Rebecca De Cicco is the global Chair of Women in BIM, an industry non-profit organisation spanning continents and regions to enable a greater representation of women in the digital built environment.

She also represents Aurecon as the Principal of Digital Enablement, supporting clients and partners in developing digital solutions.  

This article will touch on Rebecca’s view on International Women’s Day (IWD) around gender diversity, unconscious bias and the importance of awareness and knowledge in this space across the digital built environment.  

The United Nations theme for International Women’s Day this year is to ‘Count her in: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress.’ This theme resonates strongly with me for many different reasons in my own career which I will discuss in this article.  

Based on the priority for the UN on the Status of Women, the ‘Count her in’ theme aims to examine the pathways to greater economic inclusion for women and girls everywhere. As a strong advocate for diversity this couldn’t resonate more with me, and I feel that we still have such a long way to go.  

Inclusion and greater economic diversity in industries will not only be enforced if we acknowledge the differences in how men and women perceive the world. But also, in how we work and function differently in a world built for men.  

This article will give those people, some of whom believe, ‘what’s the problem?’, a quite insightful gathering of statistics as to why IWD is so important, but also as to the reasoning why groups like Women in BIM, NAWIC, etc are here to support women in their journey toward leadership. 

Something that has recently been on my mind is how we perceive women in the workplace and how women are generally expected to work, function and operate like men.  

To do this is ridiculous. We are different genders with different skills, opportunities and commitments. If you take for example the impact of motherhood on a woman, how is there no appreciation that we change, evolve and need support in the juggle we often feel when working full time.  

This is why for me, working in the Construction industry, and specifically around digital, was a great opportunity to be able to find the balance I so often desired.  

The issue around gender inequality isn’t just the low numbers of women, the gender pay gap, or the United Nations attempt to convince and support the member nations in developing tactics around higher representation of women in leadership.   

The underlying problem is around unconscious bias. What is unconscious bias, you may ask? Surely if I am a person of intelligence or someone who agrees with inequality being an issue, I don’t do this? 

I am afraid, the need for our brain to be efficient and to expediate decisions is a biological issue. This biological problem defers to the biases that exist. For example, we relate to anything that is similar, safe, more easily understood and trusting. Such as the same sex and background that we have. Unfortunately for the women reading this, we don’t really have a chance at change, unless we focus on the underlying issue of how we develop knowledge and insight to young men and boys.  

When we look at the data, its intrusting due to these biases that women feel they must work harder to gain recognition. In some ways, there is no accommodation or understanding in the workplace around this. We are not the victims; we simply work differently.  

For women to feel that they must put in the extra effort due to these unconscious biases that exist is, in my view, not acceptable. We do have other commitments in life and can’t give our lives to our work.  

I guess for me, the example is that I have a five-year-old son. I didn’t know he had a disability until two years ago, and my life changed at that point. It’s not fair to assume we all have the ability to give everything we have to our work. It’s not realistic.  

I think we forget, and many young people aren’t educated, particularly in schools around the unconscious biases that exist. If we look further at ethnic diversity, indigenous presence, neurodiversity and gender more broadly there is an enormous issue around unconscious bias. Although some believe they’re tackling at a strategic level in business, when you trawl down to the mid tiers, its generally just not there.  

On International Women’s Day this year, I wanted to draw attention to this and encourage you to discuss these types of things with your colleagues. Especially those that say ‘oh what’s the problem?’ or ‘I only hire people on their skill not gender!’  

Let them know that it’s not just about the gender divide in the workplace, but about educating our children on what’s right and what is wrong. We need to be pushing toward a change in unconscious bias as early as we can to support not only the gender divide, but issues like racial conflict, war, and even neurodiversity.