This is my friend, Gill, who is South African born, and emigrated to Australia with her husband and 2 small children 21 years ago. She has held many executive roles in both S Africa and Australia. When she left her successful executive career in S Africa, she had to start all over and rebuild her career in Australia.
This is story #4 in an 8 part series for International Women's Day I'm writing, featuring powerful stories of women who have broken the bias.
What is fascinating about Gill is she says that she has “experienced discrimination, sexual harassment and misogyny in all it’s awful forms, to the extent that it was my ‘normal’ for 20 years. But I am older now, wiser and so much stronger and I believe that all those experiences have equipped me in how I engage with the world today.”
And now, 21 years later, she is the CEO of Parents Beyond Breakup – a company whose clients they support are primarily male and also whose staff that provide support are primarily male.
Parents Beyond Breakup is an organisation which exists to prevent parents from committing suicide because they are suffering from separation from their children and partners, one of the highest contributing factors to Australian suicides.
Gill has witnessed racism, violence against women and misogyny throughout her career. When she left her home country, HIV was out of control, rape, torture and murder was common. They had electric fences outside, and metal gates inside the house separating the bedrooms that would block people from accessing their home. And every day on the news, people would break in through the roof, kill the dog and rape the women. Even her sister and brother-in-law were held up at gunpoint.
She and her husband emigrated to Australia to find safety for their two children – they wanted their kids to have a good education and to live a different life, a safer life.
After the first month in Sydney, she applied for 98 jobs – no response. Gill was told “You’re too direct. You’re too South African. You need to tone down how you engage. Don’t think your previous experience and success means anything here.” Her confidence was taken aback. Gill says, “After 6 months in Australia I was emotionally bankrupt.”
Finally, someone offered her and her husband a job in the Mona Vale Hospital kitchen. They were desperate because their savings were running out, so she took the morning shift and her husband took the night shift. “I remember after my first shift in the hospital pushing enormous food trollies to all the wards. I will never forget when my supervisor had me on my knees cleaning the floors in the hospital staff lunchroom during lunch hour – to ‘put me in my place’ as all the hospital staff queued for their meals around me.”
Gill was horrified when her 8 and 9-year old children came home from their first day of school, and relayed that their teacher introduced them to the class and explained that they were racists and had slaves where they came from. The kids were asked, “How can you be South African when you’re not black?”
As her AUS career progressed, she landed a permanent role in transport, which dealt with government ministers, so every Friday Gill was sat down by her immediate boss to practice how NOT to sound so South African, how to ‘speak Aussie’.
The week she started this job, her brother committed suicide in South Africa, a devastating and lifelong trauma, one she still finds difficult to talk about.
At one later employer, a very powerful senior executive sexually harassed her repeatedly to the extent that eventually he tried to get into her hotel room, and then sent harassing texts. While traumatised, she notified her immediate boss and shared the texts, so they offered a settlement to exit the company, or a safety net if she preferred to stay.
She chose the protection of the company who implemented a new policy that an HR person would accompany her back to her hotel from every evening work function. She was never required to be alone with him again.
Many years later Gill has overcome these experiences to achieve several senior leadership roles.
Gill says, “I don’t get upset any longer when people question my gender when I am in a senior role – it is the expected reaction and one which I would love to change. I know my gender has nothing to do with my ability to be the best person for the role. I do know that it might take a while for others to recognise that.”
Gill states, “A bias I’d like break is to recognise that I can be a strong advocate for male suicide prevention, the best one as I loved my brother more than anyone. I want to break the bias against the blanket view that all men are bad – they are NOT, very few are – most deserve our support.”
“My passion now is to bring all my life experience – of my work experience, my family life with the loss of my brother to suicide, to a place where I can break the bias in helping prevent suicide – women CAN advocate to protect vulnerable men in saving their lives.”
Why wouldn’t we? This is our mission at Parents Beyond Breakup.
Thank you Gill for helping others to #BreakTheBias and for paving the way forward to save more lives. x
