Marina Go

Every significant event has a back story.

When Australian Agricultural Company chief executive David Farley suggested our Prime Minister should “watch out”, while describing how unproductive old cows would be automatically processed in his new abattoir plans, it felt like gender equality in the business community, any community, had been tugged further away.

When news of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s pregnancy broke, I tweeted that I too had been appointed to a new role when I was six months pregnant.

Missy Higgins knew that she wanted to be a musician following a breakthrough performance as Brother Isaac in her school’s version of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when she was about 13 years old.

At an event last week at the St James Ethics centre, entitled Ethical Leadership, Women and Influence, a crowd of predominantly executive women from a range of industries listened intently while Geraldine Doogue engaged company directors and diversity advocates Wendy McCarthy and Sam Mostyn in a discussion that seemed to find its way quickly to the subject of gender quotas.

A big welcome back to Marina Go, our founding publisher who rejoins us as a regular contributor — sharing tips and anecdotes from her portfolio career which includes a new start-up called The Daily Siren, as well as a number of board positions including chairing the West Tigers and her latest, joining the board of the just listed Autosports Group.

This is the first ‘idea’ in our Eight game-changing ideas for women at work series, published over the next two weeks.

This is the fourth ‘idea’ in our Eight game-changing ideas for women at work series, published over the next two weeks.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has been the outstanding performer in Cabinet this year and will finish 2014 as Australia’s highest female office holder.

On Wednesday of this week I delivered a keynote address at the second annual Women In  Media event, organised by Quest Events.

After decades of holding high-profile positions in the media, I often meet women, in particular, who approach me as if they know me.

For the past few years you would have been excused for thinking that it was primarily women in senior executive roles who were banging their fists and demanding the rules change so that there could be equal opportunity for women in executive ranks.