Learning from Leaders to ‘Break the Bias’
Written by Orlaith McGuinness, Community Development Project Manager at ELBA
One of the themes for 2022 International Women’s Day is #BreaktheBias: a call to stand up against gender bias, discrimination and stereotyping. In honour of this, ELBA ran an online ‘Learning from Leaders’ session to create a space to share advice, experiences, and learnings on tackling bias in our organisations and communities. The session formed part of the Evolve project, a collaborative partnership between Societe Generale, Societe Generale Foundation, Linklaters and UBS.
To start off, we welcomed some fantastic panellists from both the corporate and community sector for a roundtable discussion. From the community side, we heard from Anna Strickland, who spoke about her work as Director of True you Today, an organisation that empowers and supports survivors of gendered abuse through art, movement and creativity. Anna is also a confidence coach at Self Care School, and an empowerment and self esteem photographer (who works under the name of HeardinLondon).
We were also joined by a group of panel speakers and facilitators from UBS, Societe Generale and Linklaters, all of whom shared their personal and professional experiences, in particular looking at the intersectionality of gender bias in the workplace and its impact in areas such as age, maternity, culture and race, as well as policy and process change to tackle it.
The roundtable was followed by a group discussion, where attendees from community organisations around East London were encouraged to share experiences, challenges, solutions and reflections on the discussion. The result was an open, honest and insightful discussion about bias at work and in our communities, as well as what we can do to overcome it.
IWD is a time to celebrate women’s achievement, raise awareness against bias and take action for equality, not just on the 8th of March, but all year round. At ELBA, we are proud to collaborate with organisations that value and celebrate difference. Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias.
If you are interested in collaborating on a similar programme, please get in touch with Orlaith: orlaith.mcguinness@elba-1.org.uk.
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