LAS is an award-winning provider of elearning consultancy, design, development and training services in the UK and internationally.
Established in 2005 as LearningAge Solutions, we work with some of the best known organisations in the world to boost their performance through the innovative use of learning technologies. Working in partnership with our customers, we draw on proven principles from human behaviour, how people learn and how the brain works to create impactful digital learning solutions with real return on investment.
Tess is a director of LAS. She has worked in a learning environment for over twenty years. First, as a senior manager in universities, moving into digital learning ten years ago.
By Tess Robinson
Posted 10 April 2025
For the last three years, I have had the privilege of being selected as a volunteer participant in the UN’s Committee on the Status of Women (CSW). When I started my involvement with CSW, I naively expected to see progress year-on-year. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, which set out a comprehensive agenda for achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls. Whereas we have made huge strides in some areas, progress is, in general, stalling and even going backwards. In a report by UN Women to mark 30 years since Beijing, nearly a quarter of governments worldwide reported a backlash on women’s rights.
However, in participating in CSW, what has always struck me is that, despite differences in culture, approach and beliefs and the rhetoric we hear from some countries lately, there is a real will amongst (most) of the countries in the world, to build a better, more inclusive, more sustainable future for us all. This keeps me hopeful.
As António Guterres, UN Secretary-General says
“When women and girls can rise, we all thrive. Yet, globally, women’s human rights are under attack. Instead of mainstreaming equal rights, we’re seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny. Together, we must stand firm in making human rights, equality and empowerment a reality for all women and girls, for everyone, everywhere”.
‘When women and girls can rise, we all thrive’ - such an important statement. We live in a highly interconnected world that is facing some huge challenges. We simply can’t afford not to enlist ALL the talent we have in order to find solutions. This is NOT the time to leave anyone out on the basis of their gender, or any other protected characteristic.
Despite recent roll-backs, I still believe that most organisations understand that inclusivity and diversity bring many benefits and these have a positive effect on their bottom-lines. These benefits include greater innovation and creativity, enhanced problem-solving, a wider range of skills and experience, increased productivity, better understanding of customers, improved brand reputation and profits (the Target v Costco example is a case in point), happier employees and more talent for the organisation to choose from.
So, what does all this mean for L&D and digital learning? L&D guru, Laura Overton has talked in the past about looking at our environment and the learning we are designing through different lenses. We need to add a gender lens as well. Gender-bias can be so pervasive that it can be difficult to see unless we shine a light on it. What effect would a gender lens have?
It is more important than ever to champion equality and diversity in our organisations and do what we can through our own work. We must NOT let progress slide backwards - that won’t be good for any of us, including those who may believe they will benefit personally from such a roll-back. We need our organisations to succeed and solutions to our big societal challenges to be found - we need EVERYONE included and able to contribute effectively, in order to do that.
