After tweeting about the Victorian Premier’s decision to implement a 50/50 policy to achieve gender parity in public board appointments on Saturday, an inevitable response popped up. Will ability be taken into account?
Probably not, I thought. They will probably just get out an old copy of the white pages, start at ‘A’ and begin dialling Victorian numbers until they find a woman who is available and willing to sit on a public board. How else would they find a woman?
The furious argument about merit, women and anything resembling a quota amuses me almost as much as it maddens me. At the current rate of change, workplace gender equality will be achieved in 2095.
If you believe, as many purportedly do, that gender parity is desirable and necessary, that is unacceptable. If you believe gender parity isn’t desirable or necessary that is also unacceptable. (Upon what basis can anyone deny their company or organisation the proven advantage of diversity? I’m all ears.)
Given the case for boosting the representation of women in management is clear, why is a mechanism to accelerate the rate of change so feared? If we wound the clock back 25 or 30 years, I can understand why allowing parity to materialise itself would be considered more palatable than imposing an artificial solution. It is now 2015 and change hasn’t happened.
Women working is not new by any means; women are educated and qualified almost identically to men in Australia but when it comes to seniority, they’re struggling to get a seat at the table.
The case for diversity couldn’t be clearer and yet we are reluctant to embrace a proven solution. We fear a solution that is proven to generate better outcomes. How does that work?
Last year I asked David Gonski at a Women in Banking and Finance event why he didn’t support quotas.
He had discussed at length why the greater representation of women in senior positions is desirable and necessary. He acknowledged the considerable talent pool of women in Australia. He characterised the problem of under representation of women in leadership roles as a failing of men, not women. Against that backdrop I find it perplexing that a solution can be so easily dismissed. If organic change was a viable solution then surely the problem would be solved now? It hasn’t. How much longer are we expected to wait?
After asking David Gonski my question, the CEO of a substantial organisation approached me to explain why quotas wouldn’t work. I didn’t buy his answer then and I don’t now. Why? Because the representation of women in his senior management team is woeful. It was then and it remains the same today.
The irony of being told by someone, with an observable problem retaining senior women in his own organisation, that a proven solution to support gender diversity couldn’t possibly work, wasn’t lost on me. Like many leaders he is denying his organisation the benefit of diversity and argues why he is entitled to continue to do so. Walking away from the conversation I thought the same thing that I think now: if this is merit, isn’t it time to try something else?
How much longer do we let the current batch of leaders – in business and in politics – fail to create this change? At which point do we say that a leader’s failure to address this problem is definitive? That failing to adequately engage half the population is not merely a side issue but the main issue?
“Diversity produces the best decisions and outcomes for governments, companies and boards,” Chair of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and businesswoman, Carol Schwartz told Women’s Agenda. “We are after diversity from decision making groups.”
And yet we are denied that diversity many times more than we are afforded it. There are 81 companies in the ASX 300 without a single female on the board.
Introducing a quota is not ideal but neither is the status quo. This is why Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews’ new 50:50 policy for appointments is so significant.
Unless leaders intentionally and deliberately set about instigating change, nothing will change.
“The precedent was set by Senator Penny Wong when she spoke about her government board appointment policy BoardLinks. She said there was a quota for 40% men, 40% women and 20% could go either way,” Schwartz says. “It’s not a quota for women, it’s a quota for gender parity. We don’t want all women boards in the same way we don’t want all-men boards.”
For too long the onus has been on women to argue why they deserve a spot at the table. The evidence supporting that argument is overwhelming and yet change eludes us. Isn’t it time we put the onus on male leaders to argue why, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, they deserve so many seats at the table? The simple fact so many leaders have failed to implement policies to maximise the proven benefits of diversity speaks volumes. If this is merit, isn’t it time for something else?