LIMITED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY with PAULA DUNN

EDUCATE

LIMITED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

With Paula Dunn

How We Can Minimise Gender Bias by Creating a Conscious Inclusive Community!

I recently had a conversation with a close friend talking about why do we bother having “International Women’s Day” when it’s only 1 day out of 365? There’s so much hype around it on the day and then we hear nothing for the rest of the year? Nothing seems to change. Good point!

My next question is, why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Or Christmas Day? Or Hannukah? We celebrate those days because there is a meaning behind it. Meaning comes from our beliefs, beliefs come from our set of values, our values come from various influences such as our society, culture, religion, upbringing, and past experiences. These values set the tone for our thoughts and how we feel about a subject. All of this determines whether we recognise International Women’s Day and play our part to make the world a more gender equal place or just treat it as another day in the calendar.

Bottomline, our beliefs form part of who we are, ie. our identity.

Being a strong activist on Diversity and Inclusion myself having been born into a minority group of individuals with a facial deformity. I’ve experienced firsthand what it looks and feels like to be physically and emotionally degraded for my appearance, undervalued, underappreciated, overlooked and excluded from my peers growing up.

What made it worse, was being born a female on top of my facial deformity added a complexity into my life. Society values and rewards “looks and beauty,” it’s all part of natural selection. Beauty signifies health and vitality. The ability to produce viable off-spring to perpetuate the bloodline. Even though we may not today think entirely this way or even be conscious of our decisions. Our bodies know what our bodies want without us having to think too much about it.

My life’s success was pre-determined at birth by the medical profession, my teachers, and my peers. The medical profession told my parents based on research data “These kids don’t live long”, my teachers placed me into “slow learners’ classes – Maths and English” because they thought I had an intellectual impairment because I wasn’t grasping concepts as quickly as my peers, and my peers “taunted and teased me daily” because I didn’t look “normal” so they thought it would be a great game to play with me.

My parents of course, saw all this and feared for what my future might hold especially when at such a young age I was already a target in society. The feared, would I have a career, be financially successful and find love and marry. So across all levels of my life, I faced certain beliefs and biases from others around me.

I had two choices, 1. Accept what others thought about me and live the life they thought I should live or 2. Prove them wrong! And live the life I wanted to live. I choose to challenge!

The second I made the decision, to challenge the status quo, that I too wanted to have all the same opportunities and life experiences as those that were born “normal”. That was my driving force. Despite what others said, despite the many times I’ve failed at things. I still worked 10 times as hard, to up level my life. I didn’t take no for an answer. I had to fight for what I believed in, which was “I will find a way.” Failure was not an option. To admit failure was to admit defeat, and that would mean that all the naysayers and bullies would have won. Bottomline: Never Give Up!

Sometimes the present was too painful, so I dreamed about my future self. What my life would look like once I reached my final destination. When I started high school, I was in the bottom of my classes. By the time I was in Year 10 I was in the top of my Maths, English, Science and Music Classes. I had a goal to get myself into University and Study Medical Science. When I finished Year 12, I got in the Top 10% of the state for Biology and Music and got into University studying Biomedical Science. I not only got into a Bachelors but I also went on and Graduated with a Master of Science with honours. I was the first in my migrant family to go to University and gain a Tertiary Qualification.

This year’s theme is: Women in Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world #ChooseToChallenge

Working with teens and young women many of us still today face challenges of Bias, whether its conscious or unconscious. Many parents send their teenage girls to me to help them create confidence so they can have the resilience and grit to be the women they were born to be, without limits.

Life is hard, and many of the teenage girls suffer from Stress and Anxiety because of 3 common things:

How I see myself. How I want to be seen. How others see me.

They’re torn between who they want to be vs what they’re parents, teachers or society want for them. Depending on they type of society a young girl lives in can really impact how she sees herself and her beliefs about her future aspirations and opportunities in life.

The second part of my methodology focuses on “Conscious Inclusion”. Conscious inclusion is about creating an inclusive society where opportunities are available to both men and women. Conscious inclusion only works well if we recognise our own biases and beliefs, and as a result of them, how we respond to others. Let’s face it, we all have biases, even I do. It’s part of our DNA to help us short-cut the way we scan through our environment for perceived or real threats. These short-cuts are equally elevated in those who have gone through past trauma or undesirable life experiences because our bodies remember the pain of the past and want to protect ourselves from repeating that hurt. These biases can be displayed as un-intended emotional triggers.

Think about the people you socialise with? What similarities do they have in common with you? Are they from the same cultural background? Similar interests? Colour of their skin? Socio-economic Status? Religious beliefs? Sexual Preference? Or even be connected through similar past experiences/trauma. You may notice a trend or preference towards others. It’s not that you’re exclusive to other groups, it’s that when we form part of a tribe/clan or inner circle this is where we feel safe and secure. By feeling safe and secure we are then able to be vulnerable with our thoughts and feelings. When you’re in the workplace it’s a little more difficult to select the types of people you prefer to safely interact with. This is where we need to be “Consciously Inclusive”.

Developing Conscious Inclusion, provides the emotional intelligence to understand another person’s perspective, understand their story, their past even if we do not agree. We are bound by a social system and we must be aware of others – what is happening for them, an awareness of their emotions, their needs and their wants. We can also appreciate their difference and potentially learn something new about ourselves at the same time. We should not simply tolerate others but embrace and welcome them as equals. Creating confidence within ourselves will enable us to be open-minded and able to embrace diversity as the new normal.

This article goes out to every girl and every woman across all generations that has and is currently going through challenges in life. Know that your struggle is real, and that you’re not alone. For every young girl or woman that rises we all rise together. International Women’s Day is to commemorate the past struggles of women that have laid the foundation before us, support and embrace the present struggles of today’s women and giving us hope that the future will be brighter for all of us.