Saturn Returns with Caggie - *Moments* Finding space in a man's world with Dr. Sarah Rutherford

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

This week on Saturn Returns, consultant, and academic researcher Dr. Sarah Rutherford is on the podcast to discuss women in the workplace, equality, and feminism. In this moment, you’ll hear Sarah share how she forged her career in helping organisations identify the barriers to women’s progress; as well as some of the ways women experience the workplace differently from men. Sarah also happens to be Caggie's mum! So this isn’t one to miss. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

hello everyone happy sunday i hope you are having a glorious weekend i am very excited to share with you a moment from tomorrow's episode of saturn returns where i am joined by an incredibly special guest dr sarah rutherford aka my mum here is a little clip from the episode and I think you're going to love it because not only will you get a personal insight into the conversations and the relationship I have with my mother but you will also get an education on the history of feminism. My work since I did that master's I then went on and did a PhD looking at the impact of different organizational cultures on women in the workplace. What was it about the culture that made it easier in some parts of an organization or some industries that made it easier for women to progress and then it became quite a big market

for that kind of thing and I stayed on and worked so I've been very lucky that I've actually worked in an area that I'm really passionately interested in which is quite unusual but you know I've met huge numbers of women in the workplace so I reckon I I sort of understand what the issues are. And they're fairly kind of common across the different... Which are? The basic problem really for women in the workplace, unless it's a new company, and I do think it's changing, partly because of technology. But in the sort of older established industries,

the workplace was designed for men's lives, not women's lives. So you can come in and you can be open to that when you're in your early 20s, say. But you're aware if you look up, there aren't so many women kind of at the top. So you start to think, oh, what's going on here and then you're even the hours although maybe the pandemic has changed that and will change that but if you talk to women they are trying to work as men used to work when they had wives at home which is they might well have children it would it's it's just not right and so there's still a lot of change i mean i look at more organizational change at how organizations should change maybe the ways that

they work as well as their culture so the places that the workplace issues for women has been in the past harassment and that can mean overtly by one man bothering you or it can be a bit more subtly which I do call a form of harassment which is where you get marginalized like left out of emails a bit ignored at a meeting your ideas come up but then somebody else brings them up and he's a bloke and he gets it heard very familiar things um also just the ways in which women work are on the whole different of course there's some crossovers you know if you have one of those venn diagrams you've got crossovers and there are bits in the middle where i'm probably work in some ways in quite a masculine way that I do I probably do yeah but I'm just saying that from my own observations but one of the things that I think I have noticed is that women are and I I just really go back to wondering whether this is

actually a sort of genetic biological thing is that that, for instance, in my research, I noticed that women's styles of managing, this is looking at management, are different on the whole different. And they think, women think they're more different than men think they're different. You see what I mean? As in, what do you mean? So when I did my research,

you asked the question, do you think women manage differently? The vast majority of the women said yes. Yes, and women said yes. And men said no. But quite a lot of men wouldn't know. They'd never let them. But men didn't.

But men were also, because some of them did recognize it. But women had to probably, you know, have and continue to have to mold themselves to a more masculine way. Especially the more senior they go up. Yeah. So I noticed that the styles changed as they went up the organization and in some respects that might be that the business demanded it but things like um risk management and this has been written about a lot um so people said after the financial crisis oh that wouldn't you know this was in 2007 2008 oh that wouldn't have happened if we'd had more women at the top.

I actually do believe that. I do. And in fact, Iceland responded by actually immediately making women the head of their pangs afterwards. And it was meant to happen here. Don't forget to listen to the show tomorrow morning. It will be available from 7am. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, you're not alone.

Goodbye.