Earlier this month, European Equities, RBC RFuture and RWomen (two of our Employee Resource Groups), hosted over 100 employees from across RBC at a special event with Joanne Lipman, author of ‘Win Win: When Business Works for Women, It Works for Everyone’. Joanne presented candid insights into issues ranging from diversity and unconscious bias to women in leadership and the importance of having men as allies and gave practical strategies to combat bias in the workplace.
Words from Joanne Lipman on ‘Unbaising ourselves’ included:
- Interrupt the interrupters
- Application and Brag Buddies
- Diversify in interviews, not just the 9interviewees
- Blind auditions
- Don’t decide for her
- Leadership must ‘own’ workplace equality
Following the presentation, Charlotte Sweeney, OBE and one of the UK’s most prominent diversity and inclusion specialists, held a fireside chat with Joanne and a very engaging Q&A session with attendees – of whom over 40% were men.
This event follows on from the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in London and is one of a number of initiatives in support of RBC’s commitment to gender diversity in the region including signatory to the Women in Finance Charter.
Joanne Lipman was until recently Chief Content Officer of the publishing company Gannett and Editor-in-Chief of its USA Today. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where she rose to Deputy Managing Editor, the first woman to hold that post. At the Journal, she supervised coverage that won three Pulitzer Prizes. She later became founding Editor-in-Chief of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine and Portfolio.com.
About Joanne’s book ‘Win Win: When Business Works for Women, It works for Everyone.’
A recent Harvard study found that corporate “diversity training” has actually made the gender gap worse—in part because it makes men feel demonized. Women, meanwhile, have been told closing the gender gap is up to them: they need to speak up, to be more confident, to demand to be paid what they’re worth. They discuss these issues amongst themselves all the time. What they don’t do is talk to men about it.