With a background in leadership and a history of EDI advocacy, Lucy Malarkey was an obvious choice for the role of WISH’s (Women In Social Housing) new managing director. Housing Digital’s Liam Turner caught up her to find out what she has planned for the network
How did this role come about for you?
I took the opportunity that redundancy offered me in 2020 to set up a company called Positive About Inclusion. My passion always was ED&I [equality, diversity, and inclusion]. So I set that up – it’s going brilliantly – with somebody who was made redundant at the same time as me. And then it was a connection in the north-east who said, Helen’s [Greig, previous managing director] leaving, it’s only one day a week, do it as well, you’d be great at it. So, I applied and got the job.
What do you have planned for WISH?
Authenticity is really important for an organisation, inclusion is really important, allyship, and measuring impact as well, as part of that membership offer. So, those are my immediate priorities.
It’s interesting what happens at the point of getting appointed. On LinkedIn it gets out, and there are lots of lovely messages, all congratulatory. But there was one, and it wasn’t unpleasant, but it was different from the rest. It was from a man who said, for a women’s network promoting inequality, isn’t that a juxtaposition? Because actually it’s all about exclusion rather than inclusion.
It’s an interesting one – and it’s one I have heard said before – but as I explained to that person, it’s not about exclusivity at all. In a world where women are still disenfranchised, where we still have so many gender-based bias and experiences that we need to deal with, it is really important to create a safe space, to have that opportunity for women to be able to come together to connect so that leave networking events, a WISH event, and feel rejuvenated, reenergised, and able to bring back to the workplace their whole self.
How are you looking to grow the WISH membership?
At the moment, there are nine regions in which WISH operate [London, Midlands, South West, North Wales, North East, Yorkshire & Humberside, North West, South East, East], and we’re launching in Scotland imminently. The call has gone out for people interested in the board positions particularly. Once we’ve recruited a chair or a vice-chair or a co-chair, they’ll be involved in the recruitment for the rest of the board members.
“In a world where women are still disenfranchised, it is really important to create a safe space, to have that opportunity to come together to connect”
In each of those regions – we do for the areas that have already got them and we will do in Scotland – we have a board made up of up to 12 people. In some areas, they’ll also have ambassadors, or friends-of, who link into the board – because it’s all volunteers. And they put on a regional event, some of which we can host nationally through the online capacity that we’ve all got now, which is phenomenal.
In each region, it’s hard to give you an exact number because memberships are at different levels. We have individual members, and then we have corporate members and corporate plus memberships. So people have arranged different memberships, and that entitles organisations on that corporate level to send different numbers of women or open up the opportunity for different numbers of women to come to different events. I’m very keen to make that more inclusive, particularly with the online offer.
When will you be launching your Scottish branch?
We’re going to take it slowly and get it right rather than rush it. So, we put the call out for people who are interested, and we put a closing date to be 8 March, International Women’s Day – just seemed appropriate.
Scotland is going to be really interesting because it’s going to be different than other regions…The further north you go, so in the north-east region, it’s more public sector. I think when we go in Scotland, there will be a higher percentage again of social housing and public sector. And the thing about Scotland of course, in terms of membership, is you’ve you a lot of small housing associations there, rather than your big ones that you’ve got down here.
The geography in Scotland in terms of hosting face-to-face events is going to be a challenge for the board. So it might be that, for Scotland, online is a much more preferable option, or they rotate different events in different parts of the country.
What is the demand like in Scotland for WISH membership? Are people eager to join?
Definitely. I was actually asked at an event…well, I was actually asked about personal pronouns, but that was with the other hat on, really. But I used the opportunity that presented itself, and there were an awful lot of nods from females in the audience who knew about it already, were looking forward to having something.
Talking to people who do volunteer on boards in the rest of the regions, it’s with such passion and enthusiasm…I was talking this morning to the chair of the south-west, and she was saying, we love it. We love this group of us coming together, planning to hold things, we have a good laugh. And it’s got to be like that because they’re volunteering their time and they’re all busy people – everybody, us.
How will Positive About Inclusion – the diversity and inclusion consultancy you co-founded – feed into your work with WISH, and visa-versa?
I think what I can bring from my Positive About Inclusion hat to my WISH role is that bit about embedding ED&I a bit more. So, for example, as an organisation, we haven’t done diversity monitoring, data monitoring… We asked as part of a marketing survey in the run-up to Christmas a range of questions. We did ask some diversity questions, not the full suite, but some.
Everybody went, oh my goodness, there’s a shock here in terms of the percentage of white people who are responding. Should we be shocked by that? There’s all sorts of caveats about how the data was collected, and the survey, and how it was sent out and everything. But the cries from the board was, right, we need to do something about that.
And absolutely we do, but it’s got to be authentic and not tokenistic. So that means taking WISH back to the first-base position, which is to actually say we’re bothered about this. We have to do our own monitoring.
Do you think the impact of the pandemic on equality is still being felt?
In terms of gender equality, it’s a really interesting one. There’s a real mix of views on this, from people who have the view that actually the pandemic has been terrible in terms of gender equality and visibility in the workplace, the predominant caring responsibilities that are still taken on by mostly women.
But the other side of the coin is saying, no, it’s been great, because it has enabled that flexible working that enables me to do that school run. And actually, I’m visibly doing the school run and the home-schooling; and actually, being able to show my whole self at while I’m at work in Zoom meetings is really important, and I’m much better for that.
So, it really is horses for courses when it comes to people’s experiences. Personally, I would say – and I am a glass-overflowing rather than a half-full – the pandemic, as awful as it has been, has had benefits, and that perhaps is one of them.
Is the housing sector a welcoming and supportive environment for women?
Generally in our sector, with roots steeped in social justice, there isn’t a housing organisation whose values I’ve seen that doesn’t have a people-centric elements to it. Just looking at the values that housing associations hold. Not all of them are brilliant about authentically living them, despite what they say, but as a sector, we are an inclusive, or we try to be inclusive. While there is a long way to go, gender equality has come a long way.
“What women want is the same as what everybody wants”
There’s some really interesting research that Data Clan are going to undertake soon, particularly around gender. Looking at workplaces, and trying to get to the bottom of why it is that women might be around that board or executive team level. What’s the correlation? Is it the values of the organisation that’s meant women have joined? Is it the values of the organisation that women have promoted?
What can the wider sector do to promote ED&I?
In the north-east, for example, the north-east WISH branch did a wishlist…So, what would women want? What’s on their Wishlist in terms of workplaces and feeling included. And everything that was on that, none of it was rocket science. It was all things that everybody would want in the workplace, so being trusted, wanting flexibility, feeling empowered, being heard, being understood, feeling included. Everything that I would say everybody wants.
That sense of belonging in a workplace, that’s no different. For organisations to do that, there were practical, tangible steps about looking at the representation that you have. But there’s also things about engaging in conversations, whether it’s conversations about things like the menopause or thinking about the impact of longer-term absences from the workplace.
I’m not even being gender specific there, but whether it’s maternity leave or some long-term absence because of illness or some other reason, how do you support people when they come back to the workplace after that?
I think there’s definitely more active mentoring that workplaces could do. And I don’t mean just women mentoring women at all. Because again I think that allyship and that value of working together and understanding positions, that there’s value in not making that gender specific. What women want is the same as what everybody wants.
What’s the number one thing you would like to have achieved by the time you move on from WISH?
If you asked me that about Positive About Inclusion…it would be to not need to exist. My job there is all about workplace inclusivity and helping organisation to realise that. So if I didn’t need to exist then workplaces would be inclusive, people would feel that sense of belonging, it would be a job well done.
For WISH, I suppose there’s an element of that, that we wouldn’t need to have that networking. So maybe that is the answer. Maybe the answer is that there isn’t a need for that networking, but there is still a desire and a recognition that women network differently from men. There’s value in coming together, to share, to connect.
Image: Lucy Malarkey, CEO, WISH
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