In the build-up to International Women’s Day on 8 March, the Devon Chamber has joined forces with Coops & Co to celebrate all the brilliant ways our region’s businesses are embracing gender equality.
To help you put your strategy in place, the Coops & Co team has provided 5 top tips that your business should follow to “Accelerate Action” in 2025.
What we want you to do is work through these action points and implement them into your own organisation. It could be one – or it could be all five!
Then, get in touch with our Membership Experience Manager, Clare Baker, via email at Clare.Baker@devonchamber.co.uk with details of the steps your business has taken or the plans you’re putting in place, and we’ll share them on our social channels for IWD2025.
We look forward to hearing and shouting about your incredible achievements!
1. Consider your terminology
Have you ever thought that the words we use to describe our leaders mean we are much more likely to picture a male in that role? Or a female as a nurse, or a male as a soldier, and so on.
Harvard Business Review explains more in this article.
Predominant male leadership qualities include confidence, dominance, independence, and a task-oriented focus. Words used to describe male leaders:
Analytical, Competitive, Forceful, Ambitious, Strategic, and Authoritative.
Predominant female leadership qualities include compassion, collaboration, relationship building, and a focus on team dynamics. Words used to describe female leaders:
Compassionate, Cooperative, Supportive, Inspiring, Inclusive, and Consensus-building.
Why does this matter? Because the words we use in job descriptions, performance reviews and our one-to-ones tells us something about what is valued and helps us to imagine ourselves in those associated leadership roles. If the terminology used is predominantly male it can make it more difficult for a female to imagine themselves in that role and therefore perhaps not put themselves forward for that promotion, for example. Or for the recruiting manager to imagine the female in front of them in that role, and perhaps favour an equally qualified male as a result.
What positive actions can you take to help break the leadership mould?
- Review your job descriptions to make sure they describe the requirements for the role and not the person you imagine in the role.
- Think carefully about the feedback you provide in your performance reviews and one-to-ones, preparing ahead can help stop us relying on the unconscious stereotypes we all have.
2. Be aware of unconscious bias
Our collective unconscious bias has been developed over hundreds of years. It will take a huge conscious effort from us all to re-frame this for our sons and daughters. How?
- Education and awareness of unconscious bias.
- Don’t rush decisions about who you will offer employment to or who will be promoted next, rather take your time and consider things properly.
- When recruiting, ask effective interview questions to draw out and understand a candidate’s experience rather than make assumptions.
- Justify your decisions objectively using evidence and keep a record of the reasons for your decision to appoint or promote.
- Focus on the positive behaviour of people and not negative gender-based stereotypes.
Take action:
- Review your workplace policies and practices to ensure they are not inherently gender biassed.
- Educate yourself, your managers and your employees to raise awareness of unconscious bias.
3. Do you have these workplace policies?
There are some things in life that only a woman will directly experience:
- Periods
- Pregnancy
- Fertility treatment
- Miscarriage
- Breast feeding
- Menopause
In the workplace women can often, and particularly in leadership roles, feel that they need to be seen as more masculine or equal to their male counterparts and might even pretend or ignore that these things have ever been experienced by them.
Do you have workplace policies recognising and supporting these areas?
Ensuring we have workplace policies makes it known that we understand and support these life experiences.
4. Access to training and personal development
Have you considered if the training you offer is equally accessible to women as it is to men?
Formal education and professional qualifications are often an essential requirement for more senior management or leadership roles. When it comes to obtaining these higher level credentials they are often gained over an extended period of time, have an associated number of self-directed learning hours per week, and require a significant time commitment.
This can block women’s participation, who as we know, are more likely to have caring responsibilities which can deter them from committing to the learning hours required, particularly where there is an expectation to do so outside of normal working time.
How can you support the women in your team to gain the qualifications they might need to progress and develop both personally and professionally and help combat one of the barriers to entry in leadership?
- Review your training policies and practices through a new lens to make training more accessible to women.
- Consider providing dedicated and protected work time for learning hours to be completed.
- Get in touch with Ronnie Carter, Devon Chamber‘s Local Skills Improvement Plan Project Executive.
5. Level the field
How many times have our male colleagues received a call from the school to say their child is ill and needs to be collected?
It is much more likely, and accepted by society in general and therefore a workplace norm, to be one of our female colleagues!
Why? Because it’s more likely that those of our male colleagues in heterosexual family partnerships have not had time out of work to care for their children, are likely to be in more senior positions, more likely to be higher earning than their female partner and therefore their work might be viewed as more important and unable to provide this type of flexibility. The result is that it falls to their female partner to leave work, pick up and look after their unwell child.
Did you know:
- 73% of men surveyed believe there’s a stigma attached to taking extended paternity leave.
- 95% of men surveyed agreed that workplace culture needs to be transformed to normalise men taking extended paternity leave.
How can you trail-blaze and help change these societal norms?
Review your workplace policies and cultural norms to ensure, promote and celebrate our male colleagues taking an equal share in childcaring responsibilities:
- Do you offer enhanced paternity and/ or parental leave over and above the statutory minimum?
- Do your male employees know and understand that flexible working rights apply to them as well as their female colleagues?
- Is it normal, accepted, encouraged for your working Dad’s to go and pick up their child from school when they are ill?
At Coops & Co, we believe good people doing good business can be a force for positive change in the world. Through our bespoke approach and experienced team we can provide a different perspective and strategic advantage by working together to help create a thriving workplace where gender is not a barrier. Get in touch.
