Seminar

About our presenter

Dr Suzette Dyer is a Senior lecturer in Human Resource Management, Waikato Management School from the University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Suzette has a keen interest in career management, diversity, and women’s organisational experiences and management pedagogy. She has taught, researching and published in these areas for nearly three decades. Her current work examines women’s experiences in the construction industry. She is committed to equality, social justice and supporting human resources management students develop the skills necessary to create safe work environments.

Women working in male-dominated industries and occupations are particularly vulnerable to hostile work environments, sexual harassment, and incivility. Commonly, women respond by conforming to male norms, confronting behaviours, and/or leaving the situation. Such actions rarely address the structural causes of hostility. In contrast, bystander intervention approaches empower witnesses of undesirable behaviour to intervene. In this seminar, Suzette will present a sector-wide Theory of Change (ToC) to establish a bystander culture in the construction and infrastructure sectors.

The Theory of Change was informed by the contributions of 63 participants representating public sector organisations, private sector Tier 1 and subcontracting firms, interest groups, tradeswomen, and gendered harm/inclusive work specialists. The paper presents on the short and long-term interventions that participants identified as crucial for achieving the desired outcome of keeping women safe at work in the construction and infrastructure sectors.