I had a training day the other week with one of the major audio visual distributors in Australia. Since I have known this company (about 17 years), I have never known them to have a female on staff.  This is very common with most of our suppliers, I can only remember having a couple of female reps over the years.

It made me think of my own working life and how I have always been working in male dominated workplaces – from my time in the army to working in the audio visual industry, and it never really bothered me.  I always pulled my weight and asked for help if I needed it, I never pushed to do something just because I am a woman.

But it is amazing how you still get people assuming that you may not know what you are talking about because you are a woman – like being put through a phone call from a client who wanted to speak to someone about technical issues to do with a projector. When I take the call they say, oh I wanted to speak to someone technical – I politely tell them that I have worked with projectors for over 17 years and I go on to help them with their issue – and they seem pleasantly surprised that I could help them out.  There are too many other examples of this to address in this blog – and it doesn’t bother me, I actually get a kick out of it.

This brings me to a networking breakfast that I attended this week organised by a women’s networking group called “Business Chicks”  (chicks is an unfortunate name to be associated with business women – but it seemed to work). This was an event attended by over 400 people, and with approximately 90 percent were women, the guys would have been in their element. The guest speaker was Terri Irwin who runs Australia Zoo that was started by her late husband Steve “Crikey” Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter). If you don’t remember Steve & Terri make sure to check out YouTube for a refresher.

Terri is a great business woman and speaker with an amazing story to tell, she started by stating some facts about the percentages of women in different organisations and the lack of female representation on boards and in government and so on. Then she stated quite simply “whose fault is that.”

I am proud to say that our work place is 66 percent women and our only male definitely knows what it is like to work in a female dominated workplace (we help him to get in touch with his feminine side). So I suppose what I am saying is that as a woman, if you want something bad enough just go out and get it; if you want that raise, put your justification together and ask, for it there is nothing to hold you back. And to the men out there, do not assume that a woman will not know what she is talking about; open your mind and give her a chance.

To quote Terri Irwin, “Men and women are just naturally different,” and we should always remember that and embrace it.