An ode to mum

Happy International Women’s Day!

I often speak with my mother about the impact of being a woman in the workplace mostly because I know she is interested and she has some fantastic stories of her own contributions to the Womens Liberation movement in the 1970’s. I am so proud, although I wish I could remember, that my mother took me to a Council meeting in Wollongong on the South Coast of New South Wales with numerous other mums and their kids seeking support for childcare. ?I believe that we were encouraged to be noisy and boisterous. But, this is just one example that my mother gives me of that time.

More recently though, in my conversations with my mum she has been surprised at some of my experiences and in a disappointed tone has said ‘I thought the battle was won’. And my response ‘I’m afraid it remains a battleground’! In fact, we are a long way off what the feminists of the 1970’s and mothers generation achieved. And let us not forget Emily Pankhurst and the early suffragettes. There are so many women who have been courageous over the years.

Given the theme this year is around bias it is fitting that I’ve just attended a fantastic seminar about unconscious bias which led me to Project Implicit https://www.projectimplicit.net/. There are a bunch of Implicit Association Tests (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html) that you can take that can provide great insight into your bias(or not) across a range of areas. I took one of the tests to assess my implicit bias around female/male with career and family. And, I’ll be going back to take a few more.

?Belinda