I was hoping to write something about the Rio Olympics today, but all the talk about sexism in the workplace this week has left me thinking about what women can do to try to combat it.
Brenda Trenowden, who heads the 30% Club that advocates for women holding more positions on FTSE 100 boards, offers some insight. In a candid interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trenowden reflects on how she dealt with working on a London trading floor in what she said was an “openly sexist culture” in the 1990s. “The thing I learned was to be resilient, and as long as you continue to deliver, that’s the best defense you can have,” she said.
Resilience is one approach. But its necessity highlights the big challenge facing women in the world of business—and in politics for that matter. As Fortune‘s Jennifer Reingold notes in this piece on the recent departure of Roger Ailes of Fox News amid allegations of sexual harassment, we need to “root out deep-seated discrimination against women at its core.” At the same time, she writes, we must “have open discussions about how to address the lack of diversity in business.”
The female co-founder of global consulting firm R3 Worldwide added to the conversation in a piece dismissing the recent comments by Kevin Roberts–now the ex-boss of Saatchi & Saatchi–that the debate over gender diversity in the ad industry is over. Goh Shu Fen, also the president of the Institute of Advertising Singapore, wrote that women need to “build bridges” to each other that offer “mentorship, sponsorship and guidance” to “help the ascent.” I realize there is no quick fix. But that’s an approach I can get behind.