How to deal with a sexist boss

The courage of abuse survivors triggered strong momentum for sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, yet experts still hold fear for some workers.

Brittany Higgins, a former Liberal staffer, spearheaded a national debate on sexual harassment last year after going public with allegations she was assaulted inside Parliament House in 2019.

Last year, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins released Respect@Work, a national report, which found almost two in five women and one in four men, have experienced a recent sexual harassment in their workplace.

A panel of experts told the Future Women Leadership Summit that while work is being done to address the issues in workplaces, more still needs to be done.

“The Respect@Work report actually said we need to get better indicators, we need to get better data, because it’s not very deep,” Mary Wooldridge, director Workplace Gender Equality Agency said.

Senior Security Consultant at CyberCX Jessica Smith spoke at Future Women’s Leadership Summit 2022

Jessica Smith, a Senior Security Consultant at CyberCX, said the situation had improved somewhat in the past 10 years, though there was still a glaring awareness concern.

“When we say ‘our awareness’, I think our awareness is fantastic. This is not a women’s issue,” she said.

“If anything, it’s a men’s issue but certainly a societal issue. I think there is where the awareness is lacking.”

She said it’s not so much of ‘how do we avoid being sexually harassed?’, or ‘how do we avoid sexism?’

“It’s how do we get the guys to stop harassing and stop being sexist,” she said.

“It’s kind of not our problem to solve. It falls to us because so few men are willing to stand up and champion this and have our backs in that kind of context.”

Wooldridge is more optimistic.

“We’re having a national discussion around it. We know that women, have been for decades, trying to engage this debate. I do feel the conversation has changed at a national level which then does permeate down,” she said.

“We’ve got the Institute of Company Directors, we’ve got the HR Institute. We’ve got a whole lot of the organisations that support the workforce in a whole lot of ways actually talking about this, enhancing that training.”

She was quick to add sexual harassment and sexism in the workplace still exists.

“There’s absolutely no issue there, but I feel like we’ve got some momentum on this that we need to capture this moment and really drive through on it,” she said.

Dr Victor Sojo spoke about dealing with a sexist boss at the Four Seasons in Sydney

Dr Victor Sojo, Senior Lecturer in Leadership, University of Melbourne also believes the conversation still hasn’t gone far enough.

“We need to remember that the large majority of Australians work for small-to-medium enterprises and the nature of what they are going through is very different to what might happen in large corporations… so certainly conversations are definitely not happening there,” Sojo said.

“Addressing sexual harassment will require giving women economic power so that can women get to walk away from situations.”

He said engaging business leaders, particularly men, in the discussion was simple.

“It’s very easy. You either care or you don’t,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the issue with many men is they only start caring when they have daughters and that’s infuriating.”

Smith believes the issues ultimately ties back into diversity initiatives more broadly across organisations.

“While I think we are all here advocating for better equity between women and men we also need to look at other areas as well, including ability, disability, cultural background, all these different types of axes of intersectionality,” she said.

“I’m not interested in advocating for the success of women at the expense of other groups.”

Workplace Gender Equality Agency director Mary Wooldridge joined an expert panel at Future Women’s Leadership Summit 2022

As for employers who claim ‘no women wanted the job’ or ‘I’m looking everywhere and I can’t find any women for the role’, Wooldridge has a simple answer.

“Look harder. It’s a simple as that because we know there are,” she said.

“It’s not that there aren’t women, or men for that matter, in terms of the range of diversity characteristics, it’s the fact often that the organisation itself is creating barriers for people to see there is a role for them.”

As for what employers can do to address the issues, Smith said it needs to start with a conversation.

“Talk to the women in your organisation and ask them where the pain points are and what they think would be the most useful things (to help) and then do it,” she said.

“The solutions are there. The people who know the solutions are in your organisation. You need to find them and empower them so you can let them speak up.”

Wooldridge agreed.

“Talk to your peers, talk to HR, work how you can escalate,” she said.

“I think that because unemployment is so low, and the labour market is tight, I think we have power that we haven’t had before to be able to say I’m walking away.”

Australia’s unemployment rate is 4.2 per cent, the lowest rate in 13 years.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed seasonally adjusted unemployment increased by 6000 people in January 2022.

PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK BROOME