The Fix

Inequality is everywhere, even when it comes to comedy. What we are encouraged to find funny, is often aligned with what men find funny. This is the male gaze of comedy. We are socialized to believe that women are just not as funny as men. Women comedians receive far  harsher criticisms than men. Women’s experiences, in general, are just not normalized in the way men's are. Comedy is a very diffic...

My friend, I do not believe you are a racist. My friend, I realize you do not need to care. You do not need to learn the cultural norms of Black people as a prerequisite for your career advancement and access to opportunity. You do not need to understand my fears and perceptions to keep yourself safe or to have social mobility. You do not need to consider my journey or think critically about how t...

Thanks to the pandemic our working lives seem to be in a constant state of change, with more uncertainty and new challenges arising almost on a daily basis. As lockdown eases, we will have to adopt new ways of working yet again.  Across the country people are being called to return to work and go back to normal but what is normal? The pandemic raised awareness of the importance of managing mental...

Earlier this year, dancers from around the world spoke out against racism in ballet, standing in solidarity with black French ballet dancer, Chloe Lopes Gomes. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Chloe reported that she was repeatedly told she didn’t fit in because of her black skin, that she was pressured to wear white skin makeup and in rehearsals was told her mistakes stood out because...

Feedback is part and parcel of working life. We give it, we receive it and mostly we hope that it is positive. Giving and receiving feedback is an art. Knowing how to respond or provide feedback is important because when done well feedback enables performance, engagement, sense of belonging and collaboration. In short knowing how to give feedback is a critical skill for surviving and thriving in w...

The barriers faced by racial and ethnic minority women are significantly more complex than those which face white women. In the 2010 journal article “Women and Women of Color in Leadership,” authors Janis Sanchez-Hucles and Donald Davis argue that women of color face the compounded effect of “gendered racism.” They cannot separate the multiple aspects of their identity. This means that women of co...

Despite the saying, the thing that makes great minds so great is they don't all think alike. Increasingly companies need people who can solve complex problems, innovate and create in new ways precisely because they don’t view the world in the same way as many others do.  The term “neurodivergent” describes a person who thinks differently to the dominant social norm - or “neurotypical” person - bec...

As countries begin to ease lock down restrictions, a lot of employees want to know what will the post-pandemic workplace look like? For many office workers remote work is here to stay, whether they like it or not. Companies like Twitter and Dropbox, have moved to almost complete remote working with no signs that this will change.  According to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index, roughly half of...

It is not surprising there is a gender pain gap given the distinct under-researching of womens’ health and the implications this has for medical education and training.  In the book Invisible Women, Caroline Criado-Perez points out that it has been historically assumed that there wasn’t anything fundamentally different between male and female bodies other than size and reproductive function - so f...

Over the next five to ten years, jobs will change due to technological advancements like artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, 3-D printing, and nanotechnology. While these advancements will create a range of new jobs in industries yet to be created, many of today’s jobs will still exist, they will just look a little different and probably involve working with machines. Consid...

Psychological safety, a term coined and defined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, people feel psychologically safe at work when they believe that they can be themselves at work and they won't be punished or humiliated for sharing their identity,  speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. In short, it is how comfortable individuals are with being themselves, taking...

Did you know that in the United States in 2020 over 2 million women left the workforce, and in December 140,000 jobs were lost and every one of those was to a woman. This is an issue which disproportionately impacts Black and Latina women, who often work in roles that lack paid sick leave and the ability to work from home. As covid19 hit, mothers were forced to stay at home to care for their child...

The social model of disability, which is a way of viewing the world developed by people with different mental and physical abilities, is the idea that society disables physically impaired people by assuming everyone experiences life in the same way. By not accounting for people’s differences, one of which is physical impairments,  we inadvertently exclude people from fully participating in day to...

Did you know that according to UNICEF, babies as young as 6 months old notice physical differences including skin color, and studies show that by the age of 5 children treat people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds differently, favoring some over others. Inequality is everywhere, there is simply no way to shield children from it. So what can you do? Arm your children with awareness. Ign...

Global Pride Day is June 27th  a day chosen for people to be proud of who they love irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender. It is not just a celebration of love and acceptance, it is also a day to recognize how far we have come in celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community and how far we still have to go to ensure equality, equity and inclusion of its members.  In the United States being homos...

According to a report by the American census, despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, women are still vastly underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce. Women made gains from 8% of STEM workers in 1970 to 27% in 2019  but men still dominated the field. Men made up 52% of all U.S. workers but 73% of all STEM workers. Given the technological advan...

In January this year, the government in the United Kingdom, released a stay at home Covid 19 advert, that had illustrations of women undertaking a range of domestic responsibilities, like ironing, homeschooling and cleaning while the one male featured in the advert is sat on the couch. They were forced to withdraw the advert for it’s sexist depictions of women. Sexism in advertising is an issue th...

Mallory Weggemann has proved to be one of the most inspirational figures in the sport of swimming. It isn’t because of her achievements in the sport, which are incredibly impressive but rather it is because of how she has fought back after tragedy. She is a Paralympic Gold-Medalist, 15-Time World Champion Swimmer, Author of the book Limitless and founder of social impact agency, TFA Group. Mallory...

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people face risks that make them particularly vulnerable to homicide. Some experience bias explicitly because of their gender identity. For others, their identity makes them more likely to experience other risk factors, such as unemployment or homelessness, experts say. The risks are compounded for trans women of color, especially Black women, who face the addi...

In the Great Recession, men lost twice as many jobs as women. But from February to May, in the united states 11.5 million women lost their jobs compared with 9 million men because of business closures intended to stop the spread of Covid-19. By the end of April, women's job losses had erased a decade of employment gains. In the 2020 recession, job losses are much higher for women. At its peak, wom...

Is your team at work psychologically safe? A team feels psychologically safe when individuals believe they won't be exposed to interpersonal or social threats for engaging in learning behaviors such as asking for help, seeking feedback, admitting errors or lack of knowledge, trying something new, or voicing work-related dissenting views. Research has shown that the absence of such threats is stron...

It is never too early to engage young women and men in the fight against climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provided a wake-up call about the importance of teaching kids about sustainability. The report warns that greenhouse gas levels are at their highest in 800,000 years. The findings signal the need for drastic action globally at all levels of society i...

When it comes to advancing women at work, there is a gap between the commitment male allies say they have and what they are actually doing. It’s the same as the conversation around race: It’s not enough to say you’re not a racist, you have to actually do something to create change and take action. On this episode, David G. Smith, Ph. D. and W. Brad Johnson, Ph. D. show why and how men have a cruci...

Creating a more equal workplace, where you feel like you can be yourself and will be valued for that, is going to take all of us. Research finds that unequal work environments —where employees dread going  to work, don’t feel they can be honest with their manager, and may witness or experience harassment or discrimination — are the primary reasons workers quit their jobs. Approximately one in four...

It seems to be increasingly difficult to talk about sexism, equality, and women’s rights in a modern society that perceives itself to have achieved gender equality. When women or men complain about everyday sexism or suggest that you are unhappy about the way in which women are portrayed and perceived renders you likely to be labeled difficult or uptight. Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexis...