‘People have to be accountable for change’: Ann Sherry on screen, joining Liz Broderick and moderator Cameron Clyne on the panel talking women, sport and business.
Liz Broderick was on the sidelines at the Rio Olympics when the Australian Women’s Rugby Seven’s team took Gold last week.
Now back in Australia, she said it was a beautiful, optimistic moment that reminded her that as women, there is no place we can’t succeed.
It also demonstrated how a game can adapt and evolve – like a board, community group or organisation – to be more inclusive of the broader population.
“When the game was over and we attended the medal ceremony, we found that when you inject feminine energy into what has been a male domain, the whole thing lifts, the game benefits. Everyone benefits,” she said.
Women’s sport has come a long way in Australia recently, particularly team sports such as in the AFL, Cricket, Netball, Soccer and Rugby. It helps that our female sporting teams have been performing so well, and that there’s a growing appetite to broadcast and watch women’s sport. Indeed, as NSW Minister for Sport Stuart Ayres told the crowd, women’s sport has been carrying Australia’s overall performance on the world stage in the past 18 months, including in Rio.
But sport is a seriously traditional domain. And, just like the boards that govern sporting bodies, adapting to more inclusive and diverse ways of operating has been challenging.
Carnival Australia CEO and ARU board member Ann Sherry said that while tradition in sport is really powerful, it is sometimes an anchor to the past.
“Businesses that are doing well move with their markets and anticipate their markets. The challenge for all sports is to do that,” she said.
“You respect tradition, you understand what it brings, but you don’t use it as an anchor.”
Sherry said sport has many reasons to change: to adapt to the digital world, to the new time-poor lives of women, to communities and schools where large sports grounds are disappearing or shrinking. The Rugby Seven’s game, she said, is a great example where the sport has adapted.
The result for Rugby is that a huge number of women will start participating. Broderick noted that by 2026, 40% of the world’s rugby players are expected to be female, with 500,000 young women coming into the game every year. She said the major football and cricket codes in Australia are starting to see women’s participation as a great opportunity. “I know there’s a group of CEOs of those sporting bodies who are sitting up, stepping up, and taking notice,” she said.
So if sport can adapt and change, why can’t boards and senior executive teams be more inclusive of women?
“The glib answer is stupidity,” Sherry said, laughing. “I was told twenty, thirty years ago that time will fix it, but it hasn’t. There have been companies that have leapt ahead. But clearly whether it’s unconscious bias or conscious bias, it’s still present, there are plenty of people who claim they’re data driven, who have been given the facts and don’t listen to it.”
Sherry added that change needs to be deliberate and involve taking action – just as global sporting bodies are doing in getting women involved in their games. She said that you can’t claim to believe that “people are your best asset” in an organisation if you allow people to continue to claim they can’t find more diversity for their teams. She used the example of Bob Joss in 1994 who upon arriving as CEO of Westpac, demanded his senior leadership team go out and “find the women”.
Amazingly, they did find women, including Sherry, and a number of other excellent female leaders. “Eight of us came in at the same time and that triggered a change that continues,” she said.
“So change is deliberate. Change has to be planned. People have to be accountable for change.”
