Any discussion about women’s progress through the ranks of business or onto boards inevitably includes a lament about the supposed low levels of confidence women exhibit.
As Goldman Sachs Australia CEO Simon Rothery explained at a forum this week, the queue of employees wanting to see him around bonus time each year was almost inevitably all-male.
Men are better at self-promotion he told the forum in Canberra held by BoardLinks, a network set up last year by the federal government to help more women onto government boards.
Although Rothery agreed the spruiking sessions were actually not productive and were no longer held, the idea women inherently fail to sing their own praises and therefore miss out was a hot topic on the day.
A bit more analysis of the assumption is warranted, according to Siobhan McKenna, chair of NBN Co and director of private investment company Illyria.
The idea that women are not very good at articulating what they are good at comes up often, she said.
“I think that’s an unsophisticated response, I would say if you are someone who wants a role you have to work out how you would fit that role. It’s about one-to-one marketing. We have to find the people who will help,” she told the audience.
Transparency around the women available for roles and board vacancies and appointments is a particular stumbling block for women, several speakers agreed.
One of the forum organisers, Jan Mason, deputy secretary, Department of Finance, told the audience there were 38.4% women on government boards which is close to the target of 40% by 2015.
A website launched in March lists every government board position and each board’s gender balance, and there are 180 qualified women on the BoardLinks register.
It’s about trying to create a market, McKenna said, and helping to fix market failure.
The first woman appointed to a board through the network, Elizabeth Hallett, joined the Treasury’s Takeovers Panel in March, and told the forum she had spent many years hearing different messages from the men and women working for her.
As a partner at Norton Rose she often asked younger lawyers about their aspirations. The men would say they wanted to be partners in a specific number of years. The women invariably said they wanted interesting careers.
Her advice to women is ‘deal yourself in’ when you have those discussions. And she had another career tip for women: “Don’t ask permission, you can apologise later.”