When there are so few female chairs of major companies in Australia, it’s easy for the proportion of female power in business to suddenly take a hit.
Such would be the case with the departure of Ann Pickard as the Australian chair of Royal Dutch Shell, expected to be announced today according to The Australian (Women’s Agenda has not yet been able to confirm this with Shell). The Australian reports that Pickard is set to return to her home country, America, to take on a new role within the oil giant.
She’s tipped to be replaced by current Shell VP Andrew Smith.
Pickard’s departure would not see a change in the number of female chairs on the ASX200 as Shell is not listed locally. However, it would take a woman out of an already tiny pool of those in the powerful role who also happen to be female.
And as a non-executive director of Westpac, her return to the United States could see one less woman on the board of the bank. She’s also currently on the boards of the Energy and Minerals Institute and the University of Western Australia.
There are currently six female chairs overseeing ASX 200 companies – up 0.5% from 2010 to 3%. One woman leaving that particular circle would take us back to 2010 figures. Such incremental changes year to year may provide some satisfaction regarding progress when it comes to women in leadership – if only the progress already achieved wasn’t so fragile.
A small uptick has also occurred regarding the number of board positions held by women in recent years, currently at 15.7% according to the latest figures from the Australian Institute of Company Directors (the highest ever recorded and current as of 19 April). It’s a figure that shows an improvement from recent years, but one again that could very easily remain stable or even fall backwards without constant attention. Meanwhile, there are 48 boards on the ASX 200 that still do not have a single female director.
Pickard, who’s been an executive vice president of Shell since March 2010, has had a tough and varied career in the oil business, spending five years in Nigeria overseeing Shell where she was described by Fortune Magazine as the “bravest woman in oil”, and managing some of Australia’s largest resource developments including the Gorgon Project. She’s continually shown a thick skin, particularly in the face of changing regulation and the so-called emergence of “green tape”. “I don’t like jumping the same hurdles three times in three different ways to get to the same outcome,” she told The Australian earlier this year.
The oil and gas industry is an “interesting place for women”, Pickard told the ABC’s Eliza Blue back in 2010, but added that she has used her gender to her advantage. She said that as a woman – particularly while working in the Soviet Union when she first took on a senior management role and later the Middle East – doors opened up for her because “everybody wanted to talk to me”.
It’s been important to have such a senior woman in oil and gas in Australia, not just for Shell but for the entire industry. Women need to see other women in top positions to believe they too can reach such heights and together with Caltex Australia chair Elizabeth Bryan, she’s proven such an industry can provide extraordinary careers for women.
Her departure would see our small number of powerful female chairs shrink. It shows the fragility of progress and that it’ll be a long time before we can lessen the pressure being applied to corporate Australia to consider both sides of the population for key leadership positions.