Unwittingly, I manage to tick a number of diversity boxes: female, person of colour, part-timer, working mum, person of faith.
But for most of my life, I have felt zero connection to the “minority” label. At times I have actually loathed it. Because I want to believe that I have grown my career by working damn hard to be really good at what I do. The notion that I have only managed to progress through quotas or my skin colour is just plain insulting!
I was a migrant of the 80s, so grateful to be welcomed into Australia, where girls could go to school and elections weren’t rigged. A tolerant society that was a melting pot of different religions, ethnicities and cultures. A land of opportunity, where everyone had access to education and employment. All you had to do was work hard to seize that opportunity.
Right?
I remember attending assemblies in my all-girls’ public high school, listening to the feminism narrative and thinking: What’s the big deal? We have equal access to education in Australia. The reason why women are less represented in certain spheres of work is because they are choosing to be stay-at-home-mums. They have full agency over that “decision”.
And then I became a mum.
And I realised that it is not possible to truly have full agency over that decision when there are systemic structural and cultural fundamentals in Australia that make it more difficult for women to progress, and stay, in work. Domestic duties are not equally shared at home. Centrelink perpetuates this by discriminating between primary and non-primary carers. Childcare costs a fortune. On a more personal level – I couldn’t get interviews for part-time ops manager roles as they were mostly listed as full-time. I was gaslit upon my return to work by my maternity leave backfill. I was waking at 2am (and/or 11pm, 4am, 6am…) whilst trying to work full days on a half-brain. And the 6+ years when we were either a) trying to conceive, b) were pregnant or c) wrangling a baby/toddler were bloody brutal – and made career decisions or pursuing ambitious projects/roles really tricky. These 6 years also happened in my 30s, right when I was hitting my straps in my career and finally starting to feel confident that I knew what I was doing i.e. the prime time for solid career opportunities to roll in.
And motherhood is only one angle of the female work experience.
I have mostly worked in male-dominated sectors (finance, technology and consulting) so there have been many circumstances where I have been the only female in the “room”. I didn’t talk footy, play golf, trade shares, or drink beer enough to fit in with the bro culture in finance. I am consistently told that I look young. I experienced persistent sexual harassment in my first job as a very green grad. I’ve had staff go behind my back to a senior male colleague to challenge a decision that I had full remit to make. I’ve been in meetings where the only eye contact made is with the males. I’ve had a male manager scrawl a big red “WTF” over a report I wrote, and another that said “you fucking don’t know what you’re doing”. I’ve noticed colleagues or clients subtly (and usually subconsciously) tune out when I’m talking, or consistently talk over me.
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But I can’t focus only on all the bad, and on how little has progressed for women because it would be too depressing!
I can celebrate that I was given the opportunity to start a new job (which was also a career change) whilst 4 months pregnant. A small business once set up its very first dedicated breast pumping room just for me. I’ve had plenty of flexibility for doing kid drop-offs, homeschooling (!) and working part-time and not have it be detrimental to how my performance was assessed. I have stood up to rooms of (more senior older white) men, challenged their thinking and seen things change. And similarly felt a genuine psychological safety to be the subject matter expert, provide advice or debate with men 10, 20 years more experienced than me. I’ve been promoted ahead of my peers (male and female) because of my performance, not because of who I knew. I’ve brought my baby to board meetings and felt that my voice was valued (over the sounds of his burps and farts). My husband and I share domestic duties 50/50 (meaning I do zero cooking, which makes everyone happier!) and we both work part-time. He has taken on a more chill role to enable me to manage a more full-on role – and we’ve had seasons when the opposite was true. The finance bros called me “Mawds” and, quite delightfully, when I joined 8 of them in a triathlon season, they mercilessly ribbed the most obnoxious lad of the lot when I beat his swim time. And, when I couldn’t find interesting roles on traditional job boards, I turned to my network of well-connected males who rallied and got me in the door with 8 conversations I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
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I share this history not to grandstand – I have never wanted to make a big deal of “the minority experience”. As a migrant, my MO is to just put my head down, work hard and not question or complain. I don’t want to be known for the above, I want to be known for the good work that I can do.
But in my fortieth year I have been on a journey of recognising my identity in a new light – understanding what sitting in these minority intersections has actually meant over the years. This journey has been deeply personal and frankly quite triggering – but I’m realising more and more that minority groups are underrepresented for many complex and valid reasons. Minorities have to overcome unique and persistent “extra” hurdles. And there is no silver bullet. Quotas are useless if there are massive cultural blindspots. A 45-minute awareness training is not going to rewrite decades of perspective.
I am nervous about publishing this – because I know I’m not a writer! I can’t report on stats or write insightful commentary on how the powerful are or aren’t improving the gender pay gap.
But what I CAN do is share some of my story.
And hopefully by kicking off this “Staff Stories” blog, we can use this storytelling to set a tone for sharing and listening to each other, to learn from others’ perspectives and grow how psychologically safe and inclusive our team culture can be.
If you would like to share your story for an upcoming blog, please drop me a line :)
We are lucky to have you Ai. Thank you for sharing your experience.