--- title: "Beyond Binaries" episode: 109 date: 2024-05-09 guest: "Cynthia Fortlage" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/109-beyond-binaries audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-109/audio.mp3 --- # Beyond Binaries Joanne Lockwood is joined by gender diversity speaker and consultant Cynthia Fortlage for a wide-ranging conversation about how binary thinking has shaped society and workplaces, and what it takes to build cultures where people can belong. Cynthia unpacks what she means by gender as an innate sense of self as well as a set of social expectations, and explores how language and norms shift over time. The discussion challenges common assumptions about sex and gender, draws attention to biological diversity including intersex realities, and reflects on how colonisation and religious interpretation have influenced gender roles and inequality. They bring the conversation into the workplace, looking at why progress on gender equity remains slow, what COVID revealed and exacerbated, and how bias shows up in pay, progression and everyday safety. Cynthia argues that organisations can be leading forces for change, especially when they treat culture as an ongoing practice rather than a one-off initiative. Practical themes include the need for psychological safety to enable disclosure and trustworthy data, the importance of continuous learning, and the role of allies and those with power and privilege in shifting systems. Cynthia also shares elements of her own leadership journey, including transitioning while in a C-suite role, and how that experience informs her work with organisations around the world. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome - 02:00 — Advocate for gender diversity in work and life. - 04:14 — Uniquely experienced C-suite role gives insight. - 08:11 — Language evolves, reflecting societal changes over time. - 11:52 — Intersex diversity challenges binary assumptions, demands allyship. - 13:46 — Increase in left-handed identification, parallels LGBTQ+ population. - 19:39 — Certain historical books omitted, manipulation of texts. - 23:23 — Analysis of women's influence from ancient times. - 25:30 — Historical perceptions may limit our modern understanding. - 28:55 — Struggle for equality, especially for black people. - 31:53 — Referral language challenge, feminism 4.0, inclusion, intersectionality. - 36:00 — Overcoming bias for inclusive, diverse work environments. - 38:59 — Focus on steps to create change, gender disparity. - 42:34 — Corporate decisions driven by money, lease contracts. - 45:49 — Measuring progress, data, culture impact health care. - 49:58 — Addressing diversity in work culture and progress. - 54:23 — Gendered society impact, need for education awareness. - 57:16 — Expressing gratitude to listeners, promoting inclusion. ## Key takeaways - The historical establishment of gender roles and the influence of the Roman Empire and prehistoric times. - Critique of biased scientific studies and historical interpretations that contribute to gender inequality. - The setbacks in gender equity during the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing challenges like pay disparities. - The importance of organizations in implementing changes to foster gender equity in society. - The impact of colonisation and religious doctrines on societal perceptions of gender and sexuality. - Personal narratives that highlight the journey of gender identity and the challenge of binary thinking. - Actions to create an inclusive workplace culture and the roles men can play in furthering the cause for equality. ## FAQs ### What does 'Beyond Binaries' refer to in the context of this podcast episode? 'Beyond Binaries' refers to the discussion surrounding the recognition of gender diversity beyond the traditional male and female classifications. It includes an exploration of non-binary, genderqueer, intersex, and two-spirit identities, challenging the notion of a strict gender binary. ### Who is Cynthis Fortlege? Cynthis Fortlege is a gender diversity speaker and consultant who has worked with over 500 companies in 30 countries. With a background as a C-suite technology executive, she now focuses on gender diversity advocacy and education. ### How did historical events shape our current understanding of gender roles? Cynthis traces the establishment of gender roles back to prehistoric times, Roman Empire influences, and notably, the Victorian era. She discusses how events such as colonisation and the formation of religious doctrines shaped the societal perception of gender roles. ### Can you explain the impact of COVID-19 on gender equity? The COVID-19 pandemic caused setbacks in gender equity, particularly exemplified by increased domestic responsibilities falling on women, and widened pay disparities. Cynthis addresses the challenges that have arisen due to the pandemic's reshaping of the workplace and society. ### What are some challenges that women face in religious services? Cynthis highlights the historical exclusion of women from significant roles in many religious institutions, such as the absence of female priests in the Catholic Church, and the exclusion of women's writings from religious texts. ### How common is the intersex community, and why is it significant? The intersex community represents about 2% of any country's population, making it more common than many might expect. Recognising the existence of intersex individuals challenges the binary view of gender and emphasises the diversity of human biology. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to inclusion bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what a true, what it takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs, but thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion bites. Today is episode 109 with the title beyond binaries and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Cynthia Fortlage. Cynthia is an award winning gender diversity speaker, consultant and writer, and when I asked Cynthia to describe her superpower, she said she's one leader with two genders of experience. Hello, Cynthia, welcome to the show. Hi Jo. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm Cynthia Fortlage: excited to be here with you today. Fabulous. So, Cynthia, beyond the Joanne Lockwood: binaries and your. Superpower, tell me, Cynthia Fortlage: you know, the work that I do today with organisations is focused on really dealing with all of the issues that cover the space of gender diversity. And it's not gender identity, it is how diverse gender is. And I talk about, from a historical perspective, 10,000 years of understanding language and history, where clearly 10,000 years ago cultures knew that gender was not binary. Yet we obviously have a lot of conversation today about, quote, the binary of gender, when in fact it's actually not. Even though in my own personal story, I always describe it as, quote, flipping my binary because that was what was right for me. And that insight coming from the place where I was, which was when I came to this life epiphany, I was a C suite working executive overseeing technology for a international organisation in North America. Hence my accent. And that journey to where I am today has been strewn with a whole bunch of leadership roles and responsibilities. In fact, it may interest the audience to know that I actually learned to fight for women's rights before I ever learnt to fight for LGBTQ plus or trans rights. And that very much influences the lenses by which I look at the challenges that organisations face. And those challenges that I talk about are not just within the LGBTQ plus or trans space. But the issues that impact women, that, again, relate to. For two and a half years, I was learning to fight for women's rights across all of Canada, not just the LGBTQ plus ones, but all women. And therefore, when I became national leader of that organisation, I was bringing a voice to all of women's issues. And so that gives me a very unique insight as well. Also the fact that I have never met another C suite level executive who has transitioned on the job. I'm still looking, I've met senior people, but never someone who actually has a C suite role, as I did. And there's some very unique characteristics that I find come with that role. That gives me a unique insight into corporate organisations and especially at the leadership level, that really needs to be factored in when we talk about roles and responsibilities of leaders and what does that look like when we talk about corporate cultures and how that transforms? So I've been very fortunate to do this work since about 2017, and I've been fortunate to deal with almost 500 companies in over 30 different countries to date. I am based here in London, in the UK, and I am slowly growing my network and my connections and be able to speak with diversity specialists, HR specialists and those that may have challenges within their organisation where gender is impacting their employees and they're just not sure what the next step forward is. And I bring that depth and breadth of insight in order to help those organisations move forward. Joanne Lockwood: So you talk about gender. So for our listeners, how would you define the term gender? What does that mean? Because there's lots of misunderstandings around sex, around gender. So what is gender? Well, I mean, let's break down what it's Cynthia Fortlage: not. It's not what today, people use the term sex to talk about, quote, biological sex, which the inference is genitalia. And the whole idea is, it's not that. That is one aspect. I describe sex as an act between two consenting adults. So we have that aspect. So gender is the innate sense of who we are, but also how society perceives us and puts upon us the roles and expectations of that perceived gender. So in my case, I normally get treated as a woman in society, which is how exactly I see myself, and therefore I see that as in alignment. But that also means that the oppression that women in the corporate space and in everyday life encounter is the same experience that I have. And so this idea of gender is not fixed based upon a body part. It is centred on ourselves, of how we see ourselves, but also how others are seeing us from a societal level and of course corporate cultures are a microcosm of societal cultures and I don't believe I can quote change an entire society. So I work with organisations to try and change and help them change one at a time. You talked about this concept of gender Joanne Lockwood: being innate. It's not our sex as such, as how we see ourselves, how the world sees us, how we align. There's also another phrase I've heard, social construct, and that's applied to gender. So how would we marry a gender and social construct together? What does that mean? Great question. The key is to realise Cynthia Fortlage: that a social construct is of course something that doesn't actually exist. It's being created by society who believes it to be true, but it's actually not. And I'll give you a couple of simple examples. The first is prior to the 1940s every baby that was born was put in a pink blanket. Pink. Yet today when we talk about colours, the idea that pink is for girls and blue is for boys is a social construct. It's not true. Somebody made it up and somewhere it stuck. Probably through the introduction in terms of in the hospitals. But that's just one example. Another is that when we refer to children and we refer to boys and girls. Well if you go back into 18 hundreds and before, the fact is within households having slaves, the word boy was used to refer to a male slave, not to a male child. In fact all children had a form of girl is what they were called. So society has advanced language, we have changed the use of that language. We've repurposed the word boy to describe a male child in this case. And along the way we have somehow come to believe that these have always been. When in fact many of these things have only existed within the last few hundred years, probably within 600 or less years. But when we talk about the societies of human beings, we talk about histories that are 10,000 years old or older so they're not new. And it just shows that language is ever changing and therefore our social understanding of what these words mean is also constantly changing. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the work that I often refer to as the gender box. And this is kind of societal's role, expectations of one's gender. And it has a lot of roles, doesn't it? The gender box. It says if you're a woman you must behave like this, if you're a man you must behave like that. And the thing that I always think about is that I always think of gender is proportionate or directly entwined with time, space and civilizations. So that the expectations of that gender box for a man, for a woman, for whatever is different today in 2024 than it was in 1820, 417 24, different in China, different in India, different in Saudi Arabia, different in North America. Exactly. It's the construct we've created within the society we're living in right now, isn't it? Oh, it is mean. You know, to take your example a Cynthia Fortlage: little further back, if we look at Cleopatra, who was a pharaoh in Egypt, yet pharaoh was an assumed male role. So how was this woman all of a sudden had this role as pharaoh? Right. It was completely counter to their time, to the change. But the other aspect is that when we talk about these aspects and thinking that everything is binary, black and white, one, two, on, off, whatever version of a binary acronym that you want to think of, ones and zeros for those that are in the computer industry, the reality is that what people keep forgetting to factor into this conversation, if you black out kind of all the perceived aspects and only focus in, say, from a biological perspective, because a lot of people go there, the challenge is from a biological perspective, absolutely. Everybody I talk to forgets the intersex community. Now, intersex people represent about 2% of any country's population. Now, the key is many of them do not know their intersex until they actually have a medical encounter that requires the discovery, usually from a genetic analysis, that they're intersex. Now, that means that out of the about seven physical characteristics that are biological in our body, within the intersex community, they are completely varied. And you know what? It makes complete sense, because when we look at all aspects of a human being, tell me what aspects are binary? Because when we talk about whether it be skin colour or hair colour, eye colour, we talk about our height, our size, but we're not this homogeneous binary group. We are so diverse and the spectrum is so wide that at the end of the day, the fact is that biologically we are very diverse. And from a human being perspective, that is represented within the intersex community, that shows that all of these aspects assumed to be binary, in fact, are not. And from there, we add on the layers of people's innate sense of identity, as well as components of sexuality, the privilege that comes with that, when we talk about power and privilege from an allyship perspective, but how are people oppressed, which is how are they perceived within societies? And all of these factors may be seen or unseen. We are faced with helping folks wake up to the fact that this is so much of a spectrum when it was originally perceived as simply a binary. Yet that's only in the last few hundred years, not in the totality of the existence of human beings. And the reality is that it's not that more people are becoming known as that. And everybody uses the study of left handedness where at one point it was illegal and then it was considered, well, if you write or use or dominant with your left hand, then you are working with the devil, and that's the devil's hand. And when we got rid of all of those societal bias of perceiving those things as untrue and they were just a way to classify and box a particular part of the population, there was an increase, quote, in the people that identified as left handed when it was perfectly legal to do so, and they weren't necessarily shamed as such. And when they did that, the numbers plateaued out and they plateaued out around the 10% mark. And so we know that within probably a number of these aspects, there's probably, quote, the population, about 10% fit in. So when we talk about, for instance, the LGBTQ plus community as a whole, based upon the 2022 census in the UK, that represented about 9.2% of the population. So it's kind of there. So to say that the entire population of gender diverse people is strictly the 0.5% that was quoted is probably an understatement, but it's probably an understatement that some people just didn't feel safe enough in order to make that declaration. And I certainly remember my own personal journey. That was not a simple journey to get to that point before I could ever literally utter those words. It didn't happen till I was 50, and I did not see myself represented when I looked in a mirror. I did not see myself reflected till I was 52 years old. That's Joanne Lockwood: picking up on another phrase you said earlier, is gender equity. I look back, obviously, I'm not this old, but I look back through history and we see that men, women, male, female, in terms of sex, in terms of gender, have had very kind of fixed rule sets imposed on them. And there's almost been a concept that men are superior and women are less or are inferior, and that's been kind of reinforced in the gender roles that have evolved to where we are now, but maybe even more apparent with the disneyfication of gender, Snow White and the seven dwarfs view of the world. But we wind that back to victorian times in the UK and beyond, those very fixed rules about women were incapable or perceived incapable of doing certain roles, weren't they? So where does that come from, do you? I mean, you Cynthia Fortlage: know, to your point, all we have to simply look at, to understand what even know victorian era. And that, just look at the movie Mary Poppins. It very much demonstrated those expectations. Mr. Banks was a banker, right, and his wife was bucking the trend and she was fighting for the right to vote. Yet if we trace back the history of when did all of these things kind of change, it really correlates with colonisation and the realisation that colonisation on its own, which the UK and England was not the only country colonising the world, but when those colonisers went into these foreign lands where they had much different understanding of gender, they also brought religion, and it was reinforced within religion. And so when we talk about colonisers, we really can't separate it from the conversation of a religious understanding or limitation. Now, when we talk about that, I've got my own unique history with it. I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and I was a Protestant. But unfortunately, the troubles in the early 70s chased my family away. And so I grew up in Canada, where I acquired this wonderful accent. And in doing so, I ended up meeting this wonderful person and we got married and I converted to being a Catholic. And in fact, I was so much a Catholic, I even taught catechism to adults. Now, that showed me a. The huge amount of similarities that were brought between, even though there was really just kind of a couple of the aspects of how each group practises the religion that separates them. But they were generally very similar. When we start to go backwards in time, if we look at, well, today, a lot of people want to quote the books they use. Well, which book is that? Because you end up having, of course, the Old Testament. Well, the Old Testament is the Jewish Torah, and then we have the New Testament that was put together. And if we talk about from a muslim faith perspective, not only is it the culmination of the Torah, there is no New Testament to it. So it's the Torah and aspects of the Old Testament from the Christian Bible, along with their own specific historical practises. And when I see that happening, it's like, oh, my gosh. The similarities of the points of origin and these books are not a single book. They are a culmination of many different writers from many different lands, creating the stories, recalling the stories, not in the moment, in time. Some of it was hundreds of years later. And the fact is that we know that through the Dead Sea scrolls and so forth, that through a number of finds, there have been multiple quote of these chapters, books that have been found historically, that through the process of, quote, creating the books that are used, they just opted not to use certain parts. And to me it was intriguing, certainly from a christian perspective, given that was my background, that many of the books that were created by women were not included. None of them were included in the final product that we see in use today, not the least, which was there was a rewrite for the evangelical community in the 1940s. There's a whole documentary that's out there that talks about this, and it was a reinterpretation. And the introduction of basically same sex relations are a big no no when that's not actually in the original text. So we have seen this manipulation of what we believe to be the truth that has happened through, you know, people are just doing it to, quote, create the advantage. So that's why within, say, the Catholic Church, we still don't see female priests and being able. You can have lay women practising and helping with service, but they cannot be ordained. Yet we have seen other religions, such as Church of England and others who now are much more open and they're much more inclusive of realising that carrying the word carrying. This interpretation is not restricted to a particular identity. It is actually multifaceted. And perhaps in the future that we will see rewrites and reinterpretations that will bring in a much more blended understanding, even though that's not where we're at today. And again, this is not history. That's a day in the making or a year in the making. This has been hundreds of years in the making. And that's why we assume it to be as it is, binary, when in fact none of it actually is. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think you probably trace it back even further. You think about the roman empire. The men were generally off to work, I. E. Fighting swords, shields, defending or attacking women, childbearing, nurturing, caring. And those gender roles are starting to establish, before the birth of Christ, the mythical sort of like zero ad sort of time. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. You keep Cynthia Fortlage: going. Yeah, I don't think it's modern Joanne Lockwood: Catholicism or modern Christianity that is the. These gender roles have been ingrained in many societies, just down to the fact that many women bear children. Therefore their role is more nurturing and home based. Many men are the hunter gatherer, the killer. They go out, and you can almost see that mirrored in animal wildlife type roles as well, where there are kind of evolutionary gender roles. Maybe sometimes in the lions, the females do the killing and the males do the lazing around. But overall protect and procreate. So there's slightly different roles, but there are generally fixed roles that been evolved. And I guess as a human species, we fell into that kind of, that same sort of thinking, I guess, in our prehistoric times. Cynthia Fortlage: Yeah, I don't think in prehistoric it was, quote, as articulated in the same way. I mean, I'm rereading Mary Beardy's feminist manifesto, kind of understanding the power of women. And when you look at that, she makes an amazing statement. That was news to me when I first read it. When we go back to about 4000 bce in the greek world, there was a greek philosopher who wrote the original, if you will, role of women document. So that puts it at about 6000 years ago. And literally everything you just talked about is what was embodied in that document and it's from there. So if we want to trace it back, at least from a written evidentiary based process, it probably started 6000 years ago because the roman empire came after the greek legend. So Rome was basing itself on all of this previously articulated role and responsibilities of the genders within that perspective. And yet it wasn't true. It was just in that case that philosopher's his opinion of what it should be. But it's been taken as well. That must be what it's like. And therefore that's how we see society today. And then around Joanne Lockwood: the time of Darwin, where science was becoming kind of evolved, scientists, male scientists, tried to look for evidence to prove history, if you like. And I think there were studies where people, men and women, were having their skulls measured and their brains weighed after death to prove that the male cranium was larger, therefore the male brain was larger. Therefore it must be more superior to the female brain because the female heads are smaller, the skulls are smaller, and the brain is way less so. Therefore there's the proof that male brains are superior because they're bigger. Well, if that's true, then if we go all the Cynthia Fortlage: way back to some of the prehistoric peoples and so forth, they had larger skulls and larger brains, but that did not make them necessarily smarter and so forth. And again, it's just this advancement. And one of the aspects that we have to be careful of is that when you start reading reports and research, you really have to kind of question, well, what was the question they were trying to answer? Because it's really convenient to ask the question and get far enough back to get enough data that proves your point. Well, then you don't need to go actually cheque all the other data and we stop and then we create an interpretation. And when that becomes dated and again, tens of years, hundreds of years, thousands of years old. It's no longer questioned when, in fact, when you become aware of this perception that there's this disconnect from this modern interpretation, from the historical perspective of human beings, you realise that there's a massive disconnect that is disadvantaging people today because of what's happened before. People haven't changed, they're still diverse. It's just our understanding has become limited because we have gone back to your initial point, we have gone back to those boxes when those boxes were never true in the first place. Yeah, I Joanne Lockwood: think I read a report, it was the World Economic Forum, that every year they produce, amongst other reports, the gender equity or gender equality guide or report. And I think if you compare where we were now to pre Covid, gender equity has actually gone backwards by, I think, ten or 20 years. I think before COVID it was 99 years in the western world to achieve gender equity, or in the world, and now it's like 120 years. So Covid set back the advancement of equity around gender by 20 or 30 years, just by the fact that the experience people had during COVID impacted women disproportionately harder for various reasons, such as childcare, home admin, the man being as a perceived breadwinner, and the higher earner needing more access to the table, the desk, the free time to not be bogged down with the children. So we talked about inequity of the past, but getting equity in the future is a real uphill battle. 100 od years for equity. I mean, really, do we have to wait that long? I use the comparison. Cynthia Fortlage: First of all, if we think of it, there's been equal pay legislation in the UK for slightly over 50 years. And yet we know from the reports that we see that we're not seeing it right. It's still an 83 pence to the pound for women. And again, not all women are equal. If you are a black woman, you are making less than that 83 pence. If you are perhaps of south asian or of hispanic origin, you are making even less again. So we know that even within women, there is not an equality to that, let alone that the women's rights movement is well over 150 years old. And while we're in the fourth iteration of feminism 4.0 and fighting for our rights associated with that, I look at as an interesting statistic was the population of black people within the UK is about 11%. And again, that's using the census from 2022. What was intriguing is I was reading a report that said, in order to get parity in senior leadership, which is a lot of the work that I do with organisations, if we want to get that parity for black people in that role, by the way, they need to hit two more people to be given the role to hit parity. Based upon the current trend of how many leaders actually make it to that most senior level and are black, it's going to take about 235 more years. So the whole challenge of equity, I would suggest to you, for all marginalised people, women just happen to be the largest group of marginalised people. But for all marginalised people, when we start looking at the statistics from that perspective, it creates very horrific stories to reflect on, which is why the importance of organisations need to do the work today to change it. Because we know, for the most part, we don't see it happening within society or governance of society. What we do see is organisations who are taking a stand and saying, we got to do something about this. And we fundamentally believe it as a core value of our organisational culture, and they start to do something in order to move the needle forward. And in doing so, when enough organisations actually do that, they also will move the society needle forward in the same regard. So society is always trailing to the most leading organisations, but at the end of the day, nobody's doing it perfect and it's always a work in progress. So you talked about the society there and the Joanne Lockwood: workplace. You can't escape society and the patterns in society. But if you look at just, I suppose, aspirations, the aspirations young women have in their teens, they don't aspire often. I don't want to say a stereotype, but often they don't aspire to become scientists, leaders, whatever. They aspire to be mums. They aspire to be doing low level, low paid, unskilled work in many cases, which is why we often see many women in those roles and again, impacted by Covid. So how do we change? We talked about moving the needle. How do we move the needle in creating a society where young women and girls aspire to their potential? Well, Cynthia Fortlage: a couple of things. First is, I would challenge a bit of the language that you used in making the referral, but I'll put it in context. When we think of that conversation, the challenge is not that low level work has been done, it's that on the basis of feminism 4.0, it has in advancing the feminist movement, which includes all genders, by the way, which is why men are welcome in there, to help move that needle the key is to realise that feminism 4.0, the quote unquote new elements are inclusion, which would include women like me and many others in that definition. And secondly, the intersectionality that comes into play when we look at those factors. A woman choosing to stay home and become a stay at home mom or white, that's not low level work. That is her choice. That is what the power of feminism has created, is the ability for her to choose to do that if she so chooses. If she doesn't choose that, then we get to. You were talking about some of those industries which fall under the stem st, e m, or steam. The inclusion of the a, depending upon how you define that particular market segment. And when we look into the stem space these days, the reality is that there are many careers in there that are not geared for the roles and responsibilities that are put upon all women, and especially those young women who might be mums or starting out, perhaps a married life. And in doing so, it is society that is creating the devaluation. The jobs themselves are not of low value. It's that there hasn't been. And that's the importance, from a societal perspective, when we talk about creating societal expectations of a living wage, that is to remove that bias associated with that work. And it's getting to places like a living wage allows everyone to be able to hold their head high and not be doing, quote, menial work. It's not menial, it has value. And a value has been assigned as the ability to live within society. And in doing so, whether that is stay at home, whether that is go to work and make some more money, whatever that is. That's really some of the big challenges from a gendered perspective that we face. And we have to get rid of these biases through education and awareness and realising that there are some women doing work that they don't want to be doing because they don't have another choice, because of something like not getting, having a living wage forces them to have to make other very difficult decisions in their life. And it in no way demeans them as a human being, nor the work they're actually doing, regardless of the perception. It is our own bias that's creating that perception. It's not an actual fact. It sounds easy. It sounds Joanne Lockwood: easy. Everything sounds easy. Doing. It's the hard part. So what are the barriers? Why aren't we making a significant dent? Fourth wave feminism has been around ten or 1215 years, I guess, since I started talking about it. Even third wave feminism, we haven't really, as you said, moved the needle. What are the big barriers? What's stopping organisations and men and empowering women and driving this forward? What's the barriers? Well, Cynthia Fortlage: the barriers are bias and these perceptions that we were talking about that believes the world's supposed to look or work one way. And that's why in a lot of groups that I'm involved with and certainly working with a lot of women's ergs, brgs, employee networks, the conversation about how to bring in male allies in support of, not to diminish the male role. I mean, at the end of the day, every organisation should have a cultural understanding of trying to create an inclusive workspace where every employee belongs, that includes their men, their women and every other person that may not fit within those definitions. And so the reality is that what we have to do is get together to start overcoming all of these biases and perceptions that hold us back and the realisation that we have to start shifting it. And again, I would suggest to you that at a social level of society at large, that's hard to do, really hard to do. The government's part, whatever the government is, it's not a question of politics, it's a question of are the policies in place that are creating the supports necessary to actually move the needle on these things? And in doing so, organisations are much more at the forefront of having the flexibility and the ability to actually define it. So we have seen many things change across many nations by looking at leading organisations that have influenced government, by being early adopters of change. And by doing so, they kind of shine a light on how to do it by figuring it out. No one's doing it perfectly. So that just means even the early adopters are still learning and adapting on how to move it forward. But if you don't have an intent to do it, the conversation never starts and you go, oh, this is too difficult. Well, why are we going to talk about it if it's so difficult? Because, well, that's like looking at Mount Everest and going, well, that's kind of tall, I don't want to climb it. Well, until you actually try and get to base camp, which is already putting you, I think, a few thousand feet up, you haven't even begun the journey. I always use the quote in a lot of my work that one of my favourite quotes is a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. But if we don't take the first step, the journey never begins. And the problem is we take the proverbial one step forward and half a step back because, oh, hang on, everybody was upset about that one step. We have 999 more steps to go, but we're fighting over the first step and that prevents us organisations, because they're microcosms, can create that change much easier. And in doing so we get enough organisations doing that, that can create the influence to take the next step. And it is a journey of steps. It's a journey certainly well beyond the years that I have left on this planet. But I feel that I am called to do this work in order to move the needle just because of the disparity that I encountered by simply flipping my binary and realising that one day I was treated one way and the next day I was treated so marginalised that I was struggling to have my voice heard, even though I had a table around the executive table, or the fact that I'm the subject matter expert in the room and yet because of my gender I get completely ignored. Or the fact of the moment we all walk out our front door and not feeling safe. It's not about walking down the high street in the middle of the day surrounded by people or riding the tube. It's every aspect of life and we are impacted because of our gender in every single instance and the assumed rules that were put upon us, and that's what we're having to overturn it. I can certainly tell you that as woman over my 50s, learning that I'm becoming invisible within the corporate space, certainly as an employee, was absolute despair. It wasn't that I became less useful or less smart or less productive, I just became invisible and I was no longer seen as an asset. Yet that doesn't happen to men in their 50s, they're looked at for their leadership and so forth. So that's just again those gendered perceptions that aren't reality. Women have not become less valuable, they have not become less productive, they may work differently. Things like the menopause certainly cause women to have to work differently. If a younger woman, I don't know, probably in her twenty s, thirty s, she may end up having childcare responsibilities and social and don't forget that in between there you have the sandwich generation who are not only looking after potentially children, they're looking after ageing parents. At the same time, where's the adaptation to ensure that we're getting full value? Especially when we talk about levelling up and wanting to get all of these people working. Well, guess what? You can't have a homogeneous single way that, quote, everybody works, everybody is different, everybody has different requirements. And that's really where the equity question comes in, it's how are we equitably addressing all of these diverse and unique needs? It doesn't mean you need 3 million different ways to do it, but you can't have one. And we see that challenge today definitely in the corporate space where there's all this quote, demand to return to the office kind of working because of many reasons. Some have validity, some don't. But the ultimate reality, like many business decisions, is it's driven by money. Many of these corporations have signed long term lease rental contracts with properties. The property market is a huge valuation that underpins the entire business community. And to go to where we were during COVID and realise that oh my God, we could actually have these completely distributed workplaces and we don't actually need this physical space had such a huge economic impact that the quote cost of living crisis and so forth we see today is nothing compared to what would happen if the corporate financial markets began to fail. And that's really the level we're talking about. And it's how do we keep moving away, how do we keep doing? Well, let's not force everybody back to the office, let's allow choice. Some people want to, some don't. Maybe it's a one day a week or a two day a week and you work it out, it's not always a Wednesday. Maybe this person can do it on the Monday and the Thursday. Why do they have to be there? You know what I mean? You start to have all of these different aspects. And again, I'm not being overly prescriptive because every organisation is different, their employees are different. The idea is every group has to look at what their people need and create the necessary solutions for them. And it's not going to be uniform for every company, everywhere, with one blanket perfect answer wrapped up and tied with a bow. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, Joanne Lockwood: a lot of your thoughts on RTO return to office mirror my own. We talked about bias, ingrained bias, centuries and centuries, millennia even, of gendered expectations, gendered roles. So our leaders of today and leaders of tomorrow have to have this, of a cognizance of this bias, of this inequity, baseless and foundless inequity that exists between genders. So what else? If you were talking to an organisation around first steps, what can the inclusive leader of today, who's focusing their initiatives on? We're talking about gender today. Obviously there are other characteristics, but focus on gender. What sort of steps should they be putting in place or should the organisation be thinking about today? Well, Cynthia Fortlage: the first place to start with is, do they have the data? Right. If you're going to make organisational level change, it helps you focus your efforts if you have the data. Many organisations are not collecting the data, many organisations have incomplete data and those that are trying to collect data are still getting very high. Rates of did not disclose, I e. Employees have not decided to disclose it. And typically that comes down to the psychological safety they feel within the organisation in order to actually make those disclosures. And so if it's not truly a safe workplace from their perspective, then you're not going to get that information disclosed. And therefore, how can you actually measure whether or not you advance know, it's akin to, I'm sure your listeners are aware of in the news. It was on the BBC News last night, I think it was, and they were talking about the NHS waitlists and how all the people that have been referred to specialists are no longer counted on those lists, yet they're still actually waiting for cancer care, for heart treatment, for some very serious health conditions. And so it hasn't actually gotten better, because now we're muddling with the numbers. And so let's just capture the numbers and you're not going to get the numbers unless within organisations, unless you create safe workspaces, which is an aspect, an outcome of the work companies do to create intentional cultures. So we have to go back even to the beginning of that and look, well, where do organisations, once they're trying to collect the data, when they're not getting the data? The answer is, it's a question of corporate culture. And where in the culture is there a disconnect? It could be. They say everything right in the whole bit, if they're like many organisations. And all you have to do is read a lot of the Labour tribunal reports that come out. One's definitely related to gender, I typically read quite a few of them, and in doing so, what we see is there's a very common practise of, oh, well, an organisation did a great job defining their culture and they had training on their culture and they launched their culture project and the whole bit. And that was it. It was like, well, this is the project for this month, this quarter, this year, they did it and it's one and done. Well, a culture is lived every single day, I always say. A culture is defined from the top down, but it is lived in experience from the bottom up in an organisation. And so the work to create an intentional culture cannot be a one and done. It exists as long as the lifespan of that company. So when they begin a project, if that company is going to be around for 50 more years, they have 50 more years of work in order to keep creating that intentional culture and ensuring that every person that experiences that organisation or enters that organisation or leaves that organisation can talk about that cultural experience that they wanted. That's what creates psychological safety. And obviously there's many sub aspects. I am not a specialist in psychological safety, but I have done some work specifically related to the transgender community within workspaces and how to create psychological safety while preserving psychological safety for everything else. And the fact is, it's very complex, it's not simple. There's about 14 different layers to it and that's kind of the work that organisations have to go through. And that is where I come in. And in each organisation, once we kind of get a baseline, it's about guiding the organisation through this journey that is not one and done. I always say as a consultant, I can help them define it, I can help them start to deliver the education, but I can't live an organisational culture for an organisation. They have to. So I can help put them on the path and the direction, but if they're not living it, they're going to deal with it. And guess what? The tribunals have found that where there are gross violations typically ruled against the organisation, it has been that an aspect of culture has not been continually reinforced and trained and retrained through the lifecycle of an employee. Again, it's not one and done. You have to do this ongoing because your culture of your organisation is going to mature, much like your understanding of diverse genders may mature. And in doing so you have to reflect that in the language and interpretation of your culture. And so it's not one and done. And as we go through that cycle and somebody says, oh, well, I want to address it for women and I want to address it for black or ethnic minorities or any particular group. Whatever they're focusing, they're going to learn something and that has to be reincorporated back into the culture and that's how they will slowly create psychological safety. That gives the data. And in doing so, they've actually moved the needle in doing that because they've been doing the work. Before we measure it, they had to do it. And to do that, I mean, there's a whole other conversation about the data and what data do you gather and so forth, but I'll leave that hopefully that gives you a sense of how we go after this rather large challenge, but not insurmountable I mean, we're human beings, we've done some amazing things. I don't see this as anything less than that. Are Joanne Lockwood: men, thanks, willing and able and ready to step up and do what it takes? Is that part of the challenge? We can talk all days around women's rights, women's movement, women's having these conversations. But if time has shown as anything, in order to make change, it has to be enabled by people who hold power and privilege correct and generally in society. Men, white men, white, straight men, hold power and privilege. Correct. And as a woman, you have to knock on the door gently and be invited in. If you try and knock on the door heavily or kick it in, you get repelled as someone who's crazy or someone who is subversive. So we need fundamental societal change where people who hold privilege see it as their responsibility. Sexism is a male problem, racism is a white problem, homophobia is a straight problem. So we got to try and shift where we see the challenge. And women talking around oppression isn't moving the needle, because men need to start recognising that conversation and have men involved. That's the challenge we face. Cynthia Fortlage: Exactly. Until we start to realise our privileges as human beings. What I call making the unconscious conscious. Until we start to recognise that element, you can't change it because, see, the process is you first of all have to make the unconscious conscious. Then you have to accept the conscious thought, good or bad, and then you can decide to change it or not. And then you actually have to do something. And so even that's not a one, two step, that is three or four steps in order to actually get moving to deal with it. And if somebody is at the top of the food chain, and certainly up to the age of 50, I was a perceived white, heterose man. And I enjoyed every single one of those privileges because I was in the executive suite, I quote, had made it, and I had the salary and the cars and the house and the holiday and the bank account and everything else. But as Maslow talks about, I wasn't self actualized by achieving that point in my life. What I did was realise, oh, my gosh, there's a huge gap. And that caused me to have to reflect, well, that exercise, not because of their gender or questioning their perception of their gender, but simply being a white, cis het male, so cisgender, heterosexual male, you're probably carrying a huge bunch of power and privilege that many others aren't. And until you recognise that and are willing to do something not to give away what you got. But to uplift others, to be in the same space, then that's part of the challenge. And that was one of my learnings, was the idea of what does it mean to move the needle forward and to advance a bit, quote, within society, because even within my, quote, marginalised part of my identity, which I consider tertiary to the work that I do. The reality is that I still carry a great deal of privilege and I carry privilege that many others who have travelled a similar journey to me do not. And I realise that when I'm out in society and I don't get misgendered, I don't get name called, I have never been, thank goodness, physically attacked, but I do get impacted the way other women do. I have men who try and put their power over me to show that they are, quote, sexually superior or so forth and create advancements that I didn't ask for in my personal space or that I'm trying to get from point a to b and they feel they get to interject because, well, it's just convenient for them. Too bad, so sad. For me, it's both an aspect of safety for me, but for that person, they don't even recognise the privilege they're demonstrating by doing that exact kind of behaviour. And until they're willing to recognise that behaviour, that's the challenge. And that only comes from education and awareness raising, which is a great deal of what I do with organisations because there's still a great deal of education and awareness raising that needs to be done. And just because someone had a gender diverse speaker three years ago and they've talked about that topic, they've been there and done well, things change, things advance. And so when are you doing the reeducation part, as much as we talked about doing it, with your development of your intentional culture and training your employees, bringing in the training that keeps your people open and growing by learning is also a key aspect of that. And that's an area where know, just ask learning and development professionals, they'll tell you that, know, the economy gets difficult and the business is hurting, they're one of the first budget that gets cut. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah, Cynthia, Joanne Lockwood: that's absolutely amazing. I can't believe we've been chatting for over an hour now and it's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you. You're welcome. And I'm sure our listeners have got so much from this. So how can they get in touch with you to find out more about the work you do and to maybe reach out and say hi? Absolutely. Well, connect with me on LinkedIn. Cynthia Fortlage: Please mention that you heard me on this show with you, Jo. The other one is they can go to my website, which is triple w dot cynthiafortlage.com. All one word. The name's in the description. So yeah, just go to triple w cynthiafortledge.com. You'd be able to connect with me, find out more information, and would love to engage in a conversation. If you've got a question that might be burning after this conversation, please reach out. Thank you. Thank you. Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to inclusion bytes and become part of our ever growing community, driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire, and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world, one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.