When it comes to the still small number of women in leadership, senior women will often tell you they’re sick of talking about the issue given we’ve been discussing it for years only to see nothing really changes.
That was certainly the reaction I heard attending a lunch of around 20 women with Executive Women Australia on Friday, with a number noting they want to see action over rhetoric, and conceding they’ve changed their opinion on the need for quotas.
EWA founder Tara Cheesman introduced the discussion by noting she’s not sure how many steps we’ve taken for progressing gender parity across the Australian workforce, but that she believes it’s time to focus on the finish line.
She suggested key indicators of progress could include: seeing at least two women on every ASX500 board; men working flexibly as much as women; an end to the gender pay gap; 1000 women appointed to ASX500 line management roles; and 50% of those Australians earning $100,000+ per annum being female.
These are ambitious targets, especially when you consider how little change we’ve made on existing measurements of success in this area.
Currently, we like to talk about the number of directors on ASX-listed companies as a measure of success – although this often ignores what’s going on within the pipeline and the continued wide gap in pay discrepancies between men and women.
But even at the ASX200 board level, progress achieved is not necessarily progress sustained – women have accounted for just 16% of new ASX200 appointments to June 2013, despite comprising 22% of all such appointments in 2012 and 28% in 2011, according to Company Directors. And, as some at the roundtable discussion noted, the issue runs much deeper than the number of women on boards.
“Yes we need to get people on boards, but not enough people are talking about getting women to stay in organiations in order to achieve great things within those organisations,” said one former managing director.
Meanwhile, Australia is ranked as one of the highest OECD countries when it comes to education attainment by women, but one of the lowest on women’s workforce participation.
Part of the issue comes down to continued cultural and societal expectations that see women still expected to take on the bulk of the domestic and unpaid caring responsibilities at home – with difficulties accessing affordable childcare further exacerbating the issue. One roundtable participate said we’re “brainwashed” from an early age to think our place is in the home, and that such brainwashing is continuing today in the different ways we treat boys and girls.
Then there’s also the gender pay gap – with women working fulltime currently earning 17.5% less than their male counterparts. It’s a pay disparity that gets much wider at the bottom of the market, and faces the added challenge of more women choosing service-based industries than men. Meanwhile, there are 2.2 million people living under the poverty line according to the Australian Council of Social Services, including 600,000 children. Sadly, it’s women who are more likely to be poor, with the report identifying that lower wages, taking on the bulk of the unpaid work and having access to fewer paid opportunities are all contributing factors.
So what can be done? Cheesman is adamant we can’t progress what we don’t measure, and that clear 2020 targets for women’s workforce participation are what’s needed to spur action.
However, any such targets will require leadership, and government support that continually promotes the numbers on why gender parity at work is so important. As much cited research by Goldman Sachs and Booz & Co has found, we could benefit from a 13% GDP increase by closing the gender gap.
We didn’t get enough time during the roundtable discussion to agree on what the finishing line will look like for workforce gender parity, and it’s clear the participants were looking for more than figures on the number of women in leadership in order to measure success. But the conversation needs to continue.
What do you think success will look like for women’s workforce participation in Australia?