Women in Climate (WiC) network

    • Women in Climate (WiC) network

    Being a good ally

    Posted by Penny Maher

    13 October 2020

    Being a good ally: How to be proactive and use your privilege for good

    Blog by Freya Garry and Penny Maher

    Image by Daniel Quasar

     

    We were joined by Met Office BAME network founder Misha Khan (she/her, Twitter @SuperMish651), the founder of the LGBT+ PRISM-Exeter network Claire Davies (she/her, Twitter @Tuffers_c), and our Met Office Sponsor and Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre Professor Albert Klein Tank (he/his). We had excellent attendance, with 74 participants joining us for the meeting.

    Being a good ally requires taking the time to self-educate about discrimination in society and understanding your own privilege. However, it’s also important to create spaces where we can discuss how best we can help work towards a fairer society in an empathetic and productive way.

    Our panellists started with a few points each before opening the discussion to include everyone. Our network lead Freya Garry chaired the meeting and opened the panel.

    • To be a good ally is to take on the struggles as though they are your own, while taking care to not assume you fully understand their struggles. Never devalue someone’s experiences.
    • Stand up when you feel scared. It will motivate others too.
    • Share your platform and acknowledge your privilege.
    • If you make a mistake, acknowledge it calmly (don’t get defensive), apologise (don’t over-do it and risk making it about you instead) and learn from it. We all make mistakes. But we can learn from it and try to do better next time.
    • Take responsibility for your own education of allyship.

    Misha Khan then built on this with the following points:

    • Self-reflection is important to identify where you can learn. Knowing where to start can be complicated – break it down into smaller chunks.
      • What are my unconscious biases?
      • Knowing these, how can I do better? Branch out; for example, you can follow more diverse people on social media and learn more about other perspectives.
      • Be accountable and get educated (maybe focus on one event in time this month).

    Claire Davies then added to the discussion with:

    • The importance of introducing your pronouns as an ally and using them in emails – this normalises the practise. We encourage our network sponsor to join us in this!
    • Be explicit in your actions and your language:
      • It takes constant effort to overcome stereotyping and our inherent biases
      • Understand your biases and learn how to identify when your perspective is being shaped by them.
      • Use gender neutral language
      • Allow space for people to introduce themselves and their partner/partners
      • Call out bad behaviour
      • Get a rainbow lanyard to show your support.
      • Come along to events such as this and those held by other networks such as the PRISM Exeter network.

    We then invited our network sponsor, Albert Klein-Tank, to say a few words:

    • Different perspectives make better decisions.
    • We need allyship to feel valued, creative, safe and welcome in the workplace and in our community.
    • Amplify ideas and voices of others. Good ideas often come up in general conversations as well as formal discussions, so make time for these.

    Some examples of effective allyship that were raised in the meeting were:

    • The magic of simply asking: How can I help?
    • It is hard to keep educating and directing others on how to be a good ally. Step in and help us. This takes some of the pressure off and share the responsibility.
    • Understand different cultures and how stereotyping in different cultures works.
    • Turning down opportunities to speak on panels or talk at conferences if the diversity is low. Offer suggestions to replace you that will provide more diversity. If you would like to participate, but see a diversity problem, politely email the organisers and ask if they have considered inviting a more diverse group of people.
    • Introduce yourself with your pronouns to help normalise the practise, which helps trans folks feel that they are not outing themselves just by revealing their pronouns.
    • Correct people if they make mistakes or say something you believe is incorrect. This is always a challenge but think of this skill as a work in progress. If you receive the correction, acknowledge it, apologise and learn from it.
    • There are ways to be an ally which are more active, and some more passive, but there are also ways to intervene subtly when you feel someone may be a risk or need comfort or assistance. Seize opportunities for bystander intervention training.
    • Learn about microaggressions, how to respond to them, call them out and how to report them if appropriate.
    • Understand your privilege: education, wealth, experiences, gender, sexuality, age, race, religion, nationality, disability, and body type.
    • Make your environment as inclusive as possible in order to be more diverse and recruit more diverse people.

    Other points raised in the meeting included:

    • Do not feel burdened into saying yes. Instead, celebrate saying no! There are lots of opportunities to talk as a minority (many people working in diversity or who are visually members of minority groups get pigeonholed as ‘go to’ people) so you need to say no to opportunities and, if you like, provide suggestions on who they could extend the invitation to.
    • Reach out to networks such as Women in Climate if you want to diversify your speaker list for local events as we can offer the opportunities on to our network.
    • At the University, find out who the Speak Out Guardians, and at the Met Office there are the Dignity and Respect at Work team. Call on them if you need them – they are there because they want to help you.
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