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Terrie Alafat CBEWe must all play a part in supporting women and pushing diversity
International Women’s Day is a reminder that we still have work to do to support women in our organisations and our communities, says Terrie Alafat
What better opportunity than International Women’s Day to reflect on the crucial role of women in housing.
The Chartered Institute of Housing, and indeed modern social housing, owes its beginnings to that formidable woman, Octavia Hill.
After her death the women who worked with her took her vision of housing for those who needed it the most and established the Association of Women Housing Managers in 1916.
“It matters that we remember that the roots of our profession lay with pioneering women.”
This was the first ever professional body for housing workers and would grow to become the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH).
It matters that we remember that the roots of our profession lay with these pioneering women and interesting to note that Octavia died in 1912 – six years before some women were finally allowed to vote.
Fast forward more than a century and gender equality has, thankfully, improved somewhat. I am proud to be one of many women to occupy a senior position in the sector.
In the latest Gender Inequality Index it was revealed just a quarter of board chairs, presidents and chief executives across all professions in the UK are women. Our sector fares rather better than this, with a recent survey by Inside Housing showing that 39% of executive and 36% of board members are women. But this is no reason for complacency – there is still a long way to go.
Driving change can make a big difference and in 2014 our president Steve Stride led our presidential commission on leadership and diversity which examined what could be done.
It called on housing organisations to commit to completing 10 challenges by 2020, central to which was a commitment to ensure a more diverse workforce.
Part of the work of the commission was to develop a charter with eight core principles professionals must commit to in order to sign up.
Four of these are about equality and diversity within an organisation – driving it from the top, incorporating it into business plans, making sure it shapes the culture of an organisation and supporting staff through equality and diversity initiatives and training. This is crucial.
But supporting women in housing and pushing diversity in general is not just about housing professionals, it is about the role that housing can play to promote equality and diversity in our communities and improve gender balance across the board.
The other half of our charter therefore centres on working with customers and tenants and encourages professionals to know their customers, work to ensure their involved tenants are diverse, that they work with partners in the community to promote diversity and support communities directly to tackle inequality.
Many of our members work at organisations which run their own extremely valuable projects to tackle inequality – from mentoring and apprenticeship schemes to training programmes, and we need to keep challenging ourselves to do more of this work.
On days like today it is important that we remember Octavia Hill. Not only because her vision still resonates, but because she, and the other women who were the frontrunners for CIH were central to the housing sector we have today.
They were among the first people to fully understand that housing is fundamentally about people.
And they believed passionately that providing homes for people that needed them the most was the right thing to do. Octavia’s mission to make “lives noble, homes happy and family life good” is one to which we can all still subscribe.
International Women’s Day falls in the middle of CIH Careers Week and it’s worth mentioning that Octavia isn’t just a fine example of a woman who made an outstanding contribution to housing but of a mentor, too.
“We can all learn from the successful and inspirational women working in senior positions in housing.”
Elly Hoult, who chairs our brilliant Futures group, wrote a great piece this week on the power of mentoring.
It was the women that Octavia Hill mentored that went on to form housing’s professional body.
We can all learn from the successful and inspirational women working in senior positions in housing and I’m proud that our mentoring scheme helps this to happen.
I’m also delighted to announce today that we are partnering with Inside Housing on the Women in Housing awards which are a crucial showcase of the great work women in housing do.
There is no doubt that the housing sector, along with many others, still has work to do to ensure a better gender balance and enhance equality and diversity across the board. We must all play our part.
Terrie Alafat, chief executive, Chartered Institute of Housing.
Inclusive Futures
Inside Housing’s Inclusive Futures campaign aims to promote and celebrate diversity and inclusion.
We are pledging to publish diversity audits of our own coverage.
We are also committed to proactively promoting positive role models.
We will do this through the pages of Inside Housing. But we will also seek to support other publications and events organisations to be more inclusive.
Our Inclusive Futures Bureau will provide a database of speakers and commentators from all backgrounds, for use by all media organisations.
We are also challenging readers to take five clear steps to promote diversity, informed by the Chartered Institute of Housing’s diversity commission and the Leadership 2025 project.
INSIDE HOUSING’S PLEDGES
We will take proactive steps to promote positive role models from under-represented groups and provide information to support change.
We pledge to:
Publish diversity audits: We will audit the diversity of the commentators we feature. We will formalise this process and publish the results for future audits twice a year.
Promote role models: We will work to highlight leading lights from specific under-represented groups, starting in early 2018 with our new BME Leaders List.
Launch Inclusive Futures Bureau: We will work with the sector to compile a database of speakers, commentators and experts from under-represented groups. The bureau will be available to events organisers, media outlets and publications to support them to better represent the talent in the sector.
Take forward the Women in Housing Awards: Inside Housing has taken on these successful awards and will work to grow and develop them.
Convene Inclusive Futures Summit: Our new high-level event will support organisations to develop and implement strategies to become more diverse and inclusive.
THE INCLUSIVE FUTURES CHALLENGE
Inside Housing calls on organisations to sign up to an inclusive future by taking five steps:
Prioritise diversity and inclusion at the top: commitment and persistence from chief executives, directors and chairs in setting goals and monitoring progress.
Collect data on the diversity of your board, leadership and total workforce and publish annually with your annual report. Consider gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, age, and representation of tenants on the board.
Set aspirational targets for recruitment to the executive team, board and committees from under-represented groups.
Challenge recruiting staff and agencies to ensure that all shortlists include candidates from under-represented groups.
Make diversity and inclusion a core theme in your talent management strategy to ensure you support people from under-represented groups to progress their careers.
