Member Article

International Women’s Day - Three Steps Women Can Take to Reduce the Gender Bias they have on Themselves

A women’s assertiveness coach, best-selling author and mum of three teenage daughters is celebrating making her contribution to International Women’s Day and the #breakingthebias conversation, as she is set to release a brand new app - ‘Woman Up’ - describing the app as “everything you need to live the happy, fulfilling and successful life you deserve”, Jodie Salt, 42 from Frodsham, Cheshire, has packaged her years of knowledge, learning and vast resources which she has used to support thousands of women globally to date, into something that anyone can access any time, from anywhere, in a bid to further increase the impact she can make on her mission to empower more women to step into their strengths and to readdress the gender imbalances that can come from women not feeling empowered enough, confident enough, or assertive enough to fight against gender inequality when it arises.

Jodie believes that often, “women are their own worst enemy when it comes to gender bias and so the app has been created in a bid to tackle this too, to ensure women are not further fueling gender stereotypes due to their own lack of self-worth.”

According to Mary Ann Sieghart, from the BBC Radio 4 programme, Analysis, research from Harvard through their Implicit Association Test shows that 80% of women and 75% of men show some bias and Jodie herself, even as an active feminist, banging the drum daily about equality for women showed up plenty of gender bias towards women in this test. She said of these findings: “Showing that even I have gender bias doesn’t make me a bad person, but it does raise my self-awareness of some of the beliefs that have been imprinted in my brain - now I’m aware of these I can act, and that can only be a good thing.”

Jodie’s Woman Up app will include a huge library of video modules, masterclasses, downloads, workbooks and much more, covering everything from confidence to personal style, sleep to managing your money, hormones to accelerating your career, relationships and sex to wellness and physical and mental health.

With a 15-year corporate background in leadership development, a whole host of personal experiences and mum to 3 teenage girls, Jodie who is co-founder of Womanifest ™, became an expert in assertiveness for women 7 years ago after choosing to leave the corporate rat race and become an entrepreneur. She has since built her methodology, The Woman Up Way - a 7 step framework to empower and liberate women to life the happy, fulfilling and successful life they all deserve.

Here are Jodie’s Three Steps Women Can Take to Reduce the Gender Bias they have on Themselves…

Become aware of the fact that you have these biases. Take the Implicit Association Test online. “I was mortified at first, but I quickly realised that this is all unconscious and it’s steeped in centuries of culture that came before me. It is not my fault, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got a role to play. Once you can spot these biases in yourself, you can then start to catch yourself doing it and correct your behaviour to be more objective. Don’t walk past it either. Learn to be assertive (it’s a skill so anyone can learn it) in calling it out.”

Step into your power. “What I mean by this is, it doesn’t have to be lose-lose e.g. you’re damned if you appear too feminine and you’re damned if you appear too masculine. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Decide who you are, what you’re about and what you want. Set some boundaries and uphold them. Develop your skills to have the credibility and influence that you’d like. Be a strong leader of yourself. Part of stepping into your power involves letting go. Relinquish the obsession with doing everything yourself and share the emotional and mental load of the family.”

Connect with other flippin’ awesome women – “Our brains will continue to create heuristics through associations so make them count! Engage more with those we are biased about to flip some of the beliefs we hold. Our brains are wired with another bias, confirmation bias, where we like to prove ourselves right, even when it means were self-sabotaging. So, choosing to believe that women are capable, smart, intelligent, strong, assertive, influential, credible, financially astute (the list could go on), means that we will begin to seek the evidence to confirm it… and believe me, we’ll find it!”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chocolate PR .