In 2006 Ernst & Young LLP decided to make a more conscious effort to engage men in conversations about gender equity. Two features of the effort include firm-wide leadership workshops, and locally-driven workshops and solution-building. All male attendees of the firm’s 2006 Women’s Leadership Conference were strongly encouraged to participate in a newly developed workshop called “Let’s Talk,” which fulfilled a need identified in focus groups: open, rather than “politically correct,” conversations. In the workshop, women and men candidly discussed the assumptions they make about each other and how to work through the challenges these assumptions can create.
An excerpt of this practice was published in 2009 in Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives: What Change Agents Need to Know.