Can you spot a workplace liar? Dr Rebecca Wilcoxson’s research shows it’s hard

Research suggests that females, from birth, pay more attention to faces than males, and they may pick up subtle nonverbal cues that males miss,” says Dr Rebecca Wilcoxson, a psychology lecturer and expert in lie detection, speaking to Women’s Agenda.

“This may be helpful if trying to assess the emotion of the person they are talking to, but people of all genders should be careful not to attribute specific nonverbal behaviours to lying,” she says adding that research has suggested “that men lie more than women”.

But through her overall research, Dr Wilcoxson has found that we’re all better liars than we realise and use the technique pretty much everyday.

t’s a common misconception that liars will display nervous-type behaviour or won’t maintain eye contact, says Dr Wilcoxson, noting that the problem in Australia’s criminal justice system “is that most people do not realise this, and many still use fallible methods, leading to inaccurate convictions”.

Global studies have found people around the world believe lying is accompanied by these behaviours, but Dr Wilcoxson says the current research doesn’t not support this, and tells Women’s Agenda that it’s “likely that someone who, due to neurodivergent, mental health, or cultural reasons, averts their gaze or displays nervous-type behaviours may be perceived as dishonest or untrustworthy”.

In a multicultural society, such as Australia, this misconception of how to detect liars can cause even more problems when it comes to assessing the truth. In many cultures and certain religions, eye contact is a sign of respect for authority or modesty.

One report by Queensland Health states that some Indigenous people avoid eye contact as a gesture of respect.

“If we use gaze aversion to detect deceit in Australia, we may have a lie bias against some cultures,” Dr Wilcoxson tells Roberts.

[A]uthors of the most recent peer-reviewed publication on effective lie detection methods have said “the best general advice from the psychological literature on verbal lie detection remains simply that a person is lying if what they say is inconsistent either with other things that they have said or with other evidence”.

Source: Can you spot a workplace liar? Dr Rebecca Wilcoxson’s research shows it’s hard

Traditional 9am-5pm hours could be scrapped for WFH employees

Employers could scrap the traditional 9am-5pm work day for employees working from home, as an inquiry at the Fair Work Commission (FWC) continues to investigate flexible working arrangements in Australia.

The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) appeared before the inquiry yesterday, advocating for “make-up time” provisions to be put in place for employees who work from home, as reported by the media.

The organisations will push for an end to the set shifts of 9am-5pm, allowing employees, especially carers, to complete work and meeting working hours around the schedule of responsibilities at home.

The submissions, however, received significant backlash from union groups, including the Community and Public Sector Union national secretary, Melissa Donnelly.

She said the proposed reforms is “an outrageous attempt” to reduce the working rights for employees who wish to work from home, “under the guise of modernisation”.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) also argued the provisions will particularly impact women and will only disadvantage them more in the workplace.

As women already are not compensated adequately for overtime, on-call work and more, the “make-up time” provisions will create more opportunities for disadvantage, ACTU secretary Sally McManus said.

The findings from the FWC’s inquiry, which began last month, will impact about 2.2 million workers on award wages. The review is expected to make recommendations to the federal government on whether flexible work arrangements should be a legal entitlement.

Last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressed the “work from home” conversation, saying it shouldn’t be a “one size fits all approach”.

The federal government recently passed laws that grant employees the “right to disconnect” from their job outside their working hours.

The Fair Work Amendment (Right to Disconnect) Bill 2023 will add the “right to disconnect” after work to the National Employment Standards to “ensure employees are not required to monitor, read or respond to email, telephone calls or any other kinds of communication from an employer outside their working hours”, the explanatory memorandum says.

Source: Traditional 9am-5pm hours could be scrapped for WFH employees

Former female staff at Sydney’s elite Cranbrook School warn of ‘toxic’ culture as it prepares to go co-ed – ABC News

Teachers given fluffy handcuffs. Wolf-whistling and orgasm noises on playground duty. An attempted blackmail for nudes. Being told you can expect to be sexually harassed because you’re good-looking. Victimisation, a toxic culture, a boys’ club.

These allegations by former female teachers and staff at Sydney’s elite Cranbrook School for boys paint a devastating picture of their workplace.

Cranbrook is nestled among Sydney’s most expensive real estate. It’s the alma mater of captains of industry and billionaires. Its headmaster has been found to be the second-most generously remunerated principal in the nation.

As Cranbrook prepares to enrol girls from 2026, multiple female former staff warn this 105-year-old institution has a women problem.

Source: Former female staff at Sydney’s elite Cranbrook School warn of ‘toxic’ culture as it prepares to go co-ed – ABC News

When can we really raise a glass on International Women’s Day? | Madonna King | New Daily

We are currently ranked 32nd in the world for female parliamentary representation, below New Zealand, Rwanda and Iceland.

It’s on the rise. For example, in federal Parliament the number of female politicians has jumped 15 per cent since 2002, to sit at 40 per cent in 2023.

For those young women who feel excluded from politics and disinterested in the ‘he said-he said’ that is yelled across the political chamber, Zoe McKenzie’s message was a warm embrace that showed politics can be done in another way.

But it’s time we stopped celebrating little strides forward in equality with purple cupcakes and long celebratory lunches and looked at how we could genuinely drive real gender equality in our communities.

How can we raise our glasses this International Women’s Day when the fastest growing homeless group is women over the age of 55?

Or when some girls’ schools in Australia still do not allow shorts as part of the uniform.

Or when the media refer to a felon or an accused person as ‘a mother of three’ and the narrative is dominated by her role as a woman. Rarely do we know the marital status of a male in similar circumstances.

But it’s probably the heartbreak of domestic violence that drives home the absolute inequality now faced by many women in Australia (and indeed around the world).

Advertising campaigns, targeted school talks and new laws to address coercive control have all failed to reduce the nation’s shameful domestic violence figures, with police DV callouts now increasing 20 per cent each year. In the large proportion of those, the victim is female.

Imagine if domestic violence figures became the barometer of equality, and we – men and women – worked together to curtail the heartache that largely remains hidden.

Source: When can we really raise a glass on International Women’s Day?

Superannuation will be added to Paid Parental Leave scheme | The Australian

Mums and dads will receive superannuation on top of government-funded paid parental leave payments, in a major spending commitment ahead of the May budget aimed at bolstering Labor’s gender equity credentials.

Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher will on Thursday unveil a plan to increase the nearly $900 a week payment by 12 per cent, which will go into superannuation accounts for the 180,000 parents who access the scheme every year.

Senator Gallagher said the measure would “close the super gap”, with men generally retiring with about 25 per cent more superannuation than women.

The announcement comes almost a year after the government’s Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce recommended it take “urgent” action to add super to PPL, which Senator Gallagher said she was actively considering ahead of the May 2023 budget.

Source: Superannuation will be added to Paid Parental Leave scheme | The Australian

Pay gap stats aren’t about naming and shaming? Um, they kind of are | SMH | Jacqueline Maley

We’ve all got to get our kicks somehow. I’ve been getting mine by playing a game of compare-and-contrast: looking at the data released on Tuesday showing which companies have the biggest gender pay gaps, and lining it up with what those companies say on their corporate websites, under the “diversity and inclusion” tabs.

Here is CommBank (gender pay gap of 29.8 per cent on base salary, twice the national median of 14.5 per cent) telling us its policy on equality. “Everyone has fair and equitable access to career and development opportunities resulting in diverse representation at leadership levels,” it asserts.

Energy company AGL (gender pay gap of 30 per cent, again, twice the national median for base pay) says it “strives to empower women to achieve their career goals and provide them with opportunities to connect and grow”.

AGL assures sceptics that “our Values [sic] are not just words on paper, they represent the very essence of who we are as an organisation and what we stand for. They shape our culture, guide our decisions, and drive our actions”.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley (gender pay gap of 25 per cent on base salary, and a whopping 48.2 per cent when you factor in bonuses), boasts of its commitment to “Diversity & Inclusion” as one of its “core values”.

So – is the pay gap entirely structural? And is it fair to expect companies to fix gender stereotyping in society at large?

We can blame corporate Australia for some things, but not for the fact that women, for their own reasons, “choose” to do more flexible, family-friendly jobs that happen to be less paid.

Right?

Well, it requires a truly heroic suspension of reason to conclude sexism and discrimination do not contribute to the pay gap. Salary begins to diverge along gender lines at the graduate level, before most women have had babies.

Source: 12ft

If the ABS guts Australia’s time use survey, women’s work will count for little

Childcare is probably Australia’s largest industry, most of it unpaid.

We know this because of Australian Bureau of Statistics time use surveys. Since 1992 these surveys have recorded what thousands of Australians say they do with their time in diaries kept for 48 hours.

But if the Bureau of Statistics proceeds with its current plans for scaling down the survey we soon won’t be able to tell.

Australia has not only led the world in recording time use, but also in recording simultaneous activities – what Australians do when they multitask.

In 1997 the survey found that whereas the average time spent on childcare as a main activity was about two hours per day, the average when simultaneous activities were taken into account was closer to seven hours per day. Among the simultaneous activities were preparing meals and washing clothes.

Now the bureau wants. . . .to exclude simultaneous activities.

This means we will no longer get a good read on the total amount of childcare and other domestic activities we are doing. Our surveys will also no longer be directly comparable to those of other countries.

Time-use expert Lyn Craig of the University of Melbourne says that without the contextual data the bureau proposes to leave out we won’t be able to capture the full dimensions of care work, including whether the breakdown by gender is changing.

Those who specialise in time-use research say the bureau’s current plan is destined to fail. There’s a good deal of women’s unpaid work it won’t capture.

In 1988 New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring wrote a famous book called Counting for Nothing about how women and the environment were invisible in policymaking.

If the bureau proceeds as planned, it will take us back toward those days.

Source: If the ABS guts Australia’s time use survey, women’s work will count for little

Flemish film awards under fire after men win most prestigious gender-neutral categories

The Flemish film and television awards are facing calls to temporarily do away with gender-neutral categories amid concerns that the switch has left women routinely shut out of the top awards.

At the Ensors awards on Saturday male actors cleaned up the categories for best lead and supporting actors. It was an echo of 2022 – the first year that the awards ceremony axed gendered categories – when men also walked away with each of the four awards recognising the best actors.

The results prompted calls to temporarily revert back to the traditional format.

Source: Flemish film awards under fire after men win most prestigious gender-neutral categories

Craig Kelly aide found guilty of indecent assaults

An aide who managed the electoral office of ex-MP Craig Kelly has been convicted of indecently assaulting four female staff members in their late teens and early 20s.

Francesco Zumbo manipulated his young employees, pressuring them into “kisses and cuddles”, touching them inappropriately and exposing himself to one victim.

The 56-year-old was convicted at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Friday for crimes that occurred at various locations across the city from 2014-2018.

Multiple complainants say the former aide would greet them with hugs and kisses in the office, conduct that escalated to him groping their breasts or touching their bottoms.

One woman said her boss exposed his penis to her while they were on a park bench, while another said he touched her vagina while they were pulled over in his car by the roadside.

Covertly recorded conversations showed the officer manager repeatedly saying he was in love with, attracted to and wanted to become intimate with the women, the magistrate said.

These discussions were one-sided and Zumbo would not take no for an answer, questioning his staffers’ loyalty and pulling them into lengthy rants if they rejected his attempts at intimacy.

Source: Craig Kelly aide found guilty of indecent assaults

Outrage after Australian news channel uses doctored image of woman MP

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The doctored image of Victorian upper house MP Georgie Purcell appeared on a Nine News bulletin on Monday night after she criticised the government’s decision to reject a ban on duck hunting.

Ms Purcell, the youngest woman in Victoria’s parliament, posted the original and the doctored image on social media X to call out the news channel.

“I endured a lot yesterday,” the Animal Justice Party member wrote, adding: “But having my body and outfit photoshopped by a media outlet was not on my bingo card.”

“Note the enlarged boobs and outfit to be made more revealing. Can’t imagine this happening to a male MP,” she said.

Nine News apologised following the outrage, blaming AI for “automation by Photoshop”.

Source: Outrage after Australian news channel uses doctored image of woman MP