Laugh | Launder | Lever
By the time I joined my BCD Executive Group, I had spent half my adult life in prison…
My formative years were spent in the 1970’s in the UK. Margaret Thatcher was the most powerful woman in the world. Television was reserved for the rich and the internet was merely a concept in Kahn’s ring-bound notebook. The radio stood proudly as my source of truth.
As a tween, I would ponder:
“how could it be that the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister, face such public abuse?”
Even her supposed friend, on the same side, said:
“My God the bitch has won”.
The last thing I aspired to be was a woman in charge. The normalisation of being treated unequally because I was a girl had begun.
Fast forward a couple of years and with no positions of power held by women in my world - who didn’t get bullied - I did what so many of those my age in the 80’s did.
I had a baby.
This seemed like the obvious choice for me, jaded by a 70’s world of female inequity.
From this point my life negatively spiralled. I was proud to be living up to the low expectation’s society had of me.
I was overjoyed when I landed a job cleaning bathroom’s in a factory. The next wave of my conditioning had commenced. As the men came in and out of the urinal area, I waited patiently whilst they continued on without any acknowledgement of the teen in yellow gloves standing next to them armed with a laundry bag of bleach blocks. At the tender age of 16, I did not bat an eyelid. I was already immune to the disregard of women in the workplace.
Throughout the next character building decade, I could not have imagined acquiring skills needed to survive my first proper job.
It would have been an insignificant day had it not been for the newspaper boy putting a copy of the Daily Mail through my letterbox in error, magnified by my folks telling me to grow up and get a real job.
Faced with the options of applying to be a Virgin Atlantic Air Hostess or trying for a job working in Government, I contemplated the options of high-heels and glamour vs an A-line skirt and flat black lace up shoes.
While Virgin appealed more to my ego, I opted for $2k a year more. Age 26, I applied to become a Prison Officer.
My interview was with a rotund man who commanded attention when he spoke. I imagined he would bang the table if he did not get his own way.
Like most things in my 20’s, I did not take it too seriously, and you could probably argue I was a little ditzy in my responses.
Bob – aka table banger - laughed a lot through my interview which I took in the negative, and as I left the room with my shoulders dropped, he called me back.
“Claire, you’ve got the job on one condition… you never stop laughing. This job will get to you and laughter is key to your survival”.
Bob laundered my view on my value in that split second and levered me from one parallel to another with his sponsorship.
It is fair to say my first year in the job was grim. I was personal officer to Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, which was a shock to the system. I was keen to get out of segregation and get some air and I made the decision to move to a work function with no women.
Sometimes one should be careful what one wishes for and on relocation to a unit with over 200 men locked up for 23 hours a day plus 21 male staff - things got interesting.
At my first 06:30 prisoner in bed count the prisoners had conspired to get their willies out. I was the only staff member on the unit at that time and there were limited options available to me to deal with the matters at hand – no pun intended.
I could issue a report card – a process where you issue a notice for the prisoner to meet with the Governor to be disciplined. I figured this would show weakness. By getting a man to punish them I would forever be the girl who couldn’t handle herself.
As I walked the unit completing the one-eye-shut task of counting, I concluded I would have to beat them at their own game.
I walked to the centre office and tapped the unit tannoy a couple of times:
“Attention, Attention, I have noted those of you who need a magnifying glass and the purchase order has been raised.”
The unit rattled with scores of metal doors banging.
During a nail biting breakfast, the unlocked men walked past me with an acknowledgement of respect – winks, high-fives and smiles. I had become one of them in a strange primal way.
The 21 male staff also found it bemusing having a woman working on the unit. From insisting on using the female toilet for their morning poo and not flushing it, to restraining me into the strip cell and locking me up for the day.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I was female, or because I gave as good as I got, but I laughed it off as I wanted to fit in.
The lunch break in the staff mess offered no sanctuary and would often result in the old yawn, arm down back, over shoulder and boob grope. Again, I would meet this with a jovial:
“Remove your hand or I’ll break it”
response, which had them immediately remove it to fits of laughter from their colleagues.
My baptism of fire motivated a meteoric rise in my career, which led to me becoming a Prison Governor at 30, and on to head-up operations for London’s prisons including counter-terrorism – which was around 9,000 staff and 33,000 offenders. It’s in roles like this that laughter became my best friend.
I cannot put into this blog some of the nicknames I acquired over the years and I wish I could say the source was prisoners – I cannot.
I recall one of my senior staff seeking permission from me to use force on a teenage woman in another prison who was refusing to come out of her cell.
I informed him he would have to use the best tool available to him – his voice - and talk this young lady down. Horrified, he fled my office and slammed my door.
A few hours later he returned to say he had talked her out but that he was not happy with my failure to approve the use of force. I sat bewildered that a man would feel the need to use force against a woman, even if authorised when he did not have to.
It was not his fault. This behaviour was learned from those who had taught him. His temper flared and he ripped off his epaulettes and threw them on the floor whilst saying:
“you can shove your job up your arse.”
Fast forward 24 hours and a knock on my office door, and in walks the same angry man with his hand reached out:
“Hi my name is Joe Bloggs, can we start again”.
I was delighted to put launder into action and work with him to wash his learned behaviours.
So, where are we with gender equality in Australia in the 21st Century?… Statistics on the Australian Government Workplace Gender Equality Agency show that in Australia, the full time average weekly ordinary earnings for women are 14% less than for men. There are only 17.1% of CEO’s that are women.
An astonishing 34% of Boards and governing bodies have no female Directors; by contrast only 0.9% have no male Directors. Women hold 14.1% of Chair positions and 26.8% of Directorships for Australian companies.
Sadly, there remains much laughing, laundering and levering to do!
Written by Guest Blogger, Claire Parkinson, Director at Opportunity Knocks & BCD Executive Group, Adelaide Member