Jamila Rizvi is offering young women a huge hand up at work with her new book

CONCERNED about women’s lack of confidence in the workplace and their constant fears they were doing something wrong, Jamila Rizvi set about writing a book to help them supercharge their careers.

SOME ambitious women who make a big success of their careers in an often male-dominated world become known for pulling the ladder up after them. And then there are givers, like Jamila Rizvi. At just 31, this impressive young woman could easily have kept blazing a trail through politics, media, and probably anything else she turned her hand to, without looking back. But instead, she has paused to offer those coming after her a huge hand up.

Rizvi has penned a book for younger women that could supercharge careers.

Appropriately, it is called Not Just Lucky. Like its competent and confident author, it looks women in the eye and tells them not to underrate themselves. Packed with workplace research, it offers down-to-earth tips on how to build confidence, level the playing field and never apologise for being good at your work.

You may know Rizvi from Channel 10’s The Project, where she can be seen as a guest panellist, or from ABC News Breakfast, where she does the same. Or from Q & A and any number of other media appearances.

Her public profile has been strictly a byproduct of a career that was intended to be behind the scenes in the corridors of Canberra.

Not Just Lucky, by Jamila Rizvi, Penguin Random House Books, RRP $35

The daughter of a career Canberra public servant-father (“frank and fearless, and nonpartisan”) and a teacher-mum who enjoyed talking “public policy around the dinner table”, Rizvi thought she would end up in politics. She started early, with a part-time role in MP Tony Burke’s office while studying at ANU.

This high-achiever at her public high school was so precociously ambitious, she later cold-called the office of then prime minister Kevin Rudd, aged 22, asking for a job in his office.

“I grew up in politics in a sense,” says Rizvi, now a permanent Melburnian, having married a UK-born local boy and having had her first baby here.

“I got my first full-time job working for Kevin Rudd (in his media unit) when I was 22, but I went to work in politics well before that. My casual job in my first year of university was waiting at the National Press Club because I liked listening to the speeches.”

She also worked as a youth policy adviser for then minister Kate Ellis and, at 25, was Ellis’s acting chief of staff. Ellis thought Rizvi talented enough to promote her to the permanent job, but when her proposal was knocked back because Rizvi was considered “too young”, it prompted Rizvi to look around.

Her journey to public life started when she clicked on a link in a tweet by media darling Lisa Wilkinson about a job going at the women’s website mamamia.

Her journey to becoming the author of a book that should be on the shelf of every upwardly mobile girl began when she noticed young men and women around her in Canberra had distinctly different demeanours at work.

Jamila Rizvi.

“The main thing that inspired me was having gone from this world of politics where I worked with a majority of men, quite a lot of very confident young men, to working in women’s media where at one point I had around 40 women working directly for me, or reporting to someone who reported to me, and just how different their attitudes were to work,” says Rizvi, now a columnist on news.com.au.

“The thing that stuck out above everything else was that younger men, in particular, had this kind of cocky confidence — sometimes it was arrogance and distasteful, but sometimes it was just nice, friendly confidence that you were good at something.

“They were just really sure of themselves and they would back themselves in.

“Among the young women I was working with, there was generally very little confidence to go around and a lot of concern they were doing something wrong; a lot of wanting to please, rather than wanting to achieve and a real sense that I’m just lucky to be here, I’m lucky to have a job so I’ll put up with all manner of whatever.”

Rizvi started her book by exploring the research around the theory that there is no biological difference or other inherent cause for the disparity in the work confidence of the genders. With the help of a university researcher, she progressed through local and international material about how men and women behave and are perceived at work.

She says, humbly, that she wanted her book, including advice on everything from body language to speech patterns and coping with setbacks (as well as presentation and demeanour at work), to read like a conversation between friends over wine — “but I wanted the advice to have a rigorous base”.

Jamila Rizvi and Steve Price on The Project. Picture: Channel 10

Ever the swot, she made sure to cite “the theory, the psychology and the sociology” behind the conversation, and encouraged her research partner to challenge any assumption or theory of hers that was not in keeping with the most up-to-date findings.

There is humour, too, in anecdotes about Rizvi going through her personal workplace hell — an excruciating corporate golf day — and facing down her painful stuff-ups.

Having had to work out for herself the best way to make the most of her ability as a young woman in a still male-dominated political world, Rizvi hopes other women can use her book as a jet pack to fast-track their own progression.

“It’s the kind of book you wish you had as a young working woman, I wish I had it, too.”

So strong are some of our less than useful habits that Rizvi confesses to still falling into some of them, such as apologising too much.

The author believes she will eventually find her way back to politics: “You’re not supposed admit you’d like to do something as audacious as be in the Parliament, but I love politics and I genuinely think I would be good at that job.”

And you know what? She sounds pretty confident.

NOT JUST LUCKY, PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE BOOKS, RRP $35, IS OUT MONDAY

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