A few years ago I was interviewing a senior business leader about the lack of senior women in Australian business and what could be done to address this and boost retention.
He explained a number of ‘his’ senior women executives had indeed left and I asked why.
He gestured to the window and explained that it was no wonder they resigned because Sydney had wonderful weather and who would want to be at work if they didn’t have to?
I am rarely left speechless but this was one of those occasions. I think I eventually stammered that he clearly didn’t apply this rationale to himself, but the conversation really didn’t get much better.
Then there were the occasions – multiple, unfortunately – where I was told by senior executives that they’d love to have more women at the top but they tried it once and it didn’t work. I could go on, but you get the drift. These remarks were not unusual until quite recently and are a reminder of why the recently released reports from the Business Council of Australia and the Male Champions of Change need to be seen in context.
Yes, these reports and frameworks are voluntary and there is no real stick when it comes to implementation. But it is better to have such clear sets of parameters than not – and that’s exactly where we were until the last couple of years, when the ASX Corporate Governance Council introduced diversity reporting guidelines.
There are plenty who think it’s a bit rich to have a bunch of blokes spouting on about supporting women and expecting to be congratulated. And make no mistake, the work done by both the BCA and the MCC is only possible because of plenty of fantastic and largely invisible women were working behind the scenes.
It’s not ideal, I realise, but it’s not a deal breaker either. Women have been mobilising more and more around this agenda in recent times and they know they need to have the top men on board or none of their efforts will come to much.
We need all the supporters we can get in the business world and the CEOs of our top listed companies and organisations are a pretty good place to start. The challenge now is to keep the pressure up and reinforce the message that this effort is about productivity and economic outcomes as well as fairness.
Co-opting the men in the C-suite is symbolic, and of course the place where decisions are made. But just as importantly will be the backbone to push this agenda down through the ranks. Most women I speak to across the workforce know darned well that they face the most resistance from their male peers who are fighting them for the next step up the ladder and are often furious when affirmative action is introduced.
This is where the backlash stews and there’ll be plenty more of it as pressure towards gender balance increases.
The latest reports are actually a set of commendable but fairly basic levers, but they also remind us that far from having made an effort to change women’s lot in most organisations, nothing much really happened until recently.
Mainstreaming progress around gender and setting serious goals – for example the 50/50 target from the BCA – shows a serious intent. The hard work is to get businesses to change practices, but it’s a start.
And the thing about such public statements and aims is that many of us will be monitoring progress. If nothing much alters the composition of business ranks in the next few years it will be time for more mandatory measures, such as those introduced in the EU.
This activity, to quote a woman leader, is not everything, not nothing, but something.
Success not progress is the goal and it will not happen if only one cohort gets the message, but when we all do.