Boys will be boys.

My brother called me once.

Me: ‘I can’t speak now; I’m going into a training course’

Brother (incredulously taking the piss): ‘What for? You’re an estate agent, what are they training you for, how to return calls?’

Yesterday I sat through a two-hour training course that was the equivalent to attending the Idiots Guide to Using Your Phone Effectively.

This was a workshop called Everyday Male Champions of Change in which the panel and facilitator informed men in the property industry that women are not being treated respectfully and paid equally and asked for their commitment to making a small change to their behaviour in their workplace. 

20 minutes in I nearly walked out such was my infuriation.

How can it possibly be that in 2024 there is a course outlining to men that they need to advocate for more respectful behaviour and positive policy in the workplace towards those that make up the other 50% of the world’s population?

And out of this ground-breaking workshop, two issues really fucked me off; fucking flexible working hours and how our poor boys are feeling really confused. Lots more fucked me off but these are the biggies.

If I have to listen to another self-righteous sermon from some male CEO who has introduced flexible working hours and therefore the ladies are all much happier, I’ll vomit. Literally on the table, right there.

Bravo to you male CEO in the property industry for making it so much easier for women to collect the spawn of our male colleagues from day care, feed them, clean them and put them to bed and for enabling us to then log on from home to catch up on work whilst the fathers of those children are down the pub with their colleagues building relationships that we cannot get access to because we are either a) not invited b) don’t have a babysitter c) can’t afford a babysitter because we’re not in a leadership or fee generating role and therefore get paid 20% less than our male colleagues or d) fucking knakered.

Great news!

When it was then asked of the male CEO’s if their female AND male employees were all taking advantage of the flexible working hours the CEO’s looked a little put on the spot. Of course they aren’t! Flexible working hours is absolutely a bone thrown out for women to make it easier for them to undertake their full-time paid work and their full-time unpaid work. 

And as a result, our male CEO’s can sermonise on the excellent gender splits in their workforce, they stick it on inane LinkedIn posts and mention it from stages and look like real Champions of Change.  At the same time, our CEO’s have also ensured that our male colleagues can rest easy knowing they are still in-line for those big dollar leadership positions. Because by the time women are in line to be considered for them, we are exhausted from working double shifts, and quit the race. 

Oh, and as we’ve been working flexibly, we’ve not been spotted in the office and you know what they say; out of sight, out of mind!

Ah the sweet success of flexible working hours!

Whilst men are still considered to be less-than, or just plain refuse to, take care of their share of the child-rearing and home-based chores and start leaving the office early, no change is possible.

If I hear one more man shrug and say ‘oh I would happily stay home with the kids if my wife earned more than me’ and yet not put two and two together on how this is an almost impossibility because he doesn’t use his flexible hours, he didn’t take his parental leave, he doesn’t invite women to the pub and he still expects the woman in the room to take the fucking minutes, I’ll punch him in the chops.

I really can’t see how drawing a line between these things is so far-fetched. You are the reason why your wife doesn’t earn more than you, it isn’t her choice of profession. It is entirely stacked against her and sitting in this course where you are agreeing to ‘TRY and step in’ when a man makes a derogatory comment about a woman, in your workplace, says it all.

And we don’t just quit the race because we’re physically knakered from our two jobs, we quit because after years of watching this bullshit we’re emotionally knakered, we’ve lost the ambition because frankly what kind of industry am I actually trying to get to the top of here? Do I really want to continue to spend time with these sorts of people? Despite our best efforts, nothing has changed from when we started out, except we have become completely jaded.

And with that jaded-ness we have lost our humour and our patience so we speak up more and we take less shit and, in that process, our male colleagues go off us. Now we’re just a bit difficult. We talk a bit too much. We are just a little too emotional. We’re making things a bit difficult around here.

At no point is consideration given to the environment that has brought us to this point, the idea that perhaps the workplace in which we have been toiling away in for all of these years has created this monster.

It is the ultimate in gas lighting. It’s a complete lose, lose. We can’t win. We lose by giving up our souls or we lose by giving up entirely.

And so, to the second biggest issue that arose in this workshop that fucked me right off; our poor boys and how they are confused, unsettled and feeling hard done by. They now don’t know their place in the workforce, and therefore the world, since all these women turned up, so in essence, they are acting out. Or, phrased another way, you could say; ‘boys will be boys’.

I hear that argument as that it is (again) women’s fault. We are being maligned, disrespected and abused because men are confused and don’t know their place in society anymore so therefore, we have brought this on ourselves.

Some of my words spoken in this revolutionary workshop were completely misconstrued by the male attendees.

I noted how my 3 nephews (12, 11 and 9) have zero cognition of the difference between boys and girls being able to do different jobs, sports or academically, it’s a complete anathema to them. These words were taken to mean that it must be when boys get to the workforce that it is then that they realise that the system is being stacked against them, as boys. And thus, the frustration in our young men arises.

No, no, no!

These boys go through their school lives believing the world is fair and opportunity is for all and when they get to the workforce it is then they are TAUGHT that actually this is a man’s world. The environment changes them, it is NOT that it IS the case that women are getting more opportunities than them but they are taught that it is so. What easier way to maintain the status quo than to get men to feel disgruntled by demonstrating to them that women don’t really belong here.

And this is how it plays out in the corporate world; the CEO is a man, the majority of leaders are men, the company sponsors sports events at which to entertain men, the company sponsors sports programs through its charity giving, even hangs sport memorabilia in its office, men openly tell jokes that are derogatory to women, men don’t invite women to events, to the pub for casual drinks, men make sexist comments in the office, men say their clients prefer dealing with a man and men attend meetings and start every conversation with which men they all know in common and when they worked with them ‘in the good old days’.

How can anyone NOT get the message it’s a man’s world in that environment and that they have a RIGHT to be there (and that’s before even the mention of all-boys private schools and nepotism).

And what are we doing to change the environment – not a lot. Our poor boys can’t even front up to their buddies and tell them the joke is off-colour – frankly why should they – it’s their space after all.

I would argue that actually women should be the ones feeling hard done by and confused. Our lives have changed completely from that of our mothers and grandmothers; their experience of the world so different to ours that we have entered this environment entirely ill-equipped.

This lack of preparedness and conflict between what our mothers and grandmothers thought and taught has left women confused and worst of all; feeling guilty. With extra, special thanks to the manufactured and overused trope called ‘maternal instinct’, now women, overcome with guilt, overkill with our children. We spend 14.1 hours per week in their highly stimulated company compared to 10.2 hours in the 60’s when the vast majority of us were at home all day with them.

I cannot more strongly state; this isn’t about stealing jobs from men or deliberately unsettling men in the name of feminism, women have to and want to work for the same reasons men do; standard of living, financial security and identity.

With an average house price in Sydney of $1.2m find me a single income family that can afford to live here? If women don’t stay in the workforce, we have no superannuation so when our husband’s leave us for a fresher model, we have no savings and end up in poverty. If we don’t maintain a work-life outside the home, we lose our identities outside of ‘mother’ and end up in therapy feeling worthless which is completely incompatible with getting back into the workforce.

And don’t forget, on top of the guilt for the children and the lack of partner support in the home, we are also paid less in the workplace all for the privilege! And for extra bonus points we need to do all of this with a sense of humour and looking fabulous. 

So, I’m not sure why men are feeling so unsettled and confused. They have, in modern history, gone off to work, had financial security, identity associated with their jobs, been captains of industry and left women to take care of the house and kids; THAT HAS NOT CHANGED, in fact I’ll pop in a little bonus for them – they still have it all and they don’t even need to wear ties anymore!

It feels like if anyone should be angry enough to hunt down their partner and stab them in a gym carpark or set them on fire in their car or dish out a black eye it would be women not men.

And there I am in a workshop of Male Champions listening to grown men, worrying about young men not knowing where their place is anymore to illicit my sympathy.

I don’t have sympathy because the numbers are clear – nothing has changed for bloody decades! There is no great rise in female CEO’s or leaders, men still overwhelmingly dominate the top 250 Rich List, men still do significantly less unpaid work and men still earn significantly more than women across the majority of sectors.

I don’t have sympathy because this self-perpetuating belief that men are somehow losing their power, the very fear of it being so leads to the worst behaviour in men.

The other woman at my table in yesterday’s workshop drew a direct line between the acceptance of behaviour that belittles women and domestic violence. The men looked incredulous. I very much doubt that if she said there was a link between kids who hurt animals and serial killers, they would have done anything but agree. But how can it not be put together that in a country where social acceptability of belittling, excluding, and harassing women, where we can’t even manage equal pay, could lead to a proliferation of violence against women? Is it 27 or 28 women who have died this year, it’s May 3rd, in Australia as the result of domestic violence, either way, it’s horrific.

If 1 in 4 women are the victims of violence, how many men are therefore perpetrators? I really don’t think we have a handful of rogue men going around abusing women, we don’t have one bad apple getting himself into relationships with 1 in 4 of us to perpetrate abuse. I feel strongly the need to focus on the perpetrator number as much as the victims number and as such the reality is, that of the 40 men in the room, I was sitting amongst 10 perpetrators.

Therefore, if you are the 3 out of the 4, and all you have to do is point out a bad joke, pull up a mate, see people as equals and you can make a difference to the lives of all women, to help prevent 13 women per day being hospitalised for domestic violence, just do it! It really isn’t a big deal.

We don’t want to take over the fucking world, we just want to feel safe in it and have equal opportunity.

I can’t sit in anymore workshops and training courses on gender equity, I’ve had enough of baby-talk to grown men asking them to be nice to girls.

And I’ve had enough of the industry that perpetrates these tropes and I’m quitting. I wanted to be a CEO but over the past 17 years with my employer, 10 years in Australia, there is zero chance of that happening in my industry. I cannot see a pathway; I am not valued and never will be.

I feel badly, I really do. I should be doing my bit for the next generation but I can’t, my soul is bleeding out my ears. I’m sorry girls. I can’t even say it’s better now than when I started.

I quit.

"We will only be able to eradicate violence against women and their children, when women are not only safe, but respected, valued and treated as equals in private and public life," Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins