The Women's Organisation announces new raft of events to “economically empower women”

Liverpool based training and skills provider, The Women’s Organisation, has unveiled a new programme of seminars and events for June.

Being delivered both online, and at The Women’s Organisation’s headquarters at 54 St James Street just outside the city centre, the events will cover a range of topics and among the highlights of the programme is a course on “unconscious bias’’.

The Women’s Organisation is the largest developer and deliverer of training and support for women in the UK. It delivers a range of courses and programmes designed to “economically empower” women, from entry or re-entry into the workplace and career development, to starting and scaling a business, and personal development.

It has supported more than 70,000 women and helped to create in excess of 4,000 businesses since it was established in 1996.

Taking place over three weeks, the accredited unconscious bias course will “show how our underlying biases shape our perspective of the world and asks us to consider how we can challenge those biases in our everyday interactions with other people”.

Unconscious bias was raised by the Mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson, when she spoke at the Liverpool Against Racism conference last month. The organisation said she “made history” when she became the country’s first black female elected mayor in 2021.

Mayor Anderson spoke about how some people had responded negatively to her elevation. She said: “People are really angry that I have had the audacity to say I’ll do the job. It’s unconscious bias on their part. I can see it on their faces.”

Training lead at The Women’s Organisation, Victoria Hart, added: “Unconscious bias is simply a process whereby our brain automatically makes quick assessments of people, influenced by our own background or personal circumstances, and persisting cultural and societal stereotypes.

“And unconscious bias does affect everyone in one way or another. It is, in many ways, a natural process that occurs in our subconscious. To tackle it we must first acknowledge it and that’s what our training is designed to help do.”