Lean in, shout out.

My last post, Killer Heels, generated much interest and there will be more to come on workplace dress shortly. Meanwhile, triggered by current events, this week’s post is about audibility as well as visibility, the right both to speak and to be listened to with respect – or ‘How to be heard when your voice is softer,’ as I say when delivering management and career development training. This can be a tall order, whether you are project manager on a construction site, a newly promoted member of a Board or a politician working in a tribal time warp.

"When a woman stands up, she is told to shut up and sit down.…But I will tell you that women are tired that different rules are applied to us in a different way." These words were spoken last week on CNN by the doughty Barbara Mikulski, the longest serving woman in the US State Congress who has just retired after 30 years.

Retired she may be, but retiring she is not. Her forceful words were made after Senator Elizabeth Warren was rebuked and then prevented from reading a 30 year old letter from Martin Luther King’s widow Coretta at the confirmation proceedings for Jeff Sessions, the controversial candidate for the post of Attorney General.  The unprecedented rebuke of Warren was roundly condemned by many, with Mikulski accusing senators of selectively employing the rule book, supporting her claim by giving examples of men who have made direct personal attacks without censure.

 “I see this as a pattern of behaviour,” said Barbara Mikulski. “Women stand up in the boardroom, the workplace and now even on the Senate floor, where we have the same job, and the rules, they’re applied differently to us and they were applied differently to Elizabeth Warren.”

The challenge for a woman is not only being heard, but also protecting her intellectual property when someone around the table takes ownership by repeating her words - to a roar of approval. That is when having a champion, sponsor or supportive colleague is so important. And last week in the Senate, there were four male colleagues who stood up to the plate after Elizabeth Warren was silenced and proceeded to read the same letter – without interruption.

Certainly Barbara Mikulski has plenty of wise words to share, after an extraordinary career for which she was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She was the first woman elected to the Senate who did not have a husband or father who served in high political office. She was also the first woman to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee and served on many others including Health, Education, Labor, Pensions and the Select Committee on Intelligence. A tireless campaigner, one of her recent achievements was to push through legislation on equal pay for women.

Back to the importance of acknowledging and listening to different views, with respect. When the number of women in the Senate rose to 20, Barbara Mikulski organised bipartisan dinners for all her female colleagues, Republic and Democrat alike, with the inviolable rule that ‘the event was a zone of civility even when we disagreed.’ A rule to be welcomed in workplaces on both sides of the Atlantic.  

Mikulski warns that the Warren incident will have a long lasting effect on women’s activism, referring to the hundreds of thousands of women who have marched in protest against the newly appointed 45th President of the USA and the policies and behaviour he embodies. Like many of the men and women I marched with in London on 21 January, I find it difficult to believe that in 2017 we are still dealing with so many of the same discriminatory practices and attitudes that women protested about a century ago, but there is a growing determination to bring about change.

As I was finishing this post, Sandi Toksvig was echoing these sentiments on BBC Woman’s Hour and talking about the importance of women speaking for what they want and deserve to get. In particular she called for equal pay – a topic of much personal conjecture when she took over from Stephen Fry as host of the tv programme QI.

So what can we do? We should shout out our thanks to the increasing number of men who are supporting the diversity cause - including Sir Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow, Sir Ian McKellen who added their powerful voices and presence to the Women's March London. We should provide practical and realistic ways of assisting management to make change.

And like Sandi Toksvig, Meryl Streep, Barbara Mikulski and Elizabeth Warren, more women should shout out for themselves, for others who need support and to remind people of their presence. Like Rose AnnVuich, who became the first female member of the California State Senate in 1977 and who rang a bell whenever her fellow Senators addressed the collective members of the Senate as "Gentlemen," to remind them that the chamber was no longer exclusively male.

This story reminds me of my time on the board of a construction and property company. Unlike the FT columnist Lucy Kelleway, who does not believe that women non executives should promote or support women in the workplace, I was active in helping the company increase its proportion of women from 13% to 30% – in addition to carrying out the usual responsibilities of governance, audit and risk management.

On stepping down from the board after seven years, I presented the chairman with a mason’s gavel and block with the request that it be used to open every board meeting with the statement “Remember, the best person for the job might be a woman.”

Killer heels?

Picture by Sandi Rhys Jones

‘Dress like a woman’ is the latest dictat emanating from the White House to female staff, triggering witty and withering responses from women who are posting photographs of themselves appropriately clothed to fly helicopters, perform autopsies, command ships, fight fires, administer communion, race cars, and so on. In other words, jobs where the Ivanka Trump workwear range of high heels and figure hugging sheath dresses might pose a clear and present danger to the wearers and their customers.

But whilst President Donald Trump may currently be the most prominent – and deserving – misogynist target for feminine ire, he is not alone in demanding stereotypical dress wear for women at work. Only last week the UK Government published its report High heels and workplace dress codes: urgent action needed. The report condemns the frequent flouting of existing law against discriminatory dress codes and calls for a new framework and increased penalties for employers who breach it.

Triggered by a petition started by a woman sent home without pay when she arrived for work in flat shoes rather than the high heels stipulated by the employment agency, the two committees set up to investigate were inundated with examples of workplace discrimination, including demands that women wear high heels, revealing outfits and heavy make-up.

Picture courtesy of Rebecca Alleyne

Rebecca Alleyne MD tweeted this picture, saying "That's me on the left wearing my favorite outfit ‪#DressLikeAWoman."

The #dresslikeawoman furore has set me thinking back many years, to the day I arrived at the City offices of my first job in London and was issued with a full length overall, buttoned from collar to hem and made of slippery blue nylon. To my amazement, I was told that this is what I had to wear over my clothes, every day, and on no account should I wear a belt. The reason? The company did not want their male staff to be distracted by the female form – until 4.00pm when a buzzer sounded and we women could emerge from our shapeless sacks and the chaps were allowed to smoke cigarettes for the final hour of the working day.

At the time when the City firm was insisting that its women staff cover up so as not to distract their male colleagues, rather than revealing more to attract clients and visitors, it was the swinging sixties. It was the time of Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki, Kiki Byrne. It was the time of mini skirts, hot pants, white boots, dramatic black eyeliner and bright pink lipstick. Body stockings and sheer tights were invented – perfect for those who, like me, crocheted our own short lacy frocks.

There were articles in the press about men asking for books on the top shelves of libraries and dropping items in shops to encourage short skirted assistants to reach up or bend down. So managers and HR departments may have thought that insisting all women staff wore blue overalls removed the need for tricky conversations with individuals who were perceived as pushing workwear boundaries.

It did not take me long to abandon the insurance company and its blue nylon overall to move into the heady, creative world of global advertising agency J Walter Thompson and then to spend three years as a fashion journalist.  I would like to think that my memory of dressing distinctively yet appropriately for work, reserving the crocheted frocks, catsuits and eyeliner for leisure time, is a realistic one.

Then as my career progressed, and I became an employer, there were occasional tricky issues around staff dress and appearance. The most difficult one arose from the decision to introduce ‘dress down Friday.’ It soon became apparent that the art of smart casual is a rare skill, particularly amongst British men. After a few weeks of grubby jeans, tired sweaters, down at heel footwear and so on the experiment came to an end – and nobody objected.

Picture courtesy of Institution of Civil Engineers

I became increasingly involved in promoting and supporting women in construction, including the Purple Boots campaign in 2010 to make properly sized workwear and protective clothing available for women.  Dunlop responded by producing safety boots in women’s sizes, but it wasn’t until January 2016 that Transport for London (TfL) produced its first ever women’s safety clothing range, following a successful six-week staff trial. The new range includes high-visibility jackets, trousers, gloves and adjustable eye protection and a tailoring service to ensure female staff have access to better-fitted, safer PPE.  

The TfL initiative is to be applauded of course, but there is a degree of irony in that the introduction of appropriate clothing was seen as a fitting celebration of 100 Years of Women in Transport.  It reminded me of the women fighter pilots in Japan whose reward in passing the rigorous training a few years ago was to be issued with properly fitting aviator kit.

So here we are, several decades from when I was obliged to don a blue overall to conceal my female form and we are living in a world where in some countries women are forced to cover themselves completely from the public eye by wearing the burqa or the niqab. Meanwhile an increasing number of other countries forbid women from wearing such clothing and some businesses want their women staff to present themselves in a way that at best could be described as attractive and at worst, alluring.

Modesty or threat, freedom or protection  – the issues around dress codes for women are complex. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to agree reasonable guidelines for women working in democratic, mature countries. So congratulations to Nicola Thorp for setting up the petition that attracted more than 152,000 signatures and led to the UK Government report calling for an end to discriminatory dress codes in the workplace. At a time when people are questioning the effectiveness of protest, this is a great example of one determined individual succeeding in bringing about action. 

Lost in translation

Let’s get a couple of punnets of strawberries, I say as we wend our way back from a trip to the seaside.  We are in Northern California, spending a magical fortnight in Knights Valley, a secret nook deep in the serious winelands between Sonoma and Napa. We leave the misty, rocky Pacific coast and wend our way back along the Russia River, past Bodega Bay, up to the pretty town of Sebastapol and then through the Petrified Forest. There are farm shops en route, but the traffic is heavy and we decide to keep going. Then as we negotiate a tricky junction to pick up the road to Calistoga, we spot a figure standing by a display of strawberries and peaches.  We pull off the road.

My request for two punnets is met with some surprise. I gesture towards the strawberries. Fifteen dollars for one, 25 dollars for two, says the young fruitseller. Wow, say I, that’s a lot for a punnet. He looks puzzled.  Then the penny drops. It’s fifteen dollars for the tray containing some 20 punnets. I don’t want a tray, say I, because there’s only two of us. The fruitseller looks more mystified. He doesn’t sell trays, he says, only flats, gesturing to the box which I call a tray. I shake my head and turn away. He promptly offers me half a flat, demonstrating that they can easily be cut in two, for ten dollars.

Which is how I end up with a fridge full of strawberries, in a house which is wonderfully equipped for normal human beings who regard a holiday as an excuse to eat out most days, but not for someone who cannot resist an abundance of local produce.  (For example, we drove all the way to Tuscany on our last visit so I could take my preserving equipment.)

However, we have large saucepans, an excellent blender, a very efficient freezer and, thanks to the ingrained British recycling habit, a motley collection of glass (individual jam pots, mayonnaise containers and a jam jar) and plastic boxes with lids. So what better way to spend the relative cool of a California evening than to whip up a batch of strawberry jam (ingredients measured in cups) and tubs of strawberry and honey yoghourt ice cream.

Oh, and we ate fresh strawberries too……

Note: there has been a very long gap since my last blog - stuff happens.  I have given up any attempt to catch up chronologically, and will simply start putting fingers to keyboard as the spirit (and appetite) moves me. 

Baking builders, singing bananas

Now the finishing trades...

It is the Annual Conference of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB). The theme is Inspiring the Future of Construction.  There is a good mix of men and women speakers and CIOB President Professor Ghassan Aouad, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Gulf University for Science and Technology has flown in from Bahrain to officiate. 

So far, so good. But it doesn’t take long for the waves of déjà vu to roll. Once again in this boom/bust industry of ours, we are facing an acute skills shortage, which would be even worse without immigrant workers.  And the reasons are very familiar:

·      bad image

·      poor careers advice

·      low margins.

Sir John Armitt delivers his customary incisive view. “Look in the mirror, “ he tells us. “Overturn the stereotypes, and take the lead from third generation builder Richard Burr who reached the finals of the Great British Bake-Off by creating marvellous cakes and pastries – with his pencil tucked behind his ear.”

Ian Billyard, head of Leeds College of Building is to pick up the image again in the afternoon, saying that pictures of a chap in front of a crane in a hard hat is simply old hat. New technology is the way forward for construction, he says.

But back to Sir John. It is unacceptable for an industry to have its future decided by politicians, he adds, and training should not be funded by government. He bemoans the loss of the training and development ethos when subcontracting took over in the industry, but points out that this is still alive and well amongst the small and medium sized companies and family businesses.  I can vouch for this, remembering the support from such organisations for getting women from trade training into work, and in delivering innovative mentoring programmes when on the board of Simons Group Ltd.

“I defy anyone to tell me that it is impossible for companies to take the lead,” is Sir John’s parting shot. “The only people who put this right are in the industry.” 

Close encounters at the Big Bang Fair

Peter Hansford, the Government's Chief Construction Adviser, continues the themes, citing the Construction Industry Training Board survey revealing that 35% of careers advisors see construction as an unappealing job. He holds up the Big Bang Fair and Tomorrow’s Engineers as good examples to follow. This is music my ears after six years of involvement with EngineeringUK, the body that conceived Big Bang and helps deliver it around the country.  But construction has been notable by its absence, despite the event being recognized as a great way to engage not only young people but also their teachers and parents.

Alison Watson enthusing a Class of Your Own

Peter Hansford urges  companies to adopt  a school, and indeed in the afternoon it is a school and its pupils who help push the pace up a notch, introduced by fast talking Alison Watson, the land surveyor who founded Class of Your Own (COYO) using her award winning programme design, engineer,construct (DEC) developed just  five years ago.

Demonstrating by example, the stage is taken by the head and deputy head of Heathcote School, together with four students who are embarking on construction careers as a result of the COYO programme. They are followed by 14 year Luke Hamble, aspiring engineer from Gravesend who had his first tool set when he was two years old, upgraded at four years old and at seven was using his father’s equipment. His clear delivery puts some of the adults that day to shame.

Alison Watson and Ian Billyard are joined for the closing panel session by Roy Cavanagh of Seddon Construction (one of those exemplar smaller businesses committed to training) and Salvatore Capotosto, Chair of CIOB’s East of England Novus Group representing young people in the industry.

I ask, "We have been talking about bad image, poor careers advice and lack of diversity for twenty years. We know that much progress is thanks to smaller companies and  committed individuals who spend too much time seeking modest funding to survive, rather than delivering more of what works. What does the panel think industry should do to learn from these examples, scale them up for real change and take part in the bigger picture?"

This generates a wry laugh from Alison Watson, who comments that I must have overheard her finance director’s earlier comment about going around cap in hand for money. And as for involvement in the Big Bang Fair? “When I went with my daughter, I couldn’t drag her away from the electrical engineering demonstration that shows current flowing through different types of fruit,” she says. “Construction engagement needs to be more entertaining.  We are up against singing bananas.”

So let’s do some of the creative, inter-disciplinary working we claim to be good at in construction. When students stress test their bridges made of pasta,  for example, a switch triggers a sound and light show. Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water perhaps, or Nessun Dorma for a Sydney Harbour lookalike. 

Sheffield College students pushing the limits