Do we need gender training in the workplace? I think so. When I started work in 1969 the workplace was very male dominated. Women were employed almost exclusively in support roles. The only female managers were in HR - I worked in the insurance industry and there were a few women with maths degrees specialising in actuarial work.

In the main women were low-level clerical staff, secretaries or typists. By the eighties things were improving, but as a senior manager myself, I lost a battle to have a female tax barrister promoted to manager because "She was young and likely to get married." Has this changed today - I think those ingrained attitudes that assume men are better at managing than women and that hierarchical structures are the only way to organise a business still exist?

But now it is hidden or even unconscious. As a trans woman I still experience hidden prejudice and unconscious bias. The workplace is still structured the way men like to work and there is an assumption that because that is the way it has always been; it is the right way. Men and women work in different ways, and failure to recognise that means that the workplace is not fair.

I deliver a variety of different gender based presentation and workshops to hope organisations to create a fair and more inclusive environment that gets the best out of everyone, whatever their gender. So today I am going to talk about the key issues that workplace training needs to address to create a more effective and balanced environment where everyone can grow to be the best that can be.