Welcome to the Bloke Coaching Podcast.
Join me on the journey to understand male privilege across industries and society within processes, policies, rituals and mindsets and how this is holding us back from achieving true gender equality.
Episode 7 – A 26-year-old expiry date
In this episode we chat with two singer-song-writers, Keppie Coutts and Ben Romalis about gender issues within the music industry, and the impact the music industry has on gender perspectives.
We share insights into some of the everyday microaggressions, and the gendered, racial and age-related obstacles encountered by artists.
We discuss how ‘networks’, and the lack of representation particularly in positions of power and influence in the industry work to exclude anybody who isn’t a white man.
We discuss gendered stigmas attached to instruments and different genres, before finally taking a deeper look at song lyrics – from Blurred Lines, to grapevines, and the zig a zig ahs.
Episode 6 – Look For It
In this episode, we chat with Dominque Powrie, Managing Director of DDI, about gender equality and leadership.
We chat about what makes for great leaders, and how we should be identifying talent, whilst exploring why the best leaders may not necessarily be the ones who end up in leadership roles.
We discuss why we still have a way to go to ensure equality in representation of all genders at senior leadership, and how the inherent biases still permeate our processes.
Finally, we share practical ways that executives can be allies, mentors, and sponsors, and the significant impact that we can all have to ensure fairer outcomes.
Episode 5 – An issue for the comfortable as well as the precarious
In this episode we chat with Dr Stephen Weller, Chief Operating Officer at Australian Catholic University, to discuss gender inequality within the tertiary education sector.
We explore the importance of diverse representation in decision making, governance and policy making, and how change is taking longer than it should be.
We examine some of the underlying issues associated with casualisation, flexibility and academic promotions, and how these are providing significant barriers to achieving gender equality.
Episode 4 – Yes, But
In this episode we chat with the founder of Accidental Counsellor, Cutty Felton, about mental health, suicide prevention and how to give support to those around us.
We discuss how certain pressures associated with gender can impact our mental health, how trendy ‘resilience’ training may not actually be the best approach, as well as some straightforward and effective tips for helping other people through difficult times and personal crises.
Episode 3 – The Gap
In this episode we chat with Principal Recruitment Consultant, Kayla Hoye about gender equality within recruitment and selection practices.
We look at the unconscious discounting that frequently occurs and disadvantages female candidates.
We discuss the effectiveness of blind resumes, the gender language of advertisements, the composition of selection panels, and approaches to reference checking, in order to provide practical strategies for hiring managers to take greater ownership over the inclusivity of the process.
You don’t need to wait for People and Culture before you can start fixing the problem.
Episode 2 – Let the sunlight in
In this episode we chat with Golnar Adl, Performance and Reward Manager about key gender equality measures, and pay and performance outcomes.
Golnar helps us to understand the gender pay gap and the historical reasons for this inequality.
We discuss the flaws within performance and remuneration reviews that contribute to greater gender inequality. And what leaders and organisations could be doing to firstly not make the problem worse, and then secondly provide greater transparency and accountability.
Episode 1 – The power to influence outcomes for other people
In our inaugural episode, we begin our journey in understanding male privilege by chatting with diversity and research consultant, Dr Linda Peach.
We explore the essence of male privilege and appreciate how this privilege can be further compounded by being white, rich, able-bodied and heterosexual.
We compare buying cars, buying drinks, and buying twitter, before honing in on what organisations and men need to be doing better in order to address the issue of gender inequality.
Spoiler alert: the answer is not more unconscious bias training.
About the Bloke Coaching Podcast
Welcome to the Bloke Coaching podcast.
My name is Iain Schmidt and I’m embarking upon a journey to understand male privilege, patriarchy and prejudice. I’m a workshop facilitator and a professional certified coach with over 600 hours of coaching experience.
In 2022, I founded Bloke coaching. A programme to work with men to empower them to join the conversation around gender equality, take greater ownership and become change makers.
I’ll be perfectly honest a couple of years ago I would never have pictured I’d be doing something like this. I’ve always genuinely considered myself to be completely supportive of gender equality and felt that it was other misogynistic chauvinistic men that were the problem. For me, sexism was mostly defined as the overt behaviours of discrimination and harassment.
I’ve even designed and delivered a lot of these anti harassment and anti discrimination and unconscious bias workshops to help combat the problem. It still really shocks me that this kind of overt behaviour to go on. And even more shocking is how common this behaviour really is, it’s everywhere. And it’s still a really big problem.
This podcast, though, isn’t about telling you what you should already know by now. Because you’ve heard it enough times, you’ve done enough anti harassment, and anti discrimination, and unconscious bias training that you really should know better.
This is about understanding the very thing that distorts our view of what’s actually happening, and understanding how we, although well intended, are continuing to contribute to the problem. For many men, gender doesn’t feel like it’s a big issue. It’s because the systems, the processes and attitudes largely don’t continually remind us of our gender. It’s only when you operate outside of these expectations or consciously adopt another perspective on the system, start to question things that you’ve just accepted that you start to appreciate the extent of the problem. In time you start to see inequality everywhere.
To start out the series, our intention is to unpack the foundations. What is male privilege and how does it show up in common organisational activities like recruitment, performance, reviews, remuneration, parental leave, leadership and development.
We’ll explore how patriarchy impacts us all. How many experienced sexism? How it impacts our mental health as well as its impact on education? The music we listen to, popular culture and the specific challenges encountered by specific industries.
Later in the series, we plan to develop the conversation further and make ourselves more uncomfortable, recognising that we frequently fall into the trap of thinking the conversation is just about men and women. And we fail to consider what equality looks like, for all genders.
We’ll explore intersectionality appreciating that race, culture, sexual orientations, familial structures, age able, body knus or disability, neurodiversity, socioeconomic factors all impact on this conversation. And it’s unhelpful if we limit ourselves to thinking of gender groups as homogeneous. We’ll also explore how patriarchy impacts men.
It’s a big conversation and the more we delve into this conversation, it’s gonna feel even larger and more multifaceted than it does now.
My hope is that this series will help us to feel more comfortable contributing to conversations around gender equality before we get started, though I want to recognise that plenty of people have been in this conversation for a long time and have a wealth of knowledge to offer.
I’ll be chatting with some of those people along this journey with the awareness that I’m developing, I can wholly appreciate how frustrating it must be for these people. When people like me previously haven’t been listening or understanding properly. Because of their continued advocacy and activism that I’ve joined, the conversation about bloody time, and I’m sorry that I’m late.
I don’t consider myself to be an activist, instead I’m a coach and where I believe I can add the most value is to help bring more people on this journey. Help people to understand themselves better and open their minds to different ways of thinking.
My hope is that people like me who are coming to recognise their own privilege and more importantly what not having privilege means for other people.
That people are starting to listen and recognise the real problem. Perhaps even use their privilege to help make it a fair system for everyone.
With knowledge and understanding we can take action, but we need the men involved in this conversation. So let’s begin and start listening properly this time.
