Interviews

OSPAs webinar on sexism in security sector

by Mark Rowe

Sexism should not be seen as ‘just a women’s issue’, because men in organisations have a responsibility to bring forward all those with talent – not just those who might look and sound like them. So heard the latest OSPAs thought leadership webinar yesterday.

The panel of Monicah Kimeu in Kenya, Secretary General at Women in Safety Excellence; Angela Osborne in the United States, Associate Vice President, Risk and Emergency Management Solutions at Guidepost Solutions; and the former Nottinghamshire chief constable Sue Fish, now a consultant, had much to agree on. It’s very much a leadership issue, Sue Fish stressed: how to bring on and encourage and mentor people who are different to you.

She said: “You might have great policies but what are those like in practice, and what does that mean for women.” She also touched on the wider diversity agenda, of the disabled, the LGBTQ community and others. She contrasted how ‘you might have ticked the box that says you have done an equality impact assessment or whatever is the appropriate thing; but we don’t think about what it really means.”

While the panel agreed that much progress has been made against sexism, they agreed also that much remains to be done; and Sue Fish stressed how easy it is for good intentions to wither. She had withering words to say for the police and military sectors, with among other things their ‘toxic operational culture’. When leaders are under pressure, and above all during the covid pandemic, she acknowledged the need to get through the moment; ‘but we always find a crisis as a reason for not doing real cultural change. So we do bits at the margins, they make differences, they make progress, but they don’t really change things in the way that the people that policing serves, that the security industry more broadly serves our communities, actually deserve.”

The chair as ever of the webinars, Prof Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research, closed by asking each panellist what strategic point needed to be adopted, to tackle sexism. Angela Osborne singled out that industry bodies such as ASIS have an important role in setting norms, and called for more women in leadership roles. That cropped up earlier in the discussion, as did the ‘tokenism’ of one woman joining the board (stereotypically as the head of HR). As Angela said, to say that not enough women apply for leadership positions is not sufficient (for it begs the questions, why? and if it’s so, why don’t organisations do something about it?).

She raised the concern that the talented women in the security sector may leave, if they aren’t given opportunities. Monica Kimeu said that her background was in communications, and she found herself in security through business development; cyber security, too, is a lucrative area for women. The male gate-keepers in the sector, she said, need to be conscious that women are capable and ‘have what it takes’.

Earlier, the webinar heard that while outright sexism and online abuse is still around – such as experienced by Sue Fish when she has spoken on radio and TV – it’s also more subtle, including verbal put-downs, and the assumptions of ‘unconscious bias’, such as expecting that the (sole) woman in the room for a business meeting will be the one to take the notes.

Early in 2020 Perpetuity brought out a research report on the experience of women in security, good and bad.

More in the June 2021 print edition of Professional Security magazine. The next webinar is tomorrow at the usual time of 3.30pm, on ‘security and the supply chain: is full resilience restored?’; while next Tuesday’s is on security accreditations, and asks: do they serve security professionals well? You can freely register to attend at the OSPAs website; and listen to the past 100-plus webinars that stretch back to March 2020.

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