Reimagine the Workplace for Women: The Standards and Practices We Want!
This, as WomaNiko – an initiative with a global reach that supports authentic leadership and advancement in the career journeys of women – held their annual ‘FirePlace Conversation’ on 2 August at the Development Bank of South Africa in Midrand.
This year’s conference was themed, ‘Reimagine the Workplace for Women: The Standards and Practices We Want!’ The discussions emerged from a storybook entitled, There’s More to Us, which was launched by WomaNiko last year.
The woman attendees gathered in an intimate, safe and elegant setup to have an honest discussion about the challenges they face within the workplace, such as those of feeling unsafe, rampant discrimination and sexual harassment. They also voiced solutions as to how to deal with those challenges.
Challenge of working in a male-dominated industry
One of the speakers, Tholoana Mogotsi, shared how challenging it was for her working in a very male-dominated industry, making an example of how hard it became to give instructions to her male colleagues. “That is how you start being victimised or being threatened for your life. I ended up living in fear at work.
“Generally, women carry a lot of weight – from home where they [can be] abused by their partners – and then they have to go to work and sometimes deal with men who feel like they will not take instruction from a woman.
“Regardless of work being a professional space where respect has to be mutual for great productivity. Women deal with such experiences every day and the sad part is that they do not have anywhere to report to. Though in some instances we might have women in human resources, they too do not have the will to do anything because they end up being victimised.”
Barriers to progress for women in the workplace
Another speaker, Alice Kanengoni, explained her case study which aimed to expose the barriers which made it hard for women to progress in their professional spaces and reach higher levels within the organisations. Kanengoni conducted a case study to find out what actually made women miss opportunities presented by organisations, to which she found there was a huge disconnect in their companies policies, even though they were progressive.
Championing the development of women at her workplace, Kanengoni said that her in her study, she found things like six-months fully-paid maternity leave and bursaries were there for women but many times women would take bursaries to do short courses and not long-term courses, therefore not being fully satisfied with their development.
She added, “From talking to colleagues, because as part of my research I was interviewing all women doing senior leadership, I tried to get a sense of what it was which led to them [to] not doing master’s degrees or PhDs and so forth, and the findings were that as much as the bursaries were there and were for free, practically as women, we had many things to consider as opposed to men.
“When I take up a three-year study programme, I have to think about who takes care of my kids for example. In some instances, some of us have been recruited from countries abroad and have no other support system whatsoever here.”
Building a feminist leadership ethos
“Increasingly, we were realising that there was just a lot of discontent, especially among women. I did the study in 2012 and then in 2016 again I tried to raise the issues while referring to the research, and there was a lot of skepticism as management said they have done all they could and cannot do more,” Kanengoni explained.
“But also the same year we had an opportunity to do a staff satisfaction survey with the help of HR and we found that 70 per cent of women in the organisation indicated that they were disengaged and not happy.
“That then forced management to say, ‘Indeed yes, we have a serious problem and we need to do something about it’.
“So we did a coaching programme for leadership but also building a feminist leadership ethos throughout the organisation which would target and change the culture of the organisation while acknowledging that there was a problem. So the programme is being rolled out in the organisation.”
As many women gathered for the event, many solutions were found in voicing their cries and engaging in honest conversations. The gatherings are still to be held for the development of females.
Details: www.womaniko.com
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