwood: is gender? Well, I mean, let's break down what it's
Cynthia Fortlage: not. It's not what today, people use
Cynthia Fortlage: the term sex to talk about, quote, biological sex,
Cynthia Fortlage: which the inference is genitalia.
Cynthia Fortlage: And the whole idea is, it's not that. That is
Cynthia Fortlage: one aspect. I describe sex as an act between
Cynthia Fortlage: two consenting adults. So we have that
Cynthia Fortlage: aspect. So gender is the innate
Cynthia Fortlage: sense of who we are, but also
Cynthia Fortlage: how society perceives us and puts
Cynthia Fortlage: upon us the roles and expectations
Cynthia Fortlage: of that perceived gender. So in my case, I
Cynthia Fortlage: normally get treated as a woman in society, which is
Cynthia Fortlage: how exactly I see myself, and therefore I see that
Cynthia Fortlage: as in alignment. But that also means that the oppression
Cynthia Fortlage: that women in the corporate space and in everyday life
Cynthia Fortlage: encounter is the same experience that I have. And
Cynthia Fortlage: so this idea of gender is not
Cynthia Fortlage: fixed based upon a body part. It
Cynthia Fortlage: is centred on ourselves, of how we
Cynthia Fortlage: see ourselves, but also how others are seeing us from
Cynthia Fortlage: a societal level and of course corporate
Cynthia Fortlage: cultures are a microcosm
Cynthia Fortlage: of societal cultures and I don't believe I
Cynthia Fortlage: can quote change an entire society. So I work with
Cynthia Fortlage: organisations to try and change and help them change one at
Cynthia Fortlage: a time. You talked about this concept of gender
Joanne Lockwood: being innate. It's not our
Joanne Lockwood: sex as such, as how we see ourselves, how the world sees us, how we
Joanne Lockwood: align. There's also another phrase I've heard, social
Joanne Lockwood: construct, and that's applied to gender. So how would
Joanne Lockwood: we marry a gender and social construct together? What does
Joanne Lockwood: that mean? Great question. The key is to realise
Cynthia Fortlage: that a social construct is of course something that
Cynthia Fortlage: doesn't actually exist. It's being created by
Cynthia Fortlage: society who believes it to be true, but it's actually not. And
Cynthia Fortlage: I'll give you a couple of simple examples. The first is
Cynthia Fortlage: prior to the 1940s every baby that was born was put
Cynthia Fortlage: in a pink blanket. Pink. Yet today
Cynthia Fortlage: when we talk about colours, the idea that pink is for
Cynthia Fortlage: girls and blue is for boys is a social construct.
Cynthia Fortlage: It's not true. Somebody made it up and somewhere it
Cynthia Fortlage: stuck. Probably through the introduction in terms of
Cynthia Fortlage: in the hospitals. But that's just one example. Another is
Cynthia Fortlage: that when we refer to children and we refer
Cynthia Fortlage: to boys and girls. Well if you go back into
Cynthia Fortlage: 18 hundreds and before, the fact is within
Cynthia Fortlage: households having slaves, the word boy was used to
Cynthia Fortlage: refer to a male slave, not to
Cynthia Fortlage: a male child. In fact all
Cynthia Fortlage: children had a form of girl is what they were
Cynthia Fortlage: called. So society has advanced language, we
Cynthia Fortlage: have changed the use of that language. We've
Cynthia Fortlage: repurposed the word boy to describe a male
Cynthia Fortlage: child in this case. And along the
Cynthia Fortlage: way we have somehow come to believe
Cynthia Fortlage: that these have always been. When in fact many
Cynthia Fortlage: of these things have only existed within the last few
Cynthia Fortlage: hundred years, probably within 600 or less years.
Cynthia Fortlage: But when we talk about the societies of human
Cynthia Fortlage: beings, we talk about histories that are 10,000 years
Cynthia Fortlage: old or older so they're not new.
Cynthia Fortlage: And it just shows that language is ever changing
Cynthia Fortlage: and therefore our social understanding of what these
Cynthia Fortlage: words mean is also constantly changing.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the work that
Joanne Lockwood: I often refer to as the gender box. And this is kind of
Joanne Lockwood: societal's role, expectations of one's
Joanne Lockwood: gender. And it has a lot of roles, doesn't it? The gender box. It
Joanne Lockwood: says if you're a woman you must behave like this, if you're a man you
Joanne Lockwood: must behave like that. And the thing that I always think about is
Joanne Lockwood: that I always think of gender is proportionate or directly
Joanne Lockwood: entwined with time, space and civilizations. So
Joanne Lockwood: that the expectations of that gender box for a man,
Joanne Lockwood: for a woman, for whatever is different today in
Joanne Lockwood: 2024 than it was in 1820, 417
Joanne Lockwood: 24, different in China, different in India, different in Saudi
Joanne Lockwood: Arabia, different in North America. Exactly. It's the construct
Joanne Lockwood: we've created within the society we're living in right now, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? Oh, it is mean. You know, to take your example a
Cynthia Fortlage: little further back, if we look at Cleopatra, who
Cynthia Fortlage: was a pharaoh in Egypt, yet pharaoh was an
Cynthia Fortlage: assumed male role. So how was this woman all of a
Cynthia Fortlage: sudden had this role as pharaoh? Right. It was completely
Cynthia Fortlage: counter to their time,
Cynthia Fortlage: to the change. But the other aspect is
Cynthia Fortlage: that when we talk about these aspects and
Cynthia Fortlage: thinking that everything is binary, black and
Cynthia Fortlage: white, one, two, on, off,
Cynthia Fortlage: whatever version of a binary acronym that you want to think of,
Cynthia Fortlage: ones and zeros for those that are in the computer industry, the reality is
Cynthia Fortlage: that what people keep forgetting to factor into this
Cynthia Fortlage: conversation, if you black out kind of all the
Cynthia Fortlage: perceived aspects and only focus in, say, from a biological
Cynthia Fortlage: perspective, because a lot of people go there, the challenge is from a
Cynthia Fortlage: biological perspective, absolutely. Everybody I talk to
Cynthia Fortlage: forgets the intersex community. Now, intersex people
Cynthia Fortlage: represent about 2% of any country's
Cynthia Fortlage: population. Now, the key is many of them do not know their
Cynthia Fortlage: intersex until they actually have a medical encounter that
Cynthia Fortlage: requires the discovery, usually from a genetic
Cynthia Fortlage: analysis, that they're intersex. Now, that means that out
Cynthia Fortlage: of the about seven physical characteristics
Cynthia Fortlage: that are biological in our body, within the intersex
Cynthia Fortlage: community, they are completely varied. And you know what? It makes complete
Cynthia Fortlage: sense, because when we look at all
Cynthia Fortlage: aspects of a human being, tell me what
Cynthia Fortlage: aspects are binary? Because when we talk
Cynthia Fortlage: about whether it be skin colour or hair colour, eye
Cynthia Fortlage: colour, we talk about our height, our size,
Cynthia Fortlage: but we're not this homogeneous
Cynthia Fortlage: binary group. We are so diverse and
Cynthia Fortlage: the spectrum is so wide that at the end of the day, the
Cynthia Fortlage: fact is that biologically we
Cynthia Fortlage: are very diverse. And from a human
Cynthia Fortlage: being perspective, that is represented within the
Cynthia Fortlage: intersex community, that shows that all of these
Cynthia Fortlage: aspects assumed to be binary, in fact, are not.
Cynthia Fortlage: And from there, we add on the layers of
Cynthia Fortlage: people's innate sense of identity, as well as
Cynthia Fortlage: components of sexuality, the privilege that
Cynthia Fortlage: comes with that, when we talk about power and privilege from an
Cynthia Fortlage: allyship perspective, but how are people
Cynthia Fortlage: oppressed, which is how are they perceived within
Cynthia Fortlage: societies? And all of these factors may be seen or
Cynthia Fortlage: unseen. We are faced with
Cynthia Fortlage: helping folks wake up to the fact that this is
Cynthia Fortlage: so much of a spectrum
Cynthia Fortlage: when it was originally perceived as simply a binary.
Cynthia Fortlage: Yet that's only in the last few hundred
Cynthia Fortlage: years, not in the totality of the
Cynthia Fortlage: existence of human beings. And the reality is
Cynthia Fortlage: that it's not that more people are becoming known as
Cynthia Fortlage: that. And everybody uses the study of
Cynthia Fortlage: left handedness where at one point it was illegal and then it was
Cynthia Fortlage: considered, well, if you write or use or dominant with your left
Cynthia Fortlage: hand, then you are
Cynthia Fortlage: working with the devil, and that's the devil's hand. And when
Cynthia Fortlage: we got rid of all of those societal bias
Cynthia Fortlage: of perceiving those things as untrue
Cynthia Fortlage: and they were just a way to classify and
Cynthia Fortlage: box a particular part of the population, there
Cynthia Fortlage: was an increase, quote, in the people that identified
Cynthia Fortlage: as left handed when it was perfectly legal to do so, and they weren't
Cynthia Fortlage: necessarily shamed as such. And when they did that,
Cynthia Fortlage: the numbers plateaued out and they plateaued out around the
Cynthia Fortlage: 10% mark. And so we know that within probably
Cynthia Fortlage: a number of these aspects, there's
Cynthia Fortlage: probably, quote, the population, about 10% fit in.
Cynthia Fortlage: So when we talk about, for instance, the LGBTQ plus
Cynthia Fortlage: community as a whole, based upon the
Cynthia Fortlage: 2022 census in the UK, that represented about
Cynthia Fortlage: 9.2% of the population. So it's kind
Cynthia Fortlage: of there. So to say that the entire
Cynthia Fortlage: population of gender diverse people is strictly the
Cynthia Fortlage: 0.5% that was quoted is probably
Cynthia Fortlage: an understatement, but it's probably an understatement that some people just didn't
Cynthia Fortlage: feel safe enough in order to make that declaration. And I
Cynthia Fortlage: certainly remember my own personal journey. That was
Cynthia Fortlage: not a simple journey to get to that point before I could ever
Cynthia Fortlage: literally utter those words. It didn't happen till
Cynthia Fortlage: I was 50, and I did not see
Cynthia Fortlage: myself represented when I looked in a mirror. I did not
Cynthia Fortlage: see myself reflected till I was 52 years old. That's
Joanne Lockwood: picking up on another phrase you said earlier, is
Joanne Lockwood: gender equity. I look back, obviously, I'm not this old,
Joanne Lockwood: but I look back through history and we
Joanne Lockwood: see that men, women, male,
Joanne Lockwood: female, in terms of sex, in terms of gender, have
Joanne Lockwood: had very kind of fixed rule sets imposed on them.
Joanne Lockwood: And there's almost been a concept that men are
Joanne Lockwood: superior and women are less or are
Joanne Lockwood: inferior, and that's been kind of reinforced in the
Joanne Lockwood: gender roles that have evolved to where we are now, but
Joanne Lockwood: maybe even more apparent with the disneyfication of
Joanne Lockwood: gender, Snow White and the seven dwarfs view of the
Joanne Lockwood: world. But we wind that back to victorian times in the UK
Joanne Lockwood: and beyond, those very fixed rules about women
Joanne Lockwood: were incapable or perceived incapable of doing certain roles, weren't they?
Joanne Lockwood: So where does that come from, do you? I mean, you
Cynthia Fortlage: know, to your point, all we have to simply look at, to understand what
Cynthia Fortlage: even know victorian era. And that, just look at the movie Mary
Cynthia Fortlage: Poppins. It very much demonstrated those
Cynthia Fortlage: expectations. Mr. Banks was a banker,
Cynthia Fortlage: right, and his wife was bucking the trend
Cynthia Fortlage: and she was fighting for the right to vote. Yet if we
Cynthia Fortlage: trace back the history of when did all of these things kind of change,
Cynthia Fortlage: it really correlates with colonisation and
Cynthia Fortlage: the realisation that colonisation on its own, which
Cynthia Fortlage: the UK and England was not the only country
Cynthia Fortlage: colonising the world, but when those
Cynthia Fortlage: colonisers went into these foreign lands
Cynthia Fortlage: where they had much different understanding of
Cynthia Fortlage: gender, they also brought religion, and it was
Cynthia Fortlage: reinforced within religion. And so when we talk
Cynthia Fortlage: about colonisers, we really can't separate it from the conversation
Cynthia Fortlage: of a religious understanding or
Cynthia Fortlage: limitation. Now, when we talk about that, I've got my
Cynthia Fortlage: own unique history with it. I was born in Belfast, Northern
Cynthia Fortlage: Ireland, and I was a Protestant.
Cynthia Fortlage: But unfortunately, the troubles in the early 70s
Cynthia Fortlage: chased my family away. And so I grew up in Canada, where I
Cynthia Fortlage: acquired this wonderful accent. And in doing so, I
Cynthia Fortlage: ended up meeting this wonderful person and we got married
Cynthia Fortlage: and I converted to being a Catholic. And in fact, I
Cynthia Fortlage: was so much a Catholic, I even taught catechism to adults.
Cynthia Fortlage: Now, that showed me a. The huge
Cynthia Fortlage: amount of similarities that were brought between, even
Cynthia Fortlage: though there was really just kind of a couple
Cynthia Fortlage: of the aspects of how each group
Cynthia Fortlage: practises the religion that separates them. But they were
Cynthia Fortlage: generally very similar. When we start to go
Cynthia Fortlage: backwards in time, if we look at, well,
Cynthia Fortlage: today, a lot of people want to quote the books they use.
Cynthia Fortlage: Well, which book is that? Because you end up having,
Cynthia Fortlage: of course, the Old Testament. Well, the Old Testament is the
Cynthia Fortlage: Jewish Torah, and then we have the New
Cynthia Fortlage: Testament that was put together. And if we talk about from a
Cynthia Fortlage: muslim faith perspective, not only is it
Cynthia Fortlage: the culmination of the Torah, there
Cynthia Fortlage: is no New Testament to it. So it's the
Cynthia Fortlage: Torah and aspects of the Old Testament
Cynthia Fortlage: from the Christian Bible, along with their
Cynthia Fortlage: own specific historical practises. And when
Cynthia Fortlage: I see that happening, it's like, oh, my gosh.
Cynthia Fortlage: The similarities of the points of origin and these
Cynthia Fortlage: books are not a single book. They are a
Cynthia Fortlage: culmination of many different writers from
Cynthia Fortlage: many different lands, creating the
Cynthia Fortlage: stories, recalling the stories, not in the
Cynthia Fortlage: moment, in time. Some of it was hundreds of years
Cynthia Fortlage: later. And the fact is that we know that through the
Cynthia Fortlage: Dead Sea scrolls and so forth, that through a number of finds,
Cynthia Fortlage: there have been multiple quote of
Cynthia Fortlage: these chapters, books that have been found historically,
Cynthia Fortlage: that through the process of, quote, creating the books that
Cynthia Fortlage: are used, they just opted not to use certain parts.
Cynthia Fortlage: And to me it was intriguing, certainly from a christian
Cynthia Fortlage: perspective, given that was my background, that many of
Cynthia Fortlage: the books that were created by women were not included.
Cynthia Fortlage: None of them were included in the final product that we see in
Cynthia Fortlage: use today, not the least, which was there was a rewrite
Cynthia Fortlage: for the evangelical community in the 1940s. There's a
Cynthia Fortlage: whole documentary that's out there that talks about this, and it
Cynthia Fortlage: was a reinterpretation. And the introduction
Cynthia Fortlage: of basically same sex relations are a big no
Cynthia Fortlage: no when that's not actually in the original text.
Cynthia Fortlage: So we have seen this manipulation
Cynthia Fortlage: of what we believe to be the truth that has
Cynthia Fortlage: happened through, you know, people are just doing it to,
Cynthia Fortlage: quote, create the advantage. So that's why within, say,
Cynthia Fortlage: the Catholic Church, we still don't see female priests
Cynthia Fortlage: and being able. You can have lay women practising
Cynthia Fortlage: and helping with service, but they cannot be
Cynthia Fortlage: ordained. Yet we have seen other religions, such
Cynthia Fortlage: as Church of England and others who now are
Cynthia Fortlage: much more open and they're much more inclusive of realising
Cynthia Fortlage: that carrying the word carrying. This
Cynthia Fortlage: interpretation is not restricted to a
Cynthia Fortlage: particular identity. It is actually
Cynthia Fortlage: multifaceted. And perhaps in the future
Cynthia Fortlage: that we will see rewrites and reinterpretations that will
Cynthia Fortlage: bring in a much more blended understanding,
Cynthia Fortlage: even though that's not where we're at today. And again, this is
Cynthia Fortlage: not history. That's a day in the making or a year in the making.
Cynthia Fortlage: This has been hundreds of years in the making. And that's why
Cynthia Fortlage: we assume it to be as it
Cynthia Fortlage: is, binary, when in fact none of it actually is.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think you probably trace it back even further. You
Joanne Lockwood: think about the roman empire. The men
Joanne Lockwood: were generally off to work, I. E.
Joanne Lockwood: Fighting swords, shields, defending or attacking
Joanne Lockwood: women, childbearing, nurturing, caring. And those
Joanne Lockwood: gender roles are starting to establish, before the birth
Joanne Lockwood: of Christ, the mythical sort of like zero
Joanne Lockwood: ad sort of time. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. You keep
Cynthia Fortlage: going. Yeah, I don't think it's modern
Joanne Lockwood: Catholicism or modern Christianity that is the.
Joanne Lockwood: These gender roles have been ingrained
Joanne Lockwood: in many societies, just down to the fact that many
Joanne Lockwood: women bear children. Therefore their role is more
Joanne Lockwood: nurturing and home based. Many men are the
Joanne Lockwood: hunter gatherer, the killer. They go out, and you can almost see that
Joanne Lockwood: mirrored in animal wildlife type
Joanne Lockwood: roles as well, where there are kind of
Joanne Lockwood: evolutionary gender roles. Maybe sometimes
Joanne Lockwood: in the lions, the females do the killing and the males do
Joanne Lockwood: the lazing around. But overall protect and procreate. So there's slightly
Joanne Lockwood: different roles, but there are generally fixed roles that been evolved.
Joanne Lockwood: And I guess as a human species, we fell into that kind of,
Joanne Lockwood: that same sort of thinking, I guess, in our prehistoric times.
Cynthia Fortlage: Yeah, I don't think in prehistoric it was, quote, as
Cynthia Fortlage: articulated in the same way. I mean, I'm
Cynthia Fortlage: rereading Mary Beardy's feminist manifesto, kind of
Cynthia Fortlage: understanding the power of women.
Cynthia Fortlage: And when you look at that, she makes an amazing
Cynthia Fortlage: statement. That was news to me when I first read it.
Cynthia Fortlage: When we go back to about 4000 bce
Cynthia Fortlage: in the greek world, there was
Cynthia Fortlage: a greek philosopher who wrote the
Cynthia Fortlage: original, if you will, role of women
Cynthia Fortlage: document. So that puts it at about 6000 years
Cynthia Fortlage: ago. And literally everything you just talked about is
Cynthia Fortlage: what was embodied in that document and it's
Cynthia Fortlage: from there. So if we want to trace it back, at least from a
Cynthia Fortlage: written evidentiary based process, it
Cynthia Fortlage: probably started 6000 years ago because the roman
Cynthia Fortlage: empire came after the greek legend. So
Cynthia Fortlage: Rome was basing itself on all of this
Cynthia Fortlage: previously articulated role and
Cynthia Fortlage: responsibilities of the
Cynthia Fortlage: genders within that perspective. And yet it
Cynthia Fortlage: wasn't true. It was just in that case that
Cynthia Fortlage: philosopher's his opinion of what it should be. But
Cynthia Fortlage: it's been taken as well. That must be what it's like. And therefore
Cynthia Fortlage: that's how we see society today. And then around
Joanne Lockwood: the time of Darwin, where science was becoming
Joanne Lockwood: kind of evolved, scientists,
Joanne Lockwood: male scientists, tried to look for evidence
Joanne Lockwood: to prove history, if you like. And I think there were
Joanne Lockwood: studies where people, men and women, were having their
Joanne Lockwood: skulls measured and their brains weighed after death
Joanne Lockwood: to prove that the male cranium was larger, therefore the male
Joanne Lockwood: brain was larger. Therefore it must be more superior to the female brain
Joanne Lockwood: because the female heads are smaller, the skulls are smaller, and the brain is way
Joanne Lockwood: less so. Therefore there's the proof that male brains are superior
Joanne Lockwood: because they're bigger. Well, if that's true, then if we go all the
Cynthia Fortlage: way back to some of the prehistoric peoples
Cynthia Fortlage: and so forth, they had larger
Cynthia Fortlage: skulls and larger brains, but that did not
Cynthia Fortlage: make them necessarily smarter and so forth. And
Cynthia Fortlage: again, it's just this advancement. And one of the aspects that we
Cynthia Fortlage: have to be careful of is that when you start reading
Cynthia Fortlage: reports and research, you really have to kind of question, well,
Cynthia Fortlage: what was the question they were trying to answer? Because it's
Cynthia Fortlage: really convenient to ask the question and get far enough back to get
Cynthia Fortlage: enough data that proves your point. Well, then you don't need to go actually cheque
Cynthia Fortlage: all the other data and we stop and then we create an
Cynthia Fortlage: interpretation. And when that becomes dated and again,
Cynthia Fortlage: tens of years, hundreds of years, thousands of years old.
Cynthia Fortlage: It's no longer questioned when, in fact, when you become
Cynthia Fortlage: aware of this perception that there's
Cynthia Fortlage: this disconnect from this modern interpretation, from
Cynthia Fortlage: the historical perspective of human beings,
Cynthia Fortlage: you realise that there's a massive disconnect that is
Cynthia Fortlage: disadvantaging people today because of what's happened
Cynthia Fortlage: before. People haven't changed, they're still diverse. It's
Cynthia Fortlage: just our understanding has become limited because
Cynthia Fortlage: we have gone back to your initial point, we have gone back to
Cynthia Fortlage: those boxes when those boxes were never true in the first place. Yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: think I read a report, it was the World Economic Forum, that
Joanne Lockwood: every year they produce, amongst other reports, the gender equity
Joanne Lockwood: or gender equality guide or report. And I
Joanne Lockwood: think if you compare where we were now to pre
Joanne Lockwood: Covid, gender equity has actually gone backwards
Joanne Lockwood: by, I think, ten or 20 years. I think before COVID
Joanne Lockwood: it was 99 years in the western world to achieve gender equity, or in
Joanne Lockwood: the world, and now it's like 120 years. So Covid set
Joanne Lockwood: back the advancement of equity around gender
Joanne Lockwood: by 20 or 30 years, just by the fact that the experience
Joanne Lockwood: people had during COVID impacted women
Joanne Lockwood: disproportionately harder for various reasons, such as childcare,
Joanne Lockwood: home admin, the man being as a perceived
Joanne Lockwood: breadwinner, and the higher earner needing more access to
Joanne Lockwood: the table, the desk, the free time to not be
Joanne Lockwood: bogged down with the children. So we talked about inequity of the
Joanne Lockwood: past, but getting equity in the future is a real
Joanne Lockwood: uphill battle. 100 od years for equity. I mean, really, do we have to wait
Joanne Lockwood: that long? I use the comparison.
Cynthia Fortlage: First of all, if we think of it, there's
Cynthia Fortlage: been equal pay legislation in the UK for slightly over
Cynthia Fortlage: 50 years. And yet we know from
Cynthia Fortlage: the reports that we see that we're not
Cynthia Fortlage: seeing it right. It's still an 83 pence to the pound for
Cynthia Fortlage: women. And again, not all women are equal. If you are a
Cynthia Fortlage: black woman, you are making less than that 83
Cynthia Fortlage: pence. If you are perhaps of south asian
Cynthia Fortlage: or of hispanic origin, you are making even less again.
Cynthia Fortlage: So we know that even within women, there is not an
Cynthia Fortlage: equality to that, let alone that the women's rights
Cynthia Fortlage: movement is well over 150 years old. And while
Cynthia Fortlage: we're in the fourth iteration of feminism
Cynthia Fortlage: 4.0 and fighting for our rights associated with
Cynthia Fortlage: that, I look at as an interesting
Cynthia Fortlage: statistic was the population of black people within
Cynthia Fortlage: the UK is about 11%. And again, that's using
Cynthia Fortlage: the census from 2022. What was
Cynthia Fortlage: intriguing is I was reading a report that said, in order to get
Cynthia Fortlage: parity in senior leadership, which is a
Cynthia Fortlage: lot of the work that I do with organisations, if we want to
Cynthia Fortlage: get that parity for black people in that role,
Cynthia Fortlage: by the way, they need to hit two more people to be
Cynthia Fortlage: given the role to hit parity. Based upon the current
Cynthia Fortlage: trend of how many leaders actually make it to that most
Cynthia Fortlage: senior level and are black, it's going to take about
Cynthia Fortlage: 235 more years. So the whole
Cynthia Fortlage: challenge of equity, I would suggest to you, for
Cynthia Fortlage: all marginalised people, women just happen to be the largest group of
Cynthia Fortlage: marginalised people. But for all marginalised people,
Cynthia Fortlage: when we start looking at the statistics from that perspective,
Cynthia Fortlage: it creates very horrific stories
Cynthia Fortlage: to reflect on, which is why the importance of
Cynthia Fortlage: organisations need to do the work today
Cynthia Fortlage: to change it. Because we know, for the most part, we don't see
Cynthia Fortlage: it happening within society or governance
Cynthia Fortlage: of society. What we do see is
Cynthia Fortlage: organisations who are taking a stand and
Cynthia Fortlage: saying, we got to do something about this. And we
Cynthia Fortlage: fundamentally believe it as a core value of our
Cynthia Fortlage: organisational culture, and they start to do
Cynthia Fortlage: something in order to move the needle forward. And
Cynthia Fortlage: in doing so, when enough organisations actually do
Cynthia Fortlage: that, they also will move the society
Cynthia Fortlage: needle forward in the same regard. So society is
Cynthia Fortlage: always trailing to the most leading organisations, but at
Cynthia Fortlage: the end of the day, nobody's doing it perfect and it's always a work in
Cynthia Fortlage: progress. So you talked about the society there and the
Joanne Lockwood: workplace. You can't escape society and the patterns
Joanne Lockwood: in society. But if you look at just, I suppose,
Joanne Lockwood: aspirations, the aspirations young
Joanne Lockwood: women have in their teens, they
Joanne Lockwood: don't aspire often. I don't want to say
Joanne Lockwood: a stereotype, but often they don't aspire to
Joanne Lockwood: become scientists, leaders, whatever.
Joanne Lockwood: They aspire to be mums. They aspire to be doing low
Joanne Lockwood: level, low paid, unskilled work in many cases, which
Joanne Lockwood: is why we often see many women in those roles and again, impacted
Joanne Lockwood: by Covid. So how do we change? We talked about moving the needle. How do
Joanne Lockwood: we move the needle in creating a society where young women and
Joanne Lockwood: girls aspire to their potential? Well,
Cynthia Fortlage: a couple of things. First is, I would challenge a bit of the
Cynthia Fortlage: language that you used in making the
Cynthia Fortlage: referral, but I'll put it in context. When we think
Cynthia Fortlage: of that conversation, the challenge is
Cynthia Fortlage: not that low level work has been done, it's that
Cynthia Fortlage: on the basis of feminism 4.0, it has
Cynthia Fortlage: in advancing the feminist movement, which
Cynthia Fortlage: includes all genders, by the way, which is why men are welcome in
Cynthia Fortlage: there, to help move that needle the key is to realise that
Cynthia Fortlage: feminism 4.0, the quote unquote new
Cynthia Fortlage: elements are inclusion, which would include women
Cynthia Fortlage: like me and many others in that
Cynthia Fortlage: definition. And secondly, the intersectionality
Cynthia Fortlage: that comes into play when we look at those factors.
Cynthia Fortlage: A woman choosing to stay home
Cynthia Fortlage: and become a stay at home mom or white,
Cynthia Fortlage: that's not low level work. That is her choice. That
Cynthia Fortlage: is what the power of feminism has created, is
Cynthia Fortlage: the ability for her to choose to do that
Cynthia Fortlage: if she so chooses. If she doesn't choose that,
Cynthia Fortlage: then we get to. You were talking about some of those industries which
Cynthia Fortlage: fall under the stem st, e m, or
Cynthia Fortlage: steam. The inclusion of the a, depending upon how you
Cynthia Fortlage: define that particular market
Cynthia Fortlage: segment. And when we look into the stem
Cynthia Fortlage: space these days, the reality is that there are
Cynthia Fortlage: many careers in there that are not geared
Cynthia Fortlage: for the roles and responsibilities that are put
Cynthia Fortlage: upon all women, and especially those
Cynthia Fortlage: young women who might be mums or
Cynthia Fortlage: starting out, perhaps a married life. And in doing
Cynthia Fortlage: so, it is society that is creating
Cynthia Fortlage: the devaluation. The jobs themselves are not of low
Cynthia Fortlage: value. It's that there hasn't been. And that's the importance,
Cynthia Fortlage: from a societal perspective, when we talk about
Cynthia Fortlage: creating societal expectations of a living
Cynthia Fortlage: wage, that is to remove
Cynthia Fortlage: that bias associated with that
Cynthia Fortlage: work. And it's getting to places like a
Cynthia Fortlage: living wage allows everyone to
Cynthia Fortlage: be able to hold their head high and not be doing,
Cynthia Fortlage: quote, menial work. It's not menial, it
Cynthia Fortlage: has value. And a value has been assigned as the
Cynthia Fortlage: ability to live within society. And in doing
Cynthia Fortlage: so, whether that is stay at home, whether that
Cynthia Fortlage: is go to work and make some more money,
Cynthia Fortlage: whatever that is. That's really some
Cynthia Fortlage: of the big challenges from a gendered perspective that
Cynthia Fortlage: we face. And we have to get rid of these biases
Cynthia Fortlage: through education and awareness and
Cynthia Fortlage: realising that there are some women doing work
Cynthia Fortlage: that they don't want to be doing because they don't have
Cynthia Fortlage: another choice, because of something like not getting,
Cynthia Fortlage: having a living wage forces them to have to make other
Cynthia Fortlage: very difficult decisions in their life. And it in no way demeans
Cynthia Fortlage: them as a human being, nor the work they're actually doing,
Cynthia Fortlage: regardless of the perception. It is our own
Cynthia Fortlage: bias that's creating that perception. It's not an
Cynthia Fortlage: actual fact. It sounds easy. It sounds
Joanne Lockwood: easy. Everything sounds easy. Doing. It's the hard part.
Joanne Lockwood: So what are the barriers? Why aren't we making
Joanne Lockwood: a significant dent? Fourth wave feminism has
Joanne Lockwood: been around ten or 1215 years, I guess, since I
Joanne Lockwood: started talking about it. Even third wave feminism, we haven't
Joanne Lockwood: really, as you said, moved the needle. What are the big
Joanne Lockwood: barriers? What's stopping organisations and men and empowering
Joanne Lockwood: women and driving this forward? What's the barriers? Well,
Cynthia Fortlage: the barriers are bias and these perceptions that we were
Cynthia Fortlage: talking about that believes the world's supposed to look or work
Cynthia Fortlage: one way. And that's why in a
Cynthia Fortlage: lot of groups that I'm involved with and certainly working
Cynthia Fortlage: with a lot of women's ergs, brgs,
Cynthia Fortlage: employee networks, the conversation about
Cynthia Fortlage: how to bring in male allies in support of,
Cynthia Fortlage: not to diminish the male role. I mean, at the end of the
Cynthia Fortlage: day, every organisation should have a cultural understanding of
Cynthia Fortlage: trying to create an inclusive workspace
Cynthia Fortlage: where every employee belongs, that includes their men, their
Cynthia Fortlage: women and every other person
Cynthia Fortlage: that may not fit within those definitions. And
Cynthia Fortlage: so the reality is that what we have to do
Cynthia Fortlage: is get together to start overcoming
Cynthia Fortlage: all of these biases and perceptions that hold us
Cynthia Fortlage: back and the realisation that
Cynthia Fortlage: we have to start shifting it. And again, I
Cynthia Fortlage: would suggest to you that at a social
Cynthia Fortlage: level of society at large, that's hard
Cynthia Fortlage: to do, really hard to do. The
Cynthia Fortlage: government's part, whatever the government is, it's not
Cynthia Fortlage: a question of politics, it's a question of are the policies in
Cynthia Fortlage: place that are creating the supports
Cynthia Fortlage: necessary to actually move the needle on these
Cynthia Fortlage: things? And in doing so,
Cynthia Fortlage: organisations are much more at the forefront
Cynthia Fortlage: of having the flexibility and the ability to actually
Cynthia Fortlage: define it. So we have seen many
Cynthia Fortlage: things change across many nations
Cynthia Fortlage: by looking at leading organisations that have
Cynthia Fortlage: influenced government, by being early adopters of
Cynthia Fortlage: change. And by doing so, they kind of shine a light
Cynthia Fortlage: on how to do it by figuring it out. No one's doing it
Cynthia Fortlage: perfectly. So that just means even the early adopters are still learning
Cynthia Fortlage: and adapting on how to move it forward. But if you
Cynthia Fortlage: don't have an intent to do it, the conversation never starts and
Cynthia Fortlage: you go, oh, this is too difficult. Well, why are we going to
Cynthia Fortlage: talk about it if it's so difficult? Because, well, that's like looking
Cynthia Fortlage: at Mount Everest and going, well, that's kind of tall, I don't want to
Cynthia Fortlage: climb it. Well, until you actually try and get to base camp,
Cynthia Fortlage: which is already putting you, I think, a few
Cynthia Fortlage: thousand feet up, you haven't even begun the
Cynthia Fortlage: journey. I always use the quote in a lot
Cynthia Fortlage: of my work that one of my favourite quotes is a journey of 1000
Cynthia Fortlage: miles begins with the first step. But if we don't take the first step, the
Cynthia Fortlage: journey never begins. And the problem is we take the proverbial
Cynthia Fortlage: one step forward and half a step back because,
Cynthia Fortlage: oh, hang on, everybody was upset about that one step.
Cynthia Fortlage: We have 999 more steps to
Cynthia Fortlage: go, but we're fighting over the first step and that
Cynthia Fortlage: prevents us organisations, because they're
Cynthia Fortlage: microcosms, can create that change
Cynthia Fortlage: much easier. And in doing so we get enough organisations
Cynthia Fortlage: doing that, that can create the influence to take
Cynthia Fortlage: the next step. And it is a journey of steps. It's a
Cynthia Fortlage: journey certainly well beyond the years that I have left on this
Cynthia Fortlage: planet. But I feel that I am called
Cynthia Fortlage: to do this work in order to move the needle
Cynthia Fortlage: just because of the disparity that I
Cynthia Fortlage: encountered by simply flipping my
Cynthia Fortlage: binary and realising that one day I was
Cynthia Fortlage: treated one way and the next day I was treated
Cynthia Fortlage: so marginalised that I was struggling to have my voice
Cynthia Fortlage: heard, even though I had a table around the executive
Cynthia Fortlage: table, or the fact that I'm the subject matter expert
Cynthia Fortlage: in the room and yet because of my gender I get completely
Cynthia Fortlage: ignored. Or the fact of the moment we all walk
Cynthia Fortlage: out our front door and not feeling
Cynthia Fortlage: safe. It's not about walking down the high street in the middle of the
Cynthia Fortlage: day surrounded by people or riding the
Cynthia Fortlage: tube. It's every aspect of life and
Cynthia Fortlage: we are impacted because of our gender
Cynthia Fortlage: in every single instance and the
Cynthia Fortlage: assumed rules that were put upon us,
Cynthia Fortlage: and that's what we're having to overturn it. I can certainly tell you that
Cynthia Fortlage: as woman over my 50s, learning
Cynthia Fortlage: that I'm becoming invisible within the corporate space,
Cynthia Fortlage: certainly as an employee, was absolute
Cynthia Fortlage: despair. It wasn't that I became less useful or
Cynthia Fortlage: less smart or less productive, I just
Cynthia Fortlage: became invisible and I was no longer seen as an asset.
Cynthia Fortlage: Yet that doesn't happen to men in their 50s,
Cynthia Fortlage: they're looked at for their leadership and so forth. So that's just
Cynthia Fortlage: again those gendered perceptions that aren't
Cynthia Fortlage: reality. Women have not become less
Cynthia Fortlage: valuable, they have not become less productive,
Cynthia Fortlage: they may work differently. Things like the menopause certainly
Cynthia Fortlage: cause women to have to work differently.
Cynthia Fortlage: If a younger woman, I don't know, probably in her twenty s,
Cynthia Fortlage: thirty s, she may end up having childcare
Cynthia Fortlage: responsibilities and social and don't forget that in between there you have
Cynthia Fortlage: the sandwich generation who are not only looking after potentially children,
Cynthia Fortlage: they're looking after ageing parents. At the same time,
Cynthia Fortlage: where's the adaptation to ensure that we're getting full value?
Cynthia Fortlage: Especially when we talk about levelling up and wanting to get all of
Cynthia Fortlage: these people working. Well, guess what? You can't
Cynthia Fortlage: have a homogeneous single
Cynthia Fortlage: way that, quote, everybody works, everybody is different,
Cynthia Fortlage: everybody has different requirements. And that's really where the equity
Cynthia Fortlage: question comes in, it's how are we equitably
Cynthia Fortlage: addressing all of these diverse and unique
Cynthia Fortlage: needs? It doesn't mean you need 3 million different ways to do
Cynthia Fortlage: it, but you can't have one. And
Cynthia Fortlage: we see that challenge today definitely in the corporate space where
Cynthia Fortlage: there's all this quote, demand to return to the office
Cynthia Fortlage: kind of working because of many reasons. Some have
Cynthia Fortlage: validity, some don't. But the ultimate reality, like many
Cynthia Fortlage: business decisions, is it's driven by money. Many of these corporations
Cynthia Fortlage: have signed long term lease rental contracts with
Cynthia Fortlage: properties. The property market is a huge valuation
Cynthia Fortlage: that underpins the entire business
Cynthia Fortlage: community. And to go to where we were during
Cynthia Fortlage: COVID and realise that oh my God, we could actually have these
Cynthia Fortlage: completely distributed workplaces and we don't actually
Cynthia Fortlage: need this physical space had such a huge
Cynthia Fortlage: economic impact that the
Cynthia Fortlage: quote cost of living crisis and so forth we see today is
Cynthia Fortlage: nothing compared to what would happen if the corporate
Cynthia Fortlage: financial markets began to fail. And that's really the level we're
Cynthia Fortlage: talking about. And it's how do we keep moving away, how do we
Cynthia Fortlage: keep doing? Well, let's not force everybody back to the office, let's
Cynthia Fortlage: allow choice. Some people want to, some don't. Maybe it's a
Cynthia Fortlage: one day a week or a two day a week and you work it out,
Cynthia Fortlage: it's not always a Wednesday. Maybe this person can do it on the
Cynthia Fortlage: Monday and the Thursday. Why do they have to be there? You know what I
Cynthia Fortlage: mean? You start to have all of these different
Cynthia Fortlage: aspects. And again, I'm not being overly prescriptive
Cynthia Fortlage: because every organisation is different, their employees
Cynthia Fortlage: are different. The idea is every group
Cynthia Fortlage: has to look at what their people need
Cynthia Fortlage: and create the necessary solutions for them.
Cynthia Fortlage: And it's not going to be uniform for every company,
Cynthia Fortlage: everywhere, with one blanket perfect answer
Cynthia Fortlage: wrapped up and tied with a bow. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of your thoughts on RTO return to office mirror
Joanne Lockwood: my own. We talked about bias,
Joanne Lockwood: ingrained bias, centuries and
Joanne Lockwood: centuries, millennia even, of gendered
Joanne Lockwood: expectations, gendered roles. So our leaders
Joanne Lockwood: of today and leaders of tomorrow have to have this, of a cognizance of this
Joanne Lockwood: bias, of this inequity,
Joanne Lockwood: baseless and foundless inequity that exists between genders. So what
Joanne Lockwood: else? If you were talking to an organisation around first
Joanne Lockwood: steps, what can the inclusive
Joanne Lockwood: leader of today, who's focusing their
Joanne Lockwood: initiatives on? We're talking about gender today. Obviously there are other
Joanne Lockwood: characteristics, but focus on gender. What sort of steps should they be putting
Joanne Lockwood: in place or should the organisation be thinking about today? Well,
Cynthia Fortlage: the first place to start with is, do they have the data? Right. If you're
Cynthia Fortlage: going to make organisational level change, it helps you
Cynthia Fortlage: focus your efforts if you have the data. Many organisations are not
Cynthia Fortlage: collecting the data, many organisations have incomplete data
Cynthia Fortlage: and those that are trying to collect data are still getting very
Cynthia Fortlage: high. Rates of did not disclose, I e. Employees have
Cynthia Fortlage: not decided to disclose it. And typically that
Cynthia Fortlage: comes down to the psychological safety they feel within
Cynthia Fortlage: the organisation in order to actually make those disclosures. And
Cynthia Fortlage: so if it's not truly a safe workplace from
Cynthia Fortlage: their perspective, then you're not going to get that information
Cynthia Fortlage: disclosed. And therefore, how can you actually measure whether or not you
Cynthia Fortlage: advance know, it's akin
Cynthia Fortlage: to, I'm sure your listeners are aware of in the
Cynthia Fortlage: news. It was on the BBC News last night, I think it was, and
Cynthia Fortlage: they were talking about the NHS waitlists and how all the people that
Cynthia Fortlage: have been referred to specialists are no longer counted on
Cynthia Fortlage: those lists, yet they're still actually waiting for cancer care,
Cynthia Fortlage: for heart treatment, for some very serious health
Cynthia Fortlage: conditions. And so it hasn't actually gotten better, because now
Cynthia Fortlage: we're muddling with the numbers. And so let's just
Cynthia Fortlage: capture the numbers and you're not going to get the numbers unless
Cynthia Fortlage: within organisations, unless you create safe
Cynthia Fortlage: workspaces, which is an aspect, an outcome of
Cynthia Fortlage: the work companies do to create intentional cultures.
Cynthia Fortlage: So we have to go back even to the beginning of that and look, well,
Cynthia Fortlage: where do organisations, once they're trying to collect the data,
Cynthia Fortlage: when they're not getting the data? The answer is, it's a question of
Cynthia Fortlage: corporate culture. And where in the culture is there a disconnect? It
Cynthia Fortlage: could be. They say everything right in the whole bit, if
Cynthia Fortlage: they're like many organisations. And all you have to do is read a
Cynthia Fortlage: lot of the Labour tribunal reports that come out.
Cynthia Fortlage: One's definitely related to gender, I typically read quite a few of
Cynthia Fortlage: them, and in doing so, what we see is there's
Cynthia Fortlage: a very common practise of, oh, well, an organisation did a great
Cynthia Fortlage: job defining their culture and they had training on their culture and
Cynthia Fortlage: they launched their culture project and the whole bit. And that
Cynthia Fortlage: was it. It was like, well, this is the project for this month, this quarter,
Cynthia Fortlage: this year, they did it and it's one and done. Well,
Cynthia Fortlage: a culture is lived every single day, I always say. A culture
Cynthia Fortlage: is defined from the top down, but it is lived in
Cynthia Fortlage: experience from the bottom up in an organisation. And
Cynthia Fortlage: so the work to create an intentional culture
Cynthia Fortlage: cannot be a one and done. It
Cynthia Fortlage: exists as long as the lifespan of that
Cynthia Fortlage: company. So when they begin a project, if that company is
Cynthia Fortlage: going to be around for 50 more years, they have 50 more years of
Cynthia Fortlage: work in order to keep creating that intentional culture and
Cynthia Fortlage: ensuring that every person that experiences
Cynthia Fortlage: that organisation or enters that organisation or leaves that
Cynthia Fortlage: organisation can talk about that cultural experience
Cynthia Fortlage: that they wanted. That's what creates psychological
Cynthia Fortlage: safety. And obviously there's many sub aspects. I
Cynthia Fortlage: am not a specialist in psychological safety, but I have done some
Cynthia Fortlage: work specifically related to the transgender
Cynthia Fortlage: community within workspaces and how to
Cynthia Fortlage: create psychological safety while preserving psychological
Cynthia Fortlage: safety for everything else. And the fact is, it's very complex, it's
Cynthia Fortlage: not simple. There's about 14 different layers to it
Cynthia Fortlage: and that's kind of the work that organisations have to go through. And
Cynthia Fortlage: that is where I come in. And in each organisation, once we kind of get
Cynthia Fortlage: a baseline, it's about guiding the organisation through this
Cynthia Fortlage: journey that is not one and done. I always say as
Cynthia Fortlage: a consultant, I can help them define it, I can help
Cynthia Fortlage: them start to deliver the education, but I can't
Cynthia Fortlage: live an organisational culture for an organisation. They have
Cynthia Fortlage: to. So I can help put them on the path and the
Cynthia Fortlage: direction, but if they're not living it, they're going to deal with it. And guess
Cynthia Fortlage: what? The tribunals have found that where there are gross
Cynthia Fortlage: violations typically ruled against the organisation, it has
Cynthia Fortlage: been that an aspect of culture has not been continually
Cynthia Fortlage: reinforced and trained and retrained through the
Cynthia Fortlage: lifecycle of an employee. Again, it's not one and
Cynthia Fortlage: done. You have to do this ongoing because
Cynthia Fortlage: your culture of your organisation is going to mature,
Cynthia Fortlage: much like your understanding of diverse genders
Cynthia Fortlage: may mature. And in doing so you have to reflect that
Cynthia Fortlage: in the language and interpretation of your culture. And
Cynthia Fortlage: so it's not one and done. And as we go through that
Cynthia Fortlage: cycle and somebody says, oh, well, I want to address it for
Cynthia Fortlage: women and I want to address it for black
Cynthia Fortlage: or ethnic minorities or any particular group.
Cynthia Fortlage: Whatever they're focusing, they're going to learn something and that has to be
Cynthia Fortlage: reincorporated back into the culture and that's
Cynthia Fortlage: how they will slowly create psychological safety.
Cynthia Fortlage: That gives the data. And in doing so, they've actually moved the
Cynthia Fortlage: needle in doing that because they've been doing the
Cynthia Fortlage: work. Before we measure it, they had to do it. And
Cynthia Fortlage: to do that, I mean, there's a whole other conversation
Cynthia Fortlage: about the data and what data do you gather and so
Cynthia Fortlage: forth, but I'll leave that hopefully that gives you a
Cynthia Fortlage: sense of how we go after this rather
Cynthia Fortlage: large challenge, but not insurmountable I mean, we're human beings, we've done
Cynthia Fortlage: some amazing things. I don't see this as anything less than that. Are
Joanne Lockwood: men, thanks, willing and able and ready to step
Joanne Lockwood: up and do what it takes? Is that part of the challenge? We can talk
Joanne Lockwood: all days around women's rights, women's movement,
Joanne Lockwood: women's having these conversations. But if time has shown as
Joanne Lockwood: anything, in order to make change, it has to be enabled by people
Joanne Lockwood: who hold power and privilege correct and generally in society. Men,
Joanne Lockwood: white men, white, straight men, hold power and privilege. Correct.
Joanne Lockwood: And as a woman, you have to
Joanne Lockwood: knock on the door gently and be invited in. If you try and
Joanne Lockwood: knock on the door heavily or kick it in, you get repelled
Joanne Lockwood: as someone who's crazy or someone who is subversive. So
Joanne Lockwood: we need fundamental societal change where people who hold
Joanne Lockwood: privilege see it as their responsibility. Sexism is a male
Joanne Lockwood: problem, racism is a white problem, homophobia is a
Joanne Lockwood: straight problem. So we got to try and shift where we see
Joanne Lockwood: the challenge. And women talking around oppression
Joanne Lockwood: isn't moving the needle, because men need to start recognising
Joanne Lockwood: that conversation and have men involved. That's the challenge we face.
Cynthia Fortlage: Exactly. Until we start to realise our
Cynthia Fortlage: privileges as human beings. What I call making the
Cynthia Fortlage: unconscious conscious. Until we start to recognise that
Cynthia Fortlage: element, you can't change it because, see, the process is you first of all have
Cynthia Fortlage: to make the unconscious conscious. Then you have to accept the
Cynthia Fortlage: conscious thought, good or bad, and then you can
Cynthia Fortlage: decide to change it or not. And then you actually have to
Cynthia Fortlage: do something. And so even that's not a one, two
Cynthia Fortlage: step, that is three or four steps in order to actually
Cynthia Fortlage: get moving to deal with it. And
Cynthia Fortlage: if somebody is at the top of the food chain, and certainly up to
Cynthia Fortlage: the age of 50, I was a
Cynthia Fortlage: perceived white, heterose
Cynthia Fortlage: man. And I enjoyed every single one of those
Cynthia Fortlage: privileges because I was in the executive suite,
Cynthia Fortlage: I quote, had made it, and I had the salary and
Cynthia Fortlage: the cars and the house and the holiday and the bank account
Cynthia Fortlage: and everything else. But as Maslow talks about,
Cynthia Fortlage: I wasn't self actualized by achieving that point in my
Cynthia Fortlage: life. What I did was realise, oh, my gosh,
Cynthia Fortlage: there's a huge gap. And that caused me to have to reflect,
Cynthia Fortlage: well, that exercise, not because of their
Cynthia Fortlage: gender or questioning their perception of their
Cynthia Fortlage: gender, but simply being a
Cynthia Fortlage: white, cis het male, so
Cynthia Fortlage: cisgender, heterosexual male, you're probably carrying
Cynthia Fortlage: a huge bunch of power and privilege that many
Cynthia Fortlage: others aren't. And until you recognise
Cynthia Fortlage: that and are willing to do something not to give away what
Cynthia Fortlage: you got. But to uplift others, to be in the same space,
Cynthia Fortlage: then that's part of the challenge. And that was one of my learnings,
Cynthia Fortlage: was the idea of what does it
Cynthia Fortlage: mean to move the needle forward and to advance a bit,
Cynthia Fortlage: quote, within society, because even within my,
Cynthia Fortlage: quote, marginalised part of my identity, which I
Cynthia Fortlage: consider tertiary to the work that I do. The reality
Cynthia Fortlage: is that I still carry a great deal of privilege and
Cynthia Fortlage: I carry privilege that many others who have travelled a
Cynthia Fortlage: similar journey to me do not. And I realise that when I'm out in
Cynthia Fortlage: society and I don't get
Cynthia Fortlage: misgendered, I don't get name called, I have never
Cynthia Fortlage: been, thank goodness, physically attacked, but
Cynthia Fortlage: I do get impacted the way other women do. I have
Cynthia Fortlage: men who try and put their
Cynthia Fortlage: power over me to show that they are, quote, sexually
Cynthia Fortlage: superior or so forth and
Cynthia Fortlage: create advancements that I didn't ask for
Cynthia Fortlage: in my personal space or that I'm trying to get
Cynthia Fortlage: from point a to b and they feel they get to
Cynthia Fortlage: interject because, well, it's just convenient for them. Too
Cynthia Fortlage: bad, so sad. For me, it's both an aspect
Cynthia Fortlage: of safety for me, but for that person,
Cynthia Fortlage: they don't even recognise the privilege they're demonstrating
Cynthia Fortlage: by doing that exact kind of behaviour. And until they're willing to
Cynthia Fortlage: recognise that behaviour, that's the challenge. And that only comes
Cynthia Fortlage: from education and awareness raising, which
Cynthia Fortlage: is a great deal of what I do with organisations because there's
Cynthia Fortlage: still a great deal of education and awareness raising that needs to
Cynthia Fortlage: be done. And just because someone
Cynthia Fortlage: had a gender diverse speaker three years ago
Cynthia Fortlage: and they've talked about that topic, they've been there and done
Cynthia Fortlage: well, things change, things advance. And so when
Cynthia Fortlage: are you doing the reeducation part, as much as we talked about
Cynthia Fortlage: doing it, with your development of your intentional culture and training
Cynthia Fortlage: your employees, bringing in the training that keeps
Cynthia Fortlage: your people open and growing by learning
Cynthia Fortlage: is also a key aspect of that. And that's an area
Cynthia Fortlage: where know, just ask learning and development
Cynthia Fortlage: professionals, they'll tell you that, know, the economy
Cynthia Fortlage: gets difficult and the business is hurting, they're one of the first budget that
Cynthia Fortlage: gets cut. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah, Cynthia,
Joanne Lockwood: that's absolutely amazing. I can't believe we've been chatting for over an hour
Joanne Lockwood: now and it's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you. You're welcome. And I'm sure our
Joanne Lockwood: listeners have got so much from this. So how can they get in touch with
Joanne Lockwood: you to find out more about the work you do and to maybe reach
Joanne Lockwood: out and say hi? Absolutely. Well, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cynthia Fortlage: Please mention that you heard me on this show with you, Jo. The
Cynthia Fortlage: other one is they can go to my website, which is triple w dot
Cynthia Fortlage: cynthiafortlage.com. All one word.
Cynthia Fortlage: The name's in the description. So yeah, just go to triple w
Cynthia Fortlage: cynthiafortledge.com. You'd be able to connect with me,
Cynthia Fortlage: find out more information, and would love to
Cynthia Fortlage: engage in a conversation. If you've got a question that might
Cynthia Fortlage: be burning after this conversation, please reach
Cynthia Fortlage: out. Thank you. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to
Joanne Lockwood: express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for
Joanne Lockwood: lending your ear and heart to the cause of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord.
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Joanne Lockwood: Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: and let's make your voice heard. Until next
Joanne Lockwood: time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise
Joanne Lockwood: to return with more enriching narratives that challenge,
Joanne Lockwood: inspire, and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more
Joanne Lockwood: inclusive world, one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.