Lauren Neal - Valued at Work - REVIEW

Lauren Neal has had a lengthy career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM for short) and her vast experience in the industry has earned a wealth of certifications.  Crucial also is her contribution to gender equity across STEM, of which she is a champion and proud advocate. As her book, Valued at Work, clearly demonstrates with no shortage of clarity, this is a vital component of a type of business where the majority of employees are men, particularly at the senior levels of management and leadership.

Sadly, systemic bias towards women in STEM has always existed. Female employees have frequently been undervalued, underutilised and intimidated in the workplace, and while many people may claim that diversity and equality have come a long way, the reality is that there is still a great deal more to be done. Part of what Valued at Work explains is that many workplace cultures are not nearly as progressive as they think they are. For one thing, there is a big difference between the term ‘equality’ and ‘equity’, with ‘equity’ representing the legitimate processes needed to grant women all the privileges men are entitled to, and ‘equality’ being the more narrow-minded viewpoint that women were placed on an equal footing to begin with, which simply is not true and rarely has been.

Valued at Work presents a number of scenarios pertaining to hardships that women face in their working lives, and then goes into substantial detail about when and how these issues occur, the detrimental effects that they have, and the measurements needed to prevent them in the future. Narrating this topic throughout the book are two male figureheads in STEM, Steve and Markus, each of whom are in high management positions, and make the decision to create stronger gender equity within their organisations. This of course can only be achieved by actively listening to the numerous testimonies of female employees, which have indeed been inspired by real-life accounts, and embedded by Lauren Neal into this book.

Each part is consistently structured as a series of chapters presenting these issues partly as a story and partly as a user guide for readers. Steve and Markus collectively acknowledge that a certain problem exists (for example, the first part opens with the topic of acknowledging an organisation’s behaviour before diving deeper into the issue of disrespect in the workplace) and then engage in a direct conversation with a woman who gives a specific example of when they were subjected to this treatment. Steve and Markus will then reconvene for a follow-up talk about what new systems need to be implemented going forward before the segment steps outside the narrative and concludes with a list of ‘Top Tips for Organisations’, alongside a similarly listed section titled ‘Top Tips for Women’.

This allows Valued at Work to teach the many approaches Lauren Neal has created in real-life male-dominated environments across STEM, to not only the organisations who have the opportunity to improve their gender equity but also the women who aspire to succeed in those places. It means that Valued at Work is for the attention of all parties, and its writer presents it not with the intention of belittling or alienating particular groups, but by candidly and maturely breaking down the existence of bias in an intelligent and irrefutably factual manner. The ultimate takeaway from the narrative of Steve and Markus is that Markus is not only willing to help women feel more valued in the workplace, but also take all of the appropriate measures to do so, largely to pave the way for his own young daughter who has like-minded aspirations of working in technology and engineering. Steve however has a much more rigid stance, and his ultimate hesitance to make gender equity in his company a long-term goal makes him much less of a role model for other men than Markus.

For proof that this book is an effective and expertly written study, one is encouraged to read the numerous positive testimonies listed at the beginning from a variety of CEOs, founders, and chairs across several sectors of business, STEM, and various womens’ equity organisations, all of whom have extremely high praise of Lauren Neal and her work. It’s conclusive evidence that not only does this writer highlight a very real and persistent problem but can offer the correct brand of wisdom to help every person involved change it for the better. It’s no surprise then that Valued at Work is already such a respected piece of writing.

Whether you have an understanding of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics industry or not, or even if you have no experience in workplace culture, it’s impossible to refute the importance of books such as Valued at Work. It is a sobering and extremely intelligent insight into bias towards women in a male-dominated culture that has the power to shock, but more importantly make aware, and written by a person who has lived through and diligently documented the topic in a way that makes this end result crucial reading. Hopefully, books like this will create the right kind of progression that society desperately needs. While it acts as a comfort for women that they are not alone in their experiences, it also adeptly educates men to nurture a greater understanding of what it means to be respectful of their female peers in the working environment. Anything that does this with the same effectiveness as Valued at Work is essential material, and should not be overlooked.

You can visit the Practical Inspiration Publishing website to order your own copy of Valued at Work.