Change the system and stop robbing women of their confidence - Women's Agenda

Change the system and stop robbing women of their confidence

When Rhonda Brighton-Hall wrote a blogpost urging CEOs to stop firing pregnant women, she received more than 300 emails from women who’d lost their jobs while pregnant or on maternity leave.

As the company director and Chair of FlexCareers says, it’s an issue that’s “smashing a generation of women and stealing their confidence.”

Rhonda made the comments last night during a panel session at EY’s Sydney headquarters following the launch of the Women’s Agenda Ambition report. The report surveyed more than 2000 women on what they want from their careers, and what they believe could get in the way.

The results from our study show women have ambitions, especially when it comes to promotions, leadership positions, and increasing their earning capacity.

But the study also found that women believe a number of roadblocks could get in the way, such as a lack of employer support (cited as a problem by almost a quarter of responses), a lack of personal finance (ticked as a potential hindrance by 23%) and caring responsibilities for children (33%).

The most common potential roadblock cited by women was confidence, with 51% of those surveyed suggesting ‘confidence in my abilities’ could potentially prevent them from reaching their ambitions.

As Rhonda suggested, a sense of vulnerability while you’re pregnant or on parental leave certainly doesn’t help when it comes to confidence. A certain portion of women could be seeing their confidence effectively ‘robbed’ due to the treatment they receive during this period.

As a number of written responses in our study indicated, women working flexibly or part time can also feel some vulnerability: they don’t want to leave, or ‘rock the boat’, at their current organisations out of fear of not being able to access the same conditions at a future employer.

Last night, Rhonda shared the panel with Harcourts CEO Sadhana Smiles, EY partner Mark Jones and Women’s Agenda Contributing Editor Georgie Dent, in an open, frank and personal discussion about everything from ambition to confidence, anxiety, and battling stereotypes.

The panellists shared a similar sentiment on women’s career advancement: that the current system of working is not working for women.

As EY partner Mark Jones said: “We need workplaces where women don’t have to ‘lean in’.”

He also suggested we need to address the assumptions and stereotypes made about working parents. As the father of four boys under six, he said he regularly receives comments that, ‘Your partner must be busy’, implying that he’s not as involved in raising his children. (His partner works full-time, also in a demanding career).

Sadhana Smiles shared her own story of leadership, rising up to being named one of only two female CEOs in the male dominated sector of real estate in Victoria. She said she faced plenty of judgement from a wide range of people regarding her ambitions, but simply chose to ignore them. “I just shut out the noise, removed people from my life,” she said. “Now when people see me they respect me, because I didn’t play to the system. I made the system work for me.”

Sadhana also urged us to think about diversity as being much broader than gender, an issue she’s written about for Women’s Agenda today. She said organisations must ask if their teams are actually reflecting the people they’re leading and the customers they’re serving.

Georgie Dent shared her own experiences with ambition, noting how it shifted significantly after she suffered from a nervous breakdown while working in law during her twenties. Georgie went on to pursue a journalism career, initially with BRW before moving on to other publications including Women’s Agenda.

So what can women do to achieve their ambitions in a system that doesn’t necessarily work for them? Rhonda noted that women of her generation simply had to break the rules, as she did in talking her way into working flexibly and receiving paid maternity leave. “Make your own rules and embrace the chaos,” she said. “Change the rules for yourself to make it work for you. Be bolshie about it.”

Key stats from the Women’s Agenda Ambition Report: 

  • 31.35% of respondents have young children at home under the age of 10
  • 37.17% have taken a career break for childcare commitments at any point in the past 10 years
  • 50.83% describe themselves as working full time for an employer
  • 18.20% describe themselves as working part time for an employer
  • 36.55% are aged 26 to 35
  • 87.88% say they live in a metropolitan area
  • 81.63% believe working part time has (or could have) an impact on their career
  • 26.55% are feeling ‘less optimistic’ about workplace gender equality now than at the end of 2015
  • 32.74% say they are ‘aiming to get promoted’ in the next two years
  • 39.14% say they are ‘looking to earn more’ in the next two years
  • 51% said ‘confidence in my abilities’ could potentially hinder their ambitions over the next two years
  • 93.07% rated ‘a diverse workplace culture’ as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ at some point in their careers
  • 92.34% rated ‘visible female role models’ as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ at some point in their careers

Check out the full Ambition Report here

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