Despite a stunningly low representation of women in Cabinet, Australia has an opportunity to lead the G20 discussion on reducing the gender participation gap – and we should use it, because to remain competitive on the global landscape, we’ll have to play our strongest card: diversity.
Strongly emerging through all the tributes, reflections and proclamations after Gough Whitlam’s passing, is a clear yearning. A desire for our politicians and governments to speak to a higher dream of what Australia could be.
Could it be that we are searching for more “reform trumping management”, as Noel Pearson would say? The role of leadership and indeed our politicians should be to take us into the future, not just attend to our current daily needs. The upcoming G20 leaders’ meeting in Brisbane presents an opportunity for our political representatives to speak to this desire for reform.
Having put the goal ‘to reduce the gender participation gap’ on the official agenda for the first time ever, we have a rare opportunity to lead on this important global policy area, despite the fact that Australia has significant work to do on the gender gap in its own cabinet.
Globally, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index for 2014 places Australia at the 24th spot out of 142 countries, well ahead of our closest neighbor Indonesia who is in 97th position. However, Indonesia recently jumped way ahead of us in female political representation by appointing 8 women to its new cabinet.
Australia ranks globally at number 53 for political empowerment, with a score of only 19 per cent. According to new figures released by the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, unless the current rate of change is accelerated, gender parity in the workplace will not be achieved for 81 years.
We have to do better. As Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum says: “achieving gender equality is obviously necessary for economic reasons. Only those economies who have full access to all their talent will remain competitive and will prosper.
But even more important, gender equality is a matter of justice. As a humanity, we also have the obligation to ensure a balanced set of values,” The G20 will be discussing questions of how we innovate and remain competitive to meet the economic, environmental and social challenges facing us locally and globally. These are questions of leadership.
Australia’s ability to lead in the face of the world’s new realities will require us to work out where innovation is needed. Best practice leadership theory tells us that adaptation and innovation only occur when we can harness diversity of thinking and bring ideas together to create something new. Innovation very rarely happens when we only bring like-minded people together to solve problems, problems that this same thinking created in the first place. This is the exercise of leadership. Australia has an abundance of diversity.
In the 2011 census, data showed that Sydney alone had more than one third of its citizens born overseas, with women making up roughly 50 % of the population. Yet when we look at the benches of parliament and around the boardroom tables of our institutions we see sameness.
As Ann Sherry, CEO of Carnival Australia reflected “If you look across the whole Australian market, people are blind to talent that doesn’t look like them. It’s conscious and unconscious bias, and people are lazy. No-ones had to worry about it much before because everything’s been fine.”
We are now increasingly interconnected and the world’s problems are our problems, and they cannot be solved by any one sector, policy or initiative. These Australian and global leadership challenges that we face, now and in the future, will not be solved by our current ways of thinking. The focus on one leader, usually male, with the expectation that he will solve our problems while at the same time maintain our comfortable way of life, is past its use by date.
We need diversity of gender, culture, race, sector and ideas at our highest levels of leadership in this country. We need to change our thinking about what leadership looks like and who gets to lead.
As murmurings of Cabinet reshuffles continue, the Government need to open their eyes to the talent that doesn’t look like them. Improving the political representation of women in cabinet roles is necessary not only to model a desirable future reality, but also to bring the insights, ideas and innovation of 50% of the population to the key decision making table.
The change must happen at the top levels before it can trickle down across business, government and community. This will help us harness our potential to be more competitive and innovative to meet our complex challenges, and shift our practice of leadership from same-same, to new and interesting. It’s time.
Want to show your support for more women in Cabinet? You can join a Fair Agenda campaign on the issue at www.fairagenda.org/cabinet.