Training for women
Training for women remains an issue in ensuring that our workplaces are inclusive

By Tony Harrison
In 1879, a pamphlet published in the United Kingdom drew attention to a newly-formed committee whose mission was “to show that it was a matter of necessity that nearly half of the women in the United Kingdom should maintain themselves and those women, properly trained, may become useful members of the body politic.” The pamphlet had been published by the Society for Promoting the Education of Women to mark 20 years of its activity. Noting amongst its many pioneering successes of the acceptance of women into the clerical branches of the British civil service, the Society later exchanged the word ‘Training’ for ‘Education’ in its title and its work continues to this day.

What this example shows is that as long ago as 1859, training for women had been identified as key in order to promote a fairer and more equitable society, and to enable women to make a meaningful contribution in economic life.

More recently in 2009 and 2010, research in the further education sector in the United Kingdom asked the questions, “Why are women so under-represented at principal level? How are we to ensure that the further education sector is selecting the best people to be senior leaders from the widest pool of talent?” The research results showed that among the top six barriers to career progression for women were limited opportunities for professional training and development, lack of confidence and lack of mentoring or career coaching. Top of the list of barriers were domestic and family commitments. It seems from this that some of the age old issues that have blighted the progress of women over centuries are still with us, if we reasonably substitute the notion of becoming “useful members of the body politic” for that of career progression. Access to training and development remains an issue to be addressed. The respondents in the survey for the research were also asked for their views on what would be the most effective strategies to ensure greater leadership opportunities for women in general. Top of their list were mentoring, support and training. So, it appears that training for women remains an issue in ensuring that our workplaces are inclusive.

Design training to address women’s experience
How then do we begin to address the issue of designing and delivering learning and development to meet the needs of women? To do this training has to reflect and address the experience of women.

When we are designing training for women, we need to ensure that the context we choose is a relevant one. For example, if confidence is an issue for women in the workplace, as the survey above would suggest it is, then it is crucial that the training takes this into account. Anne Dickson published her book “A Woman in your own Right” in 1982 in which she sets out strategies for behaving assertively. Many other books and training programmes for both women and men similarly set out such strategies. What makes this book different is the context in which it is set. Dickson says herself that assertiveness is not exclusively the preserve of either male or female – she does not find that women are “more in need of assertiveness techniques than men – they simply need them differently.” She cites many examples of how this might be in practice. For instance, how can a woman react assertively to sexist remarks or a domineering male boss?

Equally, the design of training for women should make use of case studies and examples that address women’s experiences. I can think of leadership training personally undertaken, where we the learners were asked to identify famous leaders and their characteristics. We came up with predictable individuals: Winston Churchill, Ghandi, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. All of these of course are male and the effect of this - completely missed by our tutors - was to stamp leadership as an essentially male quality. Surely an alternative approach to the activity could have been to have offered a series of pen portraits of leaders – men and women – and asked us to pick out which we thought were the leadership characteristics of each. In that way, we could have had a more inclusive view of leadership qualities. The context for training for women also includes domestic and family commitments. We must take this into account when designing programmes to meet the real needs of women. Whilst it is accepted that this may not be an issue for every woman, and indeed that those affected can include men, nonetheless the arrangements we make to deliver a programme should keep it in mind. We should make training as flexible as possible. The traditional favourite, the residential course, holds a number of attractions but it can exclude women before it even begins because of the need to be away from home for a period.

So, we can replace it with programmes that deploy a variety of delivery methods such as online learning, projects and action learning. Not only do these methods ensure a greater degree of access to training, but they are also increasingly favoured as extremely effective ways of learning. Even when it is a requirement to have a group of learners meet, other measures in planning can be taken to maximise the opportunity for participants to access sessions. This may mean delivering programmes outside of the usual working day, and at weekends. Consideration should also be given at the planning stage to what sort of childcare facilities can be offered where the training is to take place.

Personal support for participants
The research referred to earlier suggests that lack of confidence and support are major barriers for women. There are ways that these can be addressed, either within a training programme or independently of one. Coaching and mentoring are both methods increasingly used on the basis that they promote ownership by the learner of their own issues and the solutions to them. They can provide the support needed to help learners translate the training they have done into tangible actions and progress and, in the course of that, promote confidence. Coaching and mentoring can be delivered by telephone as well as face to face and so are eminently flexible too. Another approach is to set up support groups within cohorts of learners. These meet regularly at times to suit the participants, and the work they do can be informal, or can be an assessed part of the particular course being followed. Colleges in the United Kingdom regularly deploy this approach in training teachers. Though the learners are not exclusively women, confidence is also an issue for some and access to regular time tabled sessions can be a problem because of their individual teaching commitments. Small groups get together to work on sections of the course and then make presentations to their tutors as part of their overall assessment. These are delivered at times of the day to suit the learners.

Conclusion
We began by drawing attention to the possibility that some of the issues faced in training for women in the nineteenth century may still be with us, even if in a twenty –first century guise. But it is also possible to address these issues in some of the simple but effective ways outlined. Perhaps it is time for training organisations to seek true inclusivity in their programmes in order to ensure a workplace and society that welcome the contributions of all.

— Tony Harrison, Managing Consultant, Leadership & Management, LSN

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