Challenging bias through storytelling
While strides have been taken, action is still needed to create a gender equal world. Key to making this a reality is tackling bias. Unconscious or deliberate, it’s a barrier to women. We used this year's International Women’s Day (IWD) theme of #BreakTheBias to bring this to life both internally and externally.
Setting the scene
Our commitment to gender equality continues to be a strategic priority and we have a clear action plan to support the attraction, retention and progression of women and minority groups. Each year, we use IWD to reflect on our progress, while celebrating and promoting the voices of our female colleagues and allies.
Knowing the power of social media in giving people a platform to talk about issues that matter to them, this year we focused our attention on running a special #BreakTheBias series across our channels. Throughout March, we released four video interviews, hosted by our UK Head of Audit Hemione Hudson, with women from across the firm talking about their experience of bias and how they’ve overcome it.
How we helped
We wanted to acknowledge the overlapping and concurrent forms of disadvantage faced, especially as we know the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women. Analysis in our 2022 Women in Work Index identified that it has set back progress to gender equality in work by at least two years.
In the interviews, our people discussed bias through an intersectional lens, with other topics including race, women’s health and gender identity making up part of the conversations. We spoke to women from different backgrounds, including Katie, a manager in Consulting, whose interview brought to life the power of storytelling in challenging bias and, in turn, moved the conversation on gender equality forward.
Katie shared her story about coming out as a trans woman, starting in May 2020. She explained that reading about and hearing the experiences of others helped her realise she wasn’t alone. Hemione and Katie discussed how the firm had supported her journey, from changing her name in our systems, to having open conversations with a client about her pronouns and name before it had ‘officially’ changed.
Katie also emphasised the importance of talking about gender equality in line with other social justice issues to drive inclusion on a wider level.
“I was really pleased to have been given the opportunity to share my story as part of the firm’s IWD video series. It’s been wonderful to receive such a positive and far-reaching response; I’m very happy that this has reached so many people and touched their thoughts on gender equality.”
Making a difference
The series received an overwhelmingly positive response, with Katie’s video alone gaining over 27,000* views across LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, while the campaign as a whole generated over 124,800* views. Internally, our people shared how powerful the series was for them with comments thanking our speakers for “being so generous with sharing their experience”, and commending how “inspirational” and “honest” it was.
The accounts from our people are a reminder of the importance of storytelling in challenging and educating each other about gender bias, and the responsibilities we have at an individual, organisational and societal level to both recognise and work together to end it.
*Data as at April 2022
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