Invisible Barriers: Gender in Training Environments
Ever considered how gender can present invisible barriers in continued professional development (CPD)?
Our founder Madelaine Jones, talks about how gender can influence learning and development environments in invisible ways.
When we talk about gender in the workplace, we often focus on the bigger picture. Most of us have seen the statistics on wage gaps, discussions about workplace policies, and looked at gender differences in board representation. Most of us have done one or several unconscious bias modules in our DEI training (and probably that logic puzzle about the surgeon). And the vast majority of us have addressed the ideas we internalised from a young age, and questioned the visible, measurable things that cause discrepancies based on gender in the workplace.
But the simultaneously wonderful and tricky thing about any form of identity is that it’s part of each of us, and there is a lot going on beneath the surface that it’s hard to quantify. Throughout our lives, we absorb all manner of opinions and anxieties related to our gender, informed by our own experiences. These are quite often invisible, sometimes irrational, and almost always difficult to articulate, let alone quantify - but that doesn’t make them any less real or important to consider.
Gender is a tricky aspect to navigate in training environments for just this reason. On the surface, treating learners of different genders equally is fairly straightforward. But given all of the invisible barriers that are lurking under the surface, treating people of different genders equitably in an L&D environment can prove very difficult. Add into this the additional factor that professional training is the equivalent of school for adults, and that means all of the difficulties and questions we had growing up, be those internal or external, are going to come into play in the training room.
Because these barriers are often invisible, the effects they have on the dynamics of a workshop environment cannot always be easily untangled. To demonstrate what I mean, let’s use myself as an example learner. I grew up in a less traditionally gendered environment, with a mother who’s obsessed with sports of all kinds and a brother who loves to cook. I was the kind of girl who played with Barbies and played football. I did not grow up feeling in any way hampered by being a girl. I was boisterous, ambitious, and rejected being pigeon-holed by my gender vehemently. By all accounts, to most people, I still come across that way, and seem to be quite confident and self-assured; it would not cross most people’s minds that my gender in any way affects my engagement in a classroom, and I rarely display any traits stereotypically associated with a ‘lack of confidence’ in women.
And yet even with all that, gender has absolutely affected the way that I learn, both as a child, and still now as an adult. Despite being a seemingly confident and outgoing person, I am self-aware of being perceived as ‘bossy’ in professional environments courtesy of past school reports, and I know many other women who have similar experiences. While it may not be visible, I consciously self-monitor how much I pitch in during group discussions, and am often careful in positioning any disagreements, particularly in unfamiliar or male-dominated environments.
If I were put in a group to debate a controversial topic as a workshop attendee, how confident I felt in the conversation would be vastly different if I were put with a group of women I knew well vs. men I didn’t know at all. And while these differences may not always be visible or measurable, they will have a cumulative and tangible effect on how I absorb what has been discussed in the session, and potentially how I feel about the topic itself as a result.
As a facilitator who has an expertise in understanding how I communicate with different groups of people, I have been lucky to have the tools and time to unpick my communication in different environments, and develop tools to counterbalance that. But in discussing experiences with fellow female professionals, I’ve often been struck by the sheer variety of invisible ways in which gender has continued to influence their learning and development, and how little it is discussed and addressed openly. Like my own experience, it has often been subtle things that have had a cumulative effect on learning over the course of their professional life, such as:
anxiety in training environments one week in four, courtesy of bad experiences with periods in classroom environments
women in male-dominated fields feeling pressure to outperform colleagues in order to be considered equally competent
menopausal learners experiencing hot flushes, and not being able to request temperature changes in the room
While it has thankfully become less common, there are also some environments and industries in which gender is still a visible barrier to learning and development. I have friends who have worked on all-male teams where ‘banter’ about women was very prevalent. As a result, they felt discouraged from upskilling in their role, not because they didn’t believe in their own abilities, but because they simply didn’t have the energy to juggle the training alongside battling someone else’s assumptions. In most of these cases, my friends moved into other teams or other fields, where they felt they could develop without having to deal with this. But even when this was possible and they moved into a more supportive environment, they were often left with a wariness in their new environment, courtesy of their prior experiences, and the visible became an invisible in a new place.
People of all genders (or races, sexualities, or any other aspect of identity) have invisible barriers of their own. These barriers will be different for every individual, although groups of people with a shared characteristic will more likely have some overlapping experiences. The truth is that it would be absolutely impossible for a facilitator to account for every single invisible barrier in the room when leading a session. But developing an awareness that they exist, what some of them might be, and considering the most common ones, is a great way to start in creating inclusive learning and development.
While I have given you a snapshot today of my and my colleagues’ experiences of being a woman in a corporate training environment, other women may have different experiences entirely, particularly those whose identities mean they intersect with other invisible barriers. Other people who aren’t women may share some of these experiences. And everyone who is reading this will have their own experiences and invisible barriers relating to their identity and experiences that affect how they learn, including those groups of people generally not considered to be marginalised.
As a learning provider, the most important thing we can do is to acknowledge that these barriers exist, be empathetic when they crop up, and learn to do better when we don’t get it right (which will happen to everyone at some point). Anything we can do to better understand the experiences of different genders of learners in the room, while respecting that they may not feel comfortable sharing with us, can only be a positive thing.
Looking for workshops around the topic of inclusion? Want to hear more of Madelaine’s insights? Why not check out our workshop, Inclusion Is For Everyone, facilitated by Madelaine Jones, or else contact us to see what else we can do to help you.
