"Do you believe people should progress on merit not gender?"

Some of my best friends are men. Andy, who got me expelled by taking me to the pub from my boarding school, still my best mate. Robbie, he of the acerbic one liners and my allyship 'mentor', best mate, and I am married to a lovely man, Paul. So this is not a women v men post - it is however a 'WTF is going on in organisations' post.

Here's the story - I'm at an all hands meeting, you know the type, everyone in the company from a certain level, over a thousand people there. The head of L&D got asked the headline question here. Their response was part depressing, part funny, They said they do believe in meritocracy and then went on to point out there were probably quite a few men in post who did not have the merit to be there. it was the only laugh of the meeting.

We know that women still have to code, pretzel or otherwise alter their behaviour around men,. Even when they get promoted people (men) wonder if there was positive discrimination at play. Organisations are spending a lot of money on helping women get on in the workplace, they hire coaches for them when they get stressed and they run workshops on being assertive. No news there.

What I don't hear about, and please tell me if you do, is workshops for the male workforce to understand what it is like to live in a world that is put together for men. Caroline Criado Perez's chilling book outlining all the ways in which everything we touch is tested, planned, laid out for men illustrates the environment that women are trying to be successful in - it's stacked against them.

Like advice for women not to wear short skirts and get drunk, instead of advice to men not to attack them, let's see organisations building understanding through their make workforce what it's like to be a woman in these places.