Women and mental health - Jamila Rizvi

Speaker 1 00:00

Brainwaves. Hear the world differently. Bringing community mental health to you, raising awareness and challenging stigma. Tune in to 3CR Community Radio, Wednesdays at 5pm.

Speaker 2 00:13

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time radio program featuring community organisations, powerful stories and information. Find us at brainwaves .org .au, proudly sponsored by Wellways Australia.

Speaker 3 00:31

Hello and welcome to Brainwaves on 3CR, 855 a.m. on your dial via the app or the online stream. My name is Flic Manning, I'm your host. And today I'm joined by a very special guest who many of you will probably be familiar with from all the different work that she's amazingly put out into the world, whether it's on TV or in papers or wherever else you will have seen this wonderful person around the place before. And we're gonna be talking today about women and mental health and everything in between. 

I'm thoroughly, thoroughly looking forward to introducing Jamila Rizvi to the show today. Now, as you probably know, she is a bestselling author, she's a speaker and a broadcaster.
She also happens to be the deputy managing director of FW or Future Women for those of you who are not aware, a company that champions gender equity in Australian workplaces. So Jamila, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 01:26

Thanks for having me Flick. 

Speaker 3

Absolute pleasure. Now we have plenty to discuss, but I wanted to actually start off with a question that I ask all of my guests because I think it allows for a really big spectrum of discussion. What does the term mental health mean to you?

Speaker 4 01:43

Such a great question to kick off with. I feel like generationally, we've seen a bit of a change in the way that the language has evolved when we're speaking about mental health, mental ill health, mental illness. Since I was a kid, I think certainly when I was a teenager, you'd hear the terms mental health and you associated that with mental ill health. You didn't really think about mental wellness and how we look after our mental health more generally in a preventative way. So for me, I think I'm still probably in the process of starting to evolve that thinking. It's that difference between knowing something theoretically and living it and seeing what comes naturally in your head.

I think for me, still when I hear mental health, I immediately start to think about mental illness rather than thinking about how we maintain our mental health during the good times.

Speaker 3 02:35

That's a fantastic answer and actually quite unique. It's a really interesting answer and I completely agree with you. I think we have a particular association with it. I think we all know how we got the association with it. It's really what's been largely put out in the media and by society and even by the medical system a lot of the time. So it's really lovely as we get a little bit older and maybe we have some lived experience, we can start to reframe that and then hopefully teach other people that there are other ways to look at it as well, that fuller, bigger spectrum of what mental health actually is.

Now jumping subjects just ever so slightly, you were actually a staffer for former Prime Minister Kevin Brutt. I cannot even begin to imagine how mentally taxing and even physically taxing working at that higher level would actually be in politics. What were your takeaways from that time and I guess really what did you learn and how did you manage your mental well -being in such a pressure cooker environment?

Speaker 4 03:32

Yeah. Look, I was pretty young when I was working for Kevin. I was sort of 21, 22, 23. So I don't think I was particularly well aware of how I needed to look after myself at work. I don't think I really thought about my physical or my mental wellbeing at the time. I was, you know, I was an able -bodied person and I was a kid, right? Like I had heaps of energy and pretty good stamina. But even then, I did find it difficult. I found the hours really tough. I worked very early morning starts a lot of the time. A lot of times I started at 3, 45, 4 in the morning. And then you were working really late days. So it wasn't unusual to do 12 or 13 hours in the office or even longer, depending on whether or not parliament was sitting.

And no, I don't think it was particularly mentally healthy. I don't think we were, you know, working in a way that was sustainable. And I don't think we were working in a way that necessarily meant that we were able to make the best decisions all the time. And you don't make the best decisions when you haven't had enough sleep. You don't make the best decisions when you haven't had some space and that time to think, you know, I think we all know now that the importance of boredom and the importance of having space in your brain for creativity, you know, I'm someone who always fills my ears with podcasts. And it's always noticeable to me if I have a day where my phone runs out of battery or I didn't bring headphones and I hit a point where I realized I'm having new ideas because my brain actually has space to think of them because I'm not filling it with other things.

And I think at that time we really were, we were running so hard and we were working so hard that we didn't give ourselves that time for relaxation and boredom that would have perhaps brought greater clarity. Having said that, I've got enormous empathy for that team back then and for a little version of me and because, you know, labor had been out of government for 12 years at that point. Like that was my whole life essentially, you know, from, from when I'd become remotely aware of politics. In fact, my first awareness, I think really of politics was in 1996 when I was in primary school and I remember going to the primary school to on the weekend to vote with my parents, my dad talking to me about who he was voting for and what his plans were.

And then we didn't see a change of government for, for 12 years. Like, you know, that's, that's half, half a, half a decade, sorry, half a generation, right? So I think at that time you also had these staff members who were so energized and so focused and we really had this sense of time is against us. You don't know how long you've got. Every day is important and we're never going to have this kind of power influence again in our lives and we've got to do good things with it. And, you know, I say power and influence. I was, I was very much a support staff member, helping other people with power and influence, but I think from a, from a mental health perspective, probably not the most well period of, of life, but at the same time I learned a whole load and it was immensely rewarding. And I, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't take away or give back what I learned during that period.

Speaker 3 06:43

Yeah, amazing. Amazing. I can only, again, as I said, imagine working at that kind of higher level, but I've certainly been in a position where working 12, 13, 14 hour days is definitely on the radar. And I can completely commiserate and agree that it's not particularly good for your mental well-being. It's not great for your physical well-being. And like you said, it doesn't allow for that time, for that boredom. I think we're very, as a society, we feel our time all the time. It's constantly like as if we are afraid of making space for our brain to actually think, or probably more importantly, for us to be comfortable sitting with whatever thoughts do actually arise when we give our brain space to do that.

And I think that is a really important thing. And kudos to you for learning it and then actually embracing it, because that's not always the easiest thing to do. Now, Jamila, as a woman of color and someone who is very vocal about disability, gender and discrimination, which are really hot button topics, particularly in the media space, do you feel the way that you are spoken about represented and even comments may be made on social media are more targeted? And if so, how do you manage the effect of that mentally?

Speaker 4 07:53

Certainly the commentary on social media, 100% is, is more targeted and more vicious. I think particularly women of color are, um, subject to some really awful stuff on social media and certainly women who live with disabilities who have opinions, who dare to have opinions, also tend to cop it, I think online disproportionately and you know, there's data that backs that up. I think media diversity of Australia have done a whole bunch of work in this space and showing that it is, it is pretty rough being a woman who faces additional barriers to inclusion, online, you are going to cop it more than others. I suppose in the media and in terms of my work in the media, look, I think a lot of people have this experience, right? Like there are a handful and they are few moments of... very blatant discrimination that I've experienced and I've definitely experienced them and I, you know, I can point to them and they're very obvious, but, discrimination doesn't always, you know, dance around in front of you wearing a red hat, right?

Like sometimes it's a lot more subtle and sometimes it's about the, the feeling, um, that you have that is built up over time through series of microaggressions or those moments where you're just constantly second guessing yourself and going, what was the reason that things turned out that way? Or what was the reason for that comment? Or what was the reason for not landing that job? Or what was the reason behind the, you know, the, the comment that someone makes or whatever it might be. So I think that more subtle insidious discrimination is actually harder to deal with because I think when it's more blatant, easier to call out, easier to feel a really strong sense of you within yourself of like, that is the wrong thing.

And I'm very comfortable standing here and saying that is the wrong thing. I do think it's a lot more complicated when it's harder to define and harder to pinpoint because making the case that something has happened and trying to help particularly... white people understand, is just that much harder, right? Like not many people are going to sit down while you write them a 20 ,000 word essay of all the things that have happened and why that adds up to discrimination. Much harder to, to make your case and make your point in that, in, in that circumstance. So I think to some degree that can be more damaging.

Speaker 3 10:13

Yeah, I agree with you. I think that sort of stuff has the ability to almost get under your skin and sort of sit and fester there where it's like you said, it's not that obvious thing right in front of your face that you can point to and say, well, let's tackle this. It's just happened. Everybody can see here, feel what is going on. Whereas that stuff that's those little micro aggressions, they layer up, they build up over time and then all of a sudden it reaches a tipping point. But then you have to be able to, unfortunately, I guess in this world to some extent, you've then got to be able to quantify or give credibility to that experience, which can be difficult to do when it is those little micro things that are just sort of getting under the skin and sort of bubbling up over time.

But again, the fact that you keep on coming back and you continue to stand up and say the things that you say and speak for people that don't always have the voice, they don't always have that position of influence or power to do so is just so commendable. So I thank you for doing that on behalf of women and disabled people and all of the different things that you stand for. It's absolutely incredible. And we certainly need people like you that have the guts and the courage to continue to come back and do it.

Speaker 3 11:23

If I had a hat, Jamila, I would be tipping it to you. I don't. 

Speaker 4

That's very kind. 

Speaker 3

I'll tip my headphones to you. That's the best I can do for today. Now, one of the things we certainly have in common, Jamila, is our experience of disability and chronic illness. Now, they appeared in our lives in different ways, but I know that having spoken to thousands of people sort of in a boat similar to ours, that we are experiencing them day to day nonetheless, however they came into our world. So if you feel comfortable to do so, can you please describe a day in the life of Jam, given you have had, I think, if I'm not incorrect here, 36 rounds of radiation, two brain surgeries, you know, so what are the symptoms you're managing and how are you experiencing the effect of that on you mentally on a day to day basis?

Speaker 4 12:13

Yeah, sure. I am very comfortable chatting about it. I think it's hard for me to do in that day in the life because my work is so varied and different that joyfully work is quite different most days. But one thing that has definitely changed for me is that I have had to slow down and I have had to learn new boundaries for what is possible for me in terms of how I use my energy. So I was diagnosed with a very rare kind of brain tumor back in 2017. I had brain surgery early the next year and they weren't able to take the whole tumor out because of where it's located and the damage that that would do. And so within another six months, I was back in because it was growing so rapidly again and doing more damage again.

And second time around is where the disability impact came from. And I mentioned that because for me, that was a really big mental health change because the first time around, I was very severely mentally unwell, I think, looking backwards, particularly in the lead up to that surgery. And we're about three months maybe between diagnosis and surgery. And I look back now and I can see how acutely unwell I was. And I think at the time, I was like, well, this is just how people react. This is totally normal. I've been told this terrifying thing. I'm just acting scared. That's fair enough, isn't it? And I think that's difficult, right? In the same way, it can be hard to draw a line between where grief ends and mental illness begins.

It can be difficult to know where you draw that line between where fear ends and mental illness begins because the two overlap. There isn't a clear line. But I can see now having had subsequent experiences of this tumor growing again, how different that particular experience was and how unwell I was. And I would say to those who have had the experience of mental illness and struggle to feel like they can be taken seriously in the same way that physical illness often is, particularly acute illness like mine, I would have another 10 brain surgeries before I had to live that three months again, 100 percent.

Brain surgery is not fun. I would, it was it was the worst few months of my life, and I found it much easier to recover from brain surgery than I did to experience that period of mental health. But my second brain surgery brought with it a whole lot more damage because they needed to be more aggressive necessarily after it had grown back so quickly. And that meant knowledgeably doing some damage to different parts of my brain. And then radiation basically made a whole bunch of it worse. So my life today looks complex. I wake up, I take a whole bunch of tablets that keep me alive, including replacing cortisol, which obviously you need to live.

I take a whole bunch of drugs in the morning and that kind of kick starts my energy for the day. Depending on how I'm doing, I will often experience nausea or really serious bone pain during the day. And I will, because my body doesn't produce cortisol, if my body experiences any kind of stress and, you know, if I was in a car accident, really serious physical stress on the body, if I had a huge fight with my husband, if I got really, really worried about a piece of work, if as soon as that stress becomes significantly higher than what I would normally experience, then my body doesn't have the cortisol to manage that stress.

And, you know, we deem an ice cortisol now because we associate cortisol with stress and it being a bad thing. But cortisol increases when you're stressed because you need it to increase and mine won't increase. So the consequences of that can be that your blood pressure drops really quickly and you can go into an adrenal crisis, which becomes a medical emergency really fast. I've had that happen a few times. It's not a great time. And I've definitely come pretty close to the point where my blood pressure became very, very dangerously low and to the point that they potentially wouldn't have been able to bring it back up again.

So I've definitely learned the wins of cortisol, the benefits of cortisol. But a lot of my life now is trying to be very aware of my own body and my own brain to the point that I can be so aware of where stress is impacting my body that I can take put us all synthetically in a way that my brain can't make it. And that's a real game and can happen at any point. And sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I get it right. I'm definitely getting better over time. So often my day involves quite a bit of, I think, what is the experience of a lot of people with chronic illness in particular, is that your brain spends a lot of time in overdrive trying to figure out what's going on and trying to go, is this like did I eat a burger for lunch that's just made me a bit unsettled or am I unwell? Do I need, you know, is this bone pain or did I just work out yesterday a little bit harder than normal? 

And so, you know, I've got a sore muscle. And so there's this constant kind of to and fro and guessing and trying to figure out what is happening in your body. For me, there's a whole bunch of medication that comes in the evening, including gels and creams and injections and things like that. So I suppose at that day to day level, it's making sure that the medication rolls out properly. And that's on a good day where everything works. There are days where there are medication shortages and you are getting by without something that is not technically essential, as in you can be alive without it, but being alive isn't very fun without it.

17:56

There is a lot of time, I think, spent thinking about what the next day will bring and how to prepare for a day that will be more physically difficult for my body or physically stressful for my body, travels something I find really hard in particular. And, you know, I hate letting people down, but it's a reality sometimes that I do just have to cancel at the last minute. And you've always got that little voice in the back of your head that says, are they gonna understand or are they gonna kind of hate you for it? And then in terms of sort of more the ongoing mental health impact, I think I'm reasonably mentally well at the moment. I think I have been for a while. I developed an eating disorder for a period after the impact of all my illnesses and medications.

I think my psychologist would say I've recovered, which is good, but I'm still not the best and I'm still a little bit shaky. So I suppose I'm probably someone who and is very aware of my mental health and aware that it's not necessarily always gonna be steady or stable that there is, it can be tenuous sometimes in the same way that my physical health can be. I'm not sure if that answers your question, but for me, I think I am more aware of what is going on in my brain and my body than I have ever been in my life.

Speaker 3 19:27

Yeah, I think it's one of the weird, I don't know if we can really call it a gift, but perhaps the diamond in the rough that can sometimes come out of the experience of chronic illness and disability is that it requires from you to become incredibly self-aware. It requires you to be very aware that you are living inside this complex biological system, particularly when it is then on you to positively manipulate that situation, whether it's by taking drugs or changing activity or changing the food that you're doing or canceling a plan. I mean, it's like, it can be a minute by minute, hour by hour type situation when you're living with something as complex as what you are as well. So thank you so much for describing that too, because I think it's just really important that we have these discussions.

People are still very unaware of what these things can be, particularly if they can be invisible, that poses a massive barrier, I think, for a lot of people to understand that we can sit here and have this conversation and yet the two of us could be sitting here right now and probably experiencing pain and nausea and a range of other different symptoms that are going on that people can't see. So yeah, that's very interesting. But your comment, particularly sort of on that grief, mental illness, sort of axis going into that second surgery, I think would resonate with a lot of people, it's a massive change in identity. And, and then it's an unraveling, that's probably, yeah. Now, what has your acquired disability taught you about ableism and then ableism's impact on mental health?

Speaker 4 21:05

I think it's taught me how ableist I probably was, without necessarily understanding or realizing that. I think that's probably been the most confronting part for me, has been reckoning with how I used to approach the world and how I used to think about things and how little I, you know, I think I thought I understood, but how little I understood the experiences of others and probably how little interest I talk in the experiences of others. Yeah, you know, I think to an extent there's a little bit of shame, there's a bit of shame there of not having, you know, I'm mad that it took becoming disabled to care this much. I wish I cared more beforehand and grumpy with myself for that.

It's taught me a whole bunch of things. I think it has taught me how complex and nuanced the idea of visible and invisible disabilities are and that the, maybe the privileges and the advantages of one over the other aren't straightforward. You know, no one's going to give their seat up for me on the train. In fact, I remember once I started having an adrenal crisis and I asked someone if I could have their seat on a busy train and they just refused. And I couldn't make them understand that I wasn't, I didn't just want to sit down, like I, you know, your blood pressure will go up when you're sitting or lying down. I ended up having to lie down on the floor of the train. It was the only option to get through that moment. 

So sometimes I think to myself, you know, if people could see it, maybe they would understand more, but at the same time, there is enormous privilege that I experienced and that I get to choose most of the time. I get to choose whether or not people know I'm disabled and look, I try and live with the presumption of don't hold anything back. I'm certainly not ashamed of it. I'm proud of being disabled. So, but nonetheless, you know, I, there is enormous privilege that comes with people assuming you're an able-bodied person.

So I think that the complexity of that relationship is something that's really emerged for me. And the other one is a huge number of friendships, you know, being welcomed into a new community and the number of people who, it's not that, maybe they were friends, but there were more people who were tangential in my life, people who I was friendly with, but who I didn't really know, the number of people who reached out to me when I was sick and sort of making a transition to a new life, the number of people who reached out because it had been their experience or because they had something to share with me and who became incredibly close friends as a result.

Like, I will never be able to repay that kind of generosity. And I think the spirit of the disability community is generally one of of of inclusion and welcoming. And I have felt really lucky to be part of that. And sort of, I can't, you know, as much as I struggle with the reality of still wishing this hasn't hadn't happened to me because it has been traumatic and it has been deeply difficult, there are now benefits that are wrapped up in the experience, including what I've learned about myself and my body, but also the relationships that I've built as a result that I wouldn't give back ever. So, you know, it's not as simple as wishing you were back where you were before anymore because there's too much good that's come from it. In terms of how how it's impacted my my my mental health. I don't know, I wonder, you know, I think I'd need to to spend some time really digging into it with someone who was born with a disability.

25:00

And I do think there is a really big difference in your experience of ableism if it is your identity from day one or if it's an identity that is earned through your life, because, you know, the reality is most people will become disabled at some point. Most human beings, if they live long enough, will become disabled at some point. And so it's an identity we're all on the road towards if we don't have an already acquired it. And I think there's a real I think there is a really distinct difference there in terms of the impact on your mental health and how you reconcile that.

Because for me, I know I have something to compare this to, not just a theory to compare it to or what observing others, but I have my own experience to compare it to so I can see. ableism's impact on me really distinctly because I have a lived alternative and I remember how easy life was and I remember what it was like to be someone at work who didn't have to let people down and who didn't have to ask for additional help or I have a lot of memory loss challenges and who didn't have to seek support from colleagues and finding documents or being reminded what we agreed to in the last meeting or whatever it might be.

I remember what it was like looking different and how that impacted, for example, a career in television versus how it plays out now. So I think that I don't think it makes it better or worse. I just think it means the experience is a little bit different and for me personally, certainly wouldn't be everyone, but for me personally, I think it's actually meant a lesser impact on my mental health because instead of arriving at a place of confusion or frustration or hurt or self loathing, I've arrived at a place of righteous rage and righteous rage is a healthy place to be, right?

Like, you know, for me at least that hasn't really affected my mental health. That has made me feel very comfortable and calm in being angry about the lack of equality that exists. And so yeah, if anything, I feel like that rage has kind of helped me process what would have otherwise maybe manifested as mental health.

Speaker 3 27:32

It's really interesting. It's a really interesting way of putting it and I'm sort of, I guess, reflecting back through my own personal experience as you're talking and there's parts of it that I've sort of think, yeah, I fully resonate with that. Yeah, I do. I think there's, it is a complicated package. It is a very complicated package. So I think you're right. Like you think you mentioned, there's, it can be a small sort of sense of shame that you, you didn't care as much as what you, the person that you've become would like the previous version of you to have cared more and it's not until again, you know, you have this massive change that you think, why don't people care?

We're all going to end up there. Like you said, most people look, you know, if they live long enough, we'll ultimately end up disabled at some point. And it is really interesting than watching people who, I guess, acquire disability by age and the complicated nature of what they end up confronting because it's taken them maybe 60 or 70 or 80 years to have that experience. And then when you're a younger person, having already gone through that sort of change and you're looking at them and you're thinking, oh, if only as a society, we were much better equipped at this, we could all get through it in a, in a, in a much more sort of equal and supportive way, but instead we largely are sort of just waiting until we get there and then grappling with all of these different changes in the world.

I just think it's, it is an increased, increasingly complicated situation, especially by virtue of the pandemic. And it's just really interesting always to hear kind of what people's mental health, I guess, experience of that. And I love that righteous rage comment. I love that. Oh my gosh, I can resonate at a soul, deep soul, solvular level, completely with that. I think we do, we are really almost a ferocious community because we, we step in, we reach out when we find somebody else that is going through that kind of change and transition and we are, we rally really hard behind those people. And so we're there, we're there for all of it. We're there for the grief, the joy that gives all of the complication of it. And we're also ready to step in and say, this is not on. This is how we need to change things.

I think we are actually a really, I don't know, profoundly strong community for that reason. And I, and I understand that sense of kinship that you have found. It is, I wouldn't take that back, anything in the world.

Speaker 4 30:00

I think that, I think it's a good point about that, not just the kinship, but the strength of, of a community. And I think it comes from, you know, I remember being a kid at school and you know, you'd hear those stories about, you know, women who lifted cars off babies and would have like superhuman strength. And as a kid, you'd be like, wow, like, you know, in, and you would imagine what you would be like in a, in a genuine life or death situation, what would you do? How would you respond? I think a lot of people with disability and chronic illness and their carers are potentially going to end up in a life or death situation quite often.

Speaker 4 30:39

And so you have to be in that almost that ready state of alertness and you know that it requires fight, you know, like I have sat in a hospital waiting room in emergency, not getting paid attention to, and it becoming scarier and scarier and scarier and finally being, you know, triaged and getting through and them saying, holy crap, why didn't you come earlier? And you're like, cause I've been sitting out there for six hours. You know, you, that will never happen to me again. And I know that because my husband and I have become these like rageful tiger humans, because that's not going to happen.

Cause we know, you know, in a situation like that, that you've got to fight for how serious a situation you know it is. And I think so many people with disabilities are people who grow up needing to fight really hard to get what they need and to stay alive and to stay safe. So I do think it perhaps comes more naturally, you become better at it.

Speaker 3 31:38

Yeah, I think you're right. I think we do, we do become really, really good at fighting. I think it's very interesting too, when we fight for things around able-bodied people that maybe don't have that experience or they don't really commonly spend a lot of time with people with disabilities or chronic illnesses. And sometimes that fight can be misinterpreted as an overreaction or being over -sensitive about something like, why are you carrying on about this, I don't know, you went to a restaurant and you talked about, you know, having a food allergy and they've brought you out something that you definitely can't eat and, okay, well just calm down, you know, and you can sort of see that their reaction to things that seem small, like they're huge for us because those kinds of things could put us in hospital or those kinds of things could make us life-threateningly ill or, you know, change our quality of life for weeks or months at a time.

And so we fight and it is at the ready. Like you said, it's like we're always alert and ready to take on the fight because we've been in that situation so often in society, we know that that's what is required in order for us to not just be alive, but to actually thrive. Whereas I think other people take for granted that thrive is actually the predominant direction and maybe the available option for them for us, it's more just be alive. And we don't want that. We want to thrive too. So we fight really, really hard. So I appreciate your answer. Now, Jamila, you also wrote a fantastic book called Not Just Lucky and I've read it twice. It is deeply thought-provoking book. So kudos to you.

I absolutely love the extent of the detail and everything that you went into this book. Now, whenever I speak to other authors, I find that every author has generally got multiple books inside of them. Only some of them ever get written and only some of those ever actually get published. So for this particular book, what inspired you to write this book and did the writing help you to process things or how was that sort of affecting your mental health?

Speaker 4 33:47

So interestingly, this book was written and published before I was diagnosed, but would have been when I was quite ill and didn't realize what was happening yet. In fact, I was on book tour for the book when my sort of symptoms that led me to get the brain tumor discovered really got bad, and I dismissed them probably a little bit longer than I should have because I just thought, oh, I'm stressed out because I'm on a book tour. And so these funny things are going on in my body. I'm someone who, look, I'm really boring in the way I write books. It's the same way every time I write books for who I used to be when I've had a period of a challenge or difficulty or whatever it might be in my life, emotional transition.

And I haven't been able to find what I needed to get through it. I'm someone who loves to read. If I haven't been able to find the book I needed, that tends to be what I want to write about. And I've done that many times, I think, in luck now and continuing to with the book I'm working on at the moment. And not just luck, it was about recognising particularly the challenges that often occur for women in their 20s. Certainly can move beyond that as well, but for me at the time, that was what I was writing about. And the challenge of having gone through school, maybe Tafel University as well, some kind of other further study, and consistently being in an environment where you are set up to win if you've been socialised the way girls are socialised.

So the schooling environment very much supports the way girls are socialised. Very objective analysis, the harder you work, the more attention you pay, the more you sit quietly and listen, the more you can regurgitate the information. If you work hard enough on the essay, you'll do well. There's a really clear input and output. It's the same with university or vet education. You can see the input and you can see the output and what you get. And girls are socialised to sit still and to please and be well behaved and do what the teacher wants and hand you schoolwork in on time to a degree that is greater than boys. And so you have such a firm idea of this formula that's going to get you through.

36:11

And the formula plays out in the data, right? So in the NAP plan results, girls do better than boys on every single NAP plan test all through year three, year five, year seven. In year nine, there's a slight variation where boys pull their head in maths and some years in science. But other than that, girls win everything. And then we now know that women go to university in greater numbers, they're more likely to do higher degrees, they're more likely to finish with higher grades, they're more likely to finish with a university medal, for goodness sake. So that formula, that education environment really works, like to the extent that I think we actually need to have some conversations about what's not working for boys. But it works for the way that we socialise girls.

And so we get this clear formula for success in our heads and then we come out the other end and we go into a workplace and workplaces have this totally different formula for success which actually often rewards the way men have been socialised. And so women kind of have this panic moment and turn inwards and go, well, there's something wrong with me, I must be doing something wrong. What can I fix about myself to make myself better at this workplace thing? And so what I tried to do with that book was pull apart some of the assumptions to help women realise that workplaces were built for men and by men and they still operate to advantage men and to recognise that that is not their fault and that is not something that they personally are in charge of overcoming, that is a collective effort.

But also at the same time to try and be as practical as possible around the needs of the average woman who goes, okay, well, thanks for letting me know that work is sexist. That's probably not going to get fixed next week, but I've still got a career that I'm trying to build and I'm trying to do well, so what am I supposed to do? So what I tried to do was sort of speak to the feminist project of how we improve the situation, but also speak to the practicalities of how to navigate that situation for particularly women in the sort of the first half of their careers.

Speaker 3 38:11

Yeah, absolutely brilliant and so, so true. I think, yeah, I don't think I know a single woman who has not probably, as you said, maybe gone through the education and landed into the workplace and then gone, uh, hang on a second. I thought, I thought I was doing everything okay. And I am doing all my work. I'm doing all my work. I'm getting great KPIs. I'm handing it in on time. I'm doing all the things I've learned to do. I'm smiling. I'm polite. I'm in the corner. I get everything done. I don't make a fuss about it, right? Like all the things, as you said, that we have been trained into doing and then all of a sudden it's like, but why is that guy just showed up with three years less experience on his CV than I've got.

And now he's being promoted and I've been sitting here for two years working really hard and doing really well and just being completely ignored. So it is, it's definitely, and as you said, we then turn inward and it's like, what can I do to fix it? What am I not doing? And rather than what is the situation and the structure that actually needs to adjust and change to make it so that there is that, you know, equanimity and equality, um, yeah, so anyone that, I think whether you're a man or woman, I really recommend reading Jamila's book because it, you know, the stats, everything, it's all there in black and white.

It is really, really easy to understand and see that spectrum of how it all works. And I think if you are particularly a manager or a CEO or you've got a startup or whatever, you're in any kind of position of our influence over the way that you have that structure set, read the book, read, read, read, ask the questions, learn, learn, learn, and then apply, please people, it would be a really, really great thing for everybody. 

We're going to have more with Jamila when we get back from the break. Welcome back to Brainwaves on 3CR, 855 AM on the dial via your app or the online stream, I'm Flick Manning. I'm your host. And today I'm joined by the incredible Jamila Rizvi.

Speaker 3 40:12

Um, Jam, now what are your observations about mental health as it pertains to those who identify as women, um, as someone who is deeply embedded and entrenched in the women's movement space?

Speaker 4 40:27

Oh, where do I start? I think mental health and mental ill health intersect with almost every element of what feminism fights for, right? And what the women's movement is about, whether that is the fact that women experience violence in the home at such an extraordinary rate, to the degree that more than one woman a week is killed by a man who claims to have loved her at one point. In this country, you know, the sort of thing that if it was blokes punching one another in the street, we would call a national epidemic and it'd be on front page of every newspaper and we'd be figuring out how we solved the problem.
But we just sort of accept it as a thing. And I think the mental health implications of violence, but also the threat and the fear of violence are hugely significant. Whether it's the fact that women still retire with just over half the superannuation of men, that there are more older women living in poverty than at any other time in this country's history.

Older women are falling into poverty later in life, particularly single older women, because they can't rely on the superannuation of a partner. The mental health implications of poverty are huge, as are the more general health implications of poverty. The number of women who experience perinatal or postnatal depression and anxiety, which is absolutely intertwined with our expectations of motherhood and our narrow definitions of what a good mother is, and the way we socialise mothers to think that they have to work like they don't have kids and raise kids like they don't have a job, to quote Annabelle Crabbe badly.
I think they are so far reaching the mental health implications of gender and of sort of the unfinished feminist project that it's almost hard to pick one. 

But perhaps something that's worth focusing on is something around the intersection, I suppose, of physical and mental health and gender. I think that's the increased understanding of women's pain and how the medical fraternity thinks about, conceptualises women's pain, and has treated women's pain for so long. I think we all know about the roots of the word hysteria and the idea of us treating women's genuine heart-felt pain as if it was something that could be solved by having a child rather than understanding endometriosis the way we're starting to, just starting to now.

The fact that until fairly recently, scientific labs used for medical research routinely would only use male lab rats and mice to test on because they didn't want hormones to get in the way of the outcomes of their tests, right? And yet all that means is that you end up with a medicine that's built for a male body and not a female body, and we're not thinking enough about how those drugs work for women. The amount of money that we spend on weight loss drugs and the development of weight loss drugs or the development of things like Viagra versus the lack of money that is spent in terms of research and understanding women's pain and women's cancers is hugely distressing.

43:58

So I think for me, that's one of the spaces at the moment that I feel particularly agitated and frustrated about because the inequality is so stark and it is so common for women to have really difficult experiences in the medical system and to feel like they weren't taken seriously. I think that the implications of that are so wide reaching that it can harm so many different women's mental wellbeing even if they're not people who are seriously unwell or sick, chronically sick in an ongoing way or disabled and needing to access the medical system at that sort of acute level regularly. I think just in seeing GPs and in the way we think about our health and the way our health is treated and how little girls, one generation ago grew up not knowing about menopause or not understanding how the female body changes over time.

So yeah, a huge amounts of frustration in that space but I think the one good thing is that it does feel like mostly led I will say by some incredible women doctors. researchers, I do think we are starving to have the attention paid in the way it should be. Just as we're speaking, there's been a new inquiry into menopause in the workplace that's been announced federally and looking at the implications of discrimination around menopause. At the end of last year, there was some really interesting research work done into women's pain and an inquiry held into women's experiences of childbirth in hospitals in New South Wales and birth trauma.

I do think we're starting to sit up and pay attention, so while it's distressing, how long it's gone unacknowledged, the pace of change at the moment is really, really heartening in that space, I think, and looking at that intersection of mental and physical health for women. Yeah, fantastic. And so I think, yeah, I completely agree with you on that. I think even in Victoria recently, they've announced a state government inquiry into women's pain. So we sort of like he said, we're on the cusp and it does just feel like the door is just starting to be pushed open.

Speaker 3 46:07

We're just starting to walk through it. We've all been behind the door banging on it for ages going, there's a lot wrong here that needs to be changed. And we're finally just having the door opened a little bit. But I think that's very heartening for future generations of women and those that identify as women, because there is just, you know, even with chronic illnesses, statistically more likely to experience it as a woman and so on. We live longer, you know, so you might have an experience of disability that lasts longer or becomes more chronic, all of these things. And as you said, the mental health implications of those experiences, and particularly of when you're in that vulnerable state of needing help and then feeling not only like is if you haven't been heard, but sometimes actually punished for making a request for help, that is deeply disturbing.

And it has very, you know, far reaching implications, not just for the individual woman, but then for all the people that she then comes into contact with in her life as well. So where we can make one change, we see that beautiful flow on effect. But because women, we are community builders, and I think it just makes a huge big difference when we're being taken seriously. So like you said, there is a lot of rage, it is very easy to be extremely frustrated by it. But I think there's also a lot of hope there, that things are starting to change, they are being taken seriously. And it's wonderful that we have, as I said earlier in the interview, someone like yourself sort of coming forward and talking about these issues in a very public, you know, media sort of focused way, because it really does take that putting it in front of people's eyes to get these changes to go through.

And on that note, as I mentioned as well earlier in the interview, you're also the deputy managing director of Future Women or FW, as a lot of people will have seen the logo. I'm fairly interested because you've just recently launched Future Women Jobs Academy. But what was, you know, what was the inspiration for starting or being part of building Future Women in the first place? And then what are you trying to achieve with the Jobs Academy?

Speaker 4 48:12

Thank you. So I joined, I might actually go back, that's right. When I was first thinking about the job at FW, I was talking to Helen McCabe, who was the founder and managing director. And I was also talking to one of the other big media companies in the country, let's say this. And we were both talking about two different jobs. And I was right at the end point where it was like, okay, kind of got to make a call, which of these am I going to go with? And that's when I found out I was sick. And so Helen is actually one of the first people I told, well ahead of a lot of friends and extended family because I had to kind of pull out of the job process. And she kind of caught me unawares because she was just ringing to see how I was getting on.

And I remember crying and saying, I can't do it, explaining. And when I told the other job prospects, they were very polite, very kind. And they said, we wish you all the very best. And I went and they filled the position with someone else and that kind of thing. And Helen, who is not a flowery, emotional person, but is one of the kindest people I've ever met, just said, well, when will you be better? And I was like, I don't know. And she said, well, I'll tell you what, I'm not let's just stay in touch.

And I called her back, would have been four and a half months later, about six weeks out of surgery, maybe a little bit longer. And I said, well, you said to call your back. And she said, do you still want the job? And I said, I can't, like I physically can't. I'm not well enough to do the job. I couldn't do the travel. I couldn't move. I don't send me an email with what you would like to do. Like, what would good look like? And I sent her an email and I said, I would like to work three days a week. I'd like to focus on these things. I don't feel up to managing staff. I gave the long list and she just wrote back and said, no worries, we'll get your contract on Friday.

And I don't think there are many people that would have done that. I don't think there's many people who would have had that kind of faith in someone who was so recently back from illness and keeping in mind, like, you know, started the job two months later and then went off took 14 weeks off to have another brain surgery after that. Like it just kept coming, kept coming. I was not a reliable employee for a very long time. Someone questioned if I'm still or have ever been a reliable employee since. But I think for me, that was why I wanted to jump on board because I believed in the person who was founding it.

51:01

FW has really evolved since the early days. I think it took us a while to figure out who we were, which is, you know, part of what a startup is. But today we are a 40 odd person strong organization and we run professional development and training for women and gender diverse people. So we run that training. Often people come to assist individuals and become members or we'll sign up for our master classes. But more often we are dealing with organizations. So it's often employers who are supporting their staff's professional development through us. We also run programs for men at senior levels in organizations and mixed gender groups, but that are particularly focused on overcoming unconscious biases, looking at the barriers to women's recruitment, retention and promotion, how we undo them, looking at how to tackle gender pay gaps.

We do consultancy advisory and also run workshops that help shift particularly men's thinking about this space and really try to make them allies and advocates in the fight for gender equality within the organisations they work in. And we're working with organisations as diverse as, you know, government departments to the police, to ASX 200 companies, to football clubs. It's a real mix and a real diversity of experiences. And then we launched the Jobs Academy a couple of years ago now, but it's really grown in recent years. And the Jobs Academy is for women who themselves are probably going to be unlikely to afford our programs and for women who aren't working. So whose employers aren't going to pay for the programs. So we work with women and gender diverse people who have been unemployed usually for a year or more, some for up to might be 10 years in some cases, who face multiple barriers to work.

So some of these women you know, will fall into what you would call the traditional government categories of disadvantage, which, you know, sort of culturally and linguistically marginalised backgrounds, first nations, women, women with disabilities and queer women. Though interestingly, data shows queer women are not as disadvantaged in the workplace for the reason of being queer, I should say, rather than being women. We also take a much broader approach to that. So we consider neurodiversity, we consider whether people are unpaid carers, we prioritise older women because older women experience such intense discrimination in the workplace. Women who survive family violence, single mothers, we take a very broad approach to what it means to face barriers to entry for work.

And then we do something quite different to most of the organisations that are funded in this country to get people jobs. Firstly, we don't take incentive payments to get someone a job. So the government doesn't give us more money if someone gets a job, which sounds a bit counterintuitive because it sounds like, well, that's the point of view, so why wouldn't that be a good thing? I think what that does is it makes organisations so focused on getting someone a job that they don't care enough about that person and the job that works for them. So instead of saying, we've got to get you a job tomorrow, it doesn't matter what job, just got to get you a job.

And we, unashamedly, will take 12 months, if that's what it takes, to help someone find work. We also support people ongoing, even if after the end of the programme, they haven't found the success they wanted. We support people into study, as well as into work. We spend a lot of time talking about clarity and working out what you want and what you need, and where the intersections are of your skills, your experience, your passions, your strengths, but also what it means for your access needs, what it means for your availability to work, what it means for your access to childcare, and how we look at the confluence of all of those.

54:51

We also work with partner employers, so we partner with employers who want to hire more women and are open to hiring this cohort, which sometimes makes us feel a little bit like a professional dating service, and kind of bringing people together. We work with organisations who will offer paid training, so will upskill women on the job, so we're helping move women into male -dominated industries in a safe and supportive way. A lot of those industries, the way they're gonna earn a lot more money. And as well as doing all the practical stuff, helping people prepare for job interviews, write resumes, all that kind of thing. It's very much community -centred, that's at the heart of it, is women supporting one another.

Oh, well, I'll try and stop because I believe in this programme so much, it's hard not to overrun my mouth, but it's, yeah, I think we've created something really special, and we now have three, two state governments and the federal government financially supporting it, and I just hope we'll be able to support more people as we move on.

Speaker 3 55:50

That's so incredible. First of all, to start off with, for you to have had that level of sort of support of somebody just being in your corner and I guess flexibly coming in. I mean, as you said, and you acknowledge it is so rare, that is such a rare scenario. I'm so glad that that landed for you and it gives such hope that there are good people out there that will see you for the person that you are, including your illness, including your disability and still say, yeah, you're actually worth it. And I think that is so true of so many people in our scenario. So kudos to everybody out there doing that. Very exciting. But also for the programs that you're putting together, I mean, the level of effort that you're going through to actually make sure that people end up in the right job, not just any job.
That's absolutely incredible. 

So I hope anyone listening, if you haven't already go onto Future Women, have a look at everything. There are, there are events, there's courses, there's the Academy. There's so many things, really at whatever stage of life you're at, whether you're a manager or an employee or somebody that has been unemployed, definitely get in and check it out because Jamila and the whole team are doing incredible work in this space. And it's always really exciting to see what you're doing. Jamila, I wish I could talk to you forever. And I do feel like I've got like about 3000 more questions that I could honestly ask you, but unfortunately we do have to wrap up.

But I just really want to thank you for sharing some of your insights with our audience today. I mean, you work in such hot topic areas and I think the work that you're doing is really incredible. I'm sure that everyone listening will have learned a lot from what you've shared today. So thank you so much for being on Brainwaves.

Speaker 4 57:30

Oh Flick, thank you so much for having me and for your wonderful conversation. I think it's a great show.

Speaker 3 57:35

Oh, thank you. That's very, very kind. Now, as I mentioned to everyone before, get onto Future Women, but also go out and grab Jamila's book. As I said, I've read it twice. I'll probably get in there and read it a third time. You pick up something more every time you read it. So no matter whether you're a man, woman, how you identify, please pick up the book. I think it's definitely worth checking it out. And everyone at home or driving home or wherever you are today, thank you so much for tuning into Brainwaves.

As always, I want to wrap up by reminding you that your mental health is of equal importance to your physical health. So if you're yet to do so today, please bring them together in beautiful alignment with a nice big inhale. Lovely exhale. And then remember to shower yourself in the kindness that you so easily give to others. I'm Flick Manning, and I look forward to chatting to you next time on Brainwaves.

Speaker 5 58:33

If you're wrestling with feelings of anxiety, worry and depression or finding the current social isolation measures hard to deal with, we would like to encourage you to call Wellways Helpline. Wellways Helpline is a volunteer support and referral service that provides information to people experiencing mental health issues or other disabilities, as well as their family, friends and carers. We're here to talk if you are seeking information about mental health or mental health services or just need someone to talk to. As a peer -based service, everyone working at Wellways Helpline has a lived experience of mental health issues or disability.

Wellways Helpline is a national service and operates Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm, excluding public holidays. If you feel it would be helpful to talk to someone about these issues during this difficult period, please call Wellways Helpline on 1300 111 500, that's 1300 111 500. Wellways supports 3CR.