Women can't win. Discuss - Women's Agenda

Women can’t win. Discuss

Photo by Steve Chee for Fairfax

Last weekend Fairfax’s Sunday Life ran a cover story about some of the female powerhouses at the ABC. Emma Alberici, Leigh Sales, Annabel Crabb, Virginia Trioli, Kate Torney, Sally Neighbour and Jo Puccini were photographed in a sleek, monochrome shoot to accompany the feature article. Erin O’Dwyer interviewed the women about their roles, their careers, their family lives and working at the national broadcaster.

To say the feature attracted some attention is an understatement. Crikey published a thought-provoking op-ed on Monday from Whitney Fitzsimmons who argued that, notwithstanding the impressive line-up of “power-houses” featured, the ABC is hardly a utopia for working mums. The ABC published this statement on Wednesday in response to her piece. Fitzsimmons has responded to the ABC’s statement in a column in The Australian today discussing the need for cultural change and it’s worth a read

These are a few of my own, albeit circuitous, thoughts on the discussion the feature has prompted. I raised an eye-brow when I first clocked the preview image of Leigh Sales, Virginia Trioli and Emma Alberici looking ultra-glam on The Sun Herald’s cover last weekend. They looked smoking hot: far more overtly sexy than they look in their day jobs.

“Why do this? Why not really show them on the job as they really are? Why make turn them into an ABC equivalent of a Vanity Fair Oscars cover?” Fitzsimmons wrote. “Wearing a designer d’jour and teetering around in heels with big hair and five inches of makeup being labelled “screen queens” is not a prerequisite to being a credible journalist and yet that is exactly the message that these photos send.”

I accept that point. A woman’s appearance, inexplicably, remains a determinant of her worth and it’s accentuated for women in the media.  In light of that why present these successful women whose careers haven’t turned on their looks, in such a stylised, uber-glam fashion? Is it helpful? Do women – younger and older – need to be further inundated with images like this? Probably not.

But there is more to it than that. It’s a magazine cover. Magazines are stylised and uber-glam. That’s what they are. And this is where – in my mind – it gets tricky.

Is a magazine ever going to run a cover of seven women or seven men dressed in their own clothes, without make-up, standing as they like? I doubt it. It’s also relevant, isn’t it, that with the assistance of hair and make-up artists, lighting and expert photography every single one of us is likely to look a thousand times more glamourous than without? Does that make criticism of the shoot irrelevant? No. But it’s worth noting that the level playing field for magazine shoots is a few thousand kilometres above real life.

So then the question is this. Is it better to run a cover story with seven women styled as they were or not at all?

When it comes to female leadership there is a mantra that is repeated often. You cannot be what you cannot see. It’s the reason that images from last week’s Leaders’ Retreat are so dismal.  It’s the reason All-Male Panels are received the way they are.  They perpetuate a narrow typecast of power, ‘merit’ and leadership.

Is the ABC a utopia for balanced gender representation? No. Very few large organisations are. Whitney Fitzsimmons raises some valid questions today about its culture that ought to be considered.

But, does the ABC not being perfect negate the utility in highlighting the fact that there are females in a variety of senior roles at the national broadcaster? I’d argue not. I’d argue it presents men and women with some valuable vision for what’s possible.

Last Wednesday afternoon I found myself at the ABC studios in Ultimo in a make-up chair next to Annabel Crabb. Our conversation turned to the magazine feature which I am told prompted as much chatter within the ABC as it did outside.

On the issue of the photoshoot, which Crabb and Leigh Sales admitted was outside their natural comfort zone in their podcast, Crabb also said this.
The women featured are undoubtedly attractive but they’re hardly cookie-cutter-may-as-well-be-models. With that issue touched on we moved on to the article itself.

It’s a universally acknowledged truth that women with children in senior roles will always be asked how they manage their home life with their work life. This question is rarely levelled at men.

On announcing her resignation on Friday, Kate Torney, the ABC’s first female director of News, was asked whether her decision was motivated by seeking a more family-friendly lifestyle. She replied she didn’t think that question would be asked of a man and she’s most certainly right.

But, in my mind, it does not mean it’s not worth answering.

Men and women should be asked how they make their lives work. It’s helpful for women – and men – who do combine family and work to shed light on how they do that. I am always interested to discover how other people make the logistics of their lives work. There is no single answer but the more answers that are in the public domain the more easily others can find a solution that might just work for them.

The trouble is, when people in the public domain open up about their lives in this way they often attract the ire of others. It’s something of a lose-lose that I will allow Annabel herself to explain:

“I get asked quite often how I ‘manage it all’.” I’m always up-front about the fact that I have help – my partner works flexibly one day a week, I do a lot of time-shifting of my work, and we have an au pair who lives with us,” she says. “Not to look after the children while I go out to have my hair done. Not to get up with the children during the night, or give them breakfast while I have a delicious sleep-in. Not to cook them dinner or to make their Easter bonnets. Those – and a million other things – are a parent’s responsibility and pleasure to do. I need backup for when I can’t get to school at 3pm, and to help look after my two-year-old during the day. Every time I mention this in an interview, I feel a bit exposed and some people will roll their eyes and say – ‘Oooo, la-di-da. An au pair!’ But I’m buggered if I’m going to just smile enigmatically and say ‘Oh, you know, I’m just very organised’, and make every other working mother reading the interview feel like there’s some higher grade of competence or something. There isn’t. I mean, there might be, but if there is, I don’t have it. If you are going to work a full-on job with weird hours and have kids, then you need flexibility – both in your work and in the help that you get. I’m fortunate enough to have both, and that’s how I manage. End of story.”

The solution? Ditch the lose-lose. Accept that we set women up not to be able to win. We tear them down if they admit they have help and we tear them down if they don’t admit they have help.  

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