Prime Minister Tony Abbott has made a general observation today in response to Clive Palmer’s attack on Peta Credlin, Abbott’s own chief of staff.
That observation is that, “Blokes around this place have learnt to underestimate women at their peril”.
And it’s a fair one to make about “the gentleman in question” as Abbott referred to Palmer. After all, Palmer’s comments in which he said Credlin was pushing the Coalition’s paid parental leave scheme because she wanted to get pregnant were offensive and certainly showed a lack of understanding of the broader issue. As Abbott told reporters this morning: “‘Before he goes out and attacks people he really ought to understand the policy.’
But back to that initial observation of underestimating women. Surely it’s one Abbott could make about his own government?
If there’s any place that blokes have “underestimated women” it would have to be in Cabinet where just one woman features in the ministry and others have been described by Abbott to be “knocking at the door”.
Women don’t need to knock at the door of politics, business or across other leadership positions of the wider community. We’re here. We’re 50% of the population and carry 50% of the merit. As Bain & Co recently found, women also make up 66% of university graduates and have been doing so for some time. We certainly have the education and talent.
And yet women make up less than 10% of senior leadership and board positions across the country’s largest 500 organisations.
And, even more disappointingly as highlighted at the 2013 Australian Women’s Leadership Symposium this morning, we’re becoming known around the world for actually going backwards when it comes to gender equality. In 2005, Australia was ranked 15 on the Global Gender Gap Report. In late 2013, we’d dropped to 24.
The one place we’re doing ok is when it comes to female entrepreneurship, with research commissioned by Dell this week finding Australia is the second best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur.
Could it be that women are seeing great opportunities outside the existing structures and institutions dominated by men?
Could it be that too many blokes are underestimating the women around them, so women are simply ignoring the glass ceiling to go out and rebuild the house?
Blokes around a lot of places are underestimating women. And — as in Parliament and in business — they do so at their peril.