The system needs fixing – not the women

Stop fixing women. That’s it. That’s the cry from Catherine Fox on how to make workplaces fairer.

As one of Australia’s leading commentators on women and the workforce, the celebrated journalist, author and presenter believes workplace systems in place are biased and need sorting.

Her latest book, Stop Fixing Women, released this month, says discrimination in the workplace might still make the headlines, and the statistics speak for themselves.

Meet Fox at The Breakfast Club presented by CCI and Boffins Books on 12 May.

With the pay gap at 17.9 per cent, with only 3 per cent of top CEO’s female, and women having half the superannuation savings of men, she says it’s high time things changed.

“The point is this message has been reinforced so strongly to women that many women believe that the barriers they are facing—structural sexism and discrimination—are kind of their own fault, that they’ve made poor individual decisions,” she says.

“What I am saying here is ‘no, don’t, we all make mistakes.

“This is not an excuse for saying ‘oh women are perfect’—far from it. We’re just human beings but when it comes to discrimination and bias, those are structural issues.

“They are woven through the rules, the norms, the attitudes and the behaviour in workplaces because that’s the society we’re living in.”

Fox, who has written three books including 7 Myths about Women and Work, says Stop Fixing Women offers practical tips on how to change the system to be fairer, such as flexible working hours, review of pay gaps, recruitment, promotion and progression methods.

 

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