Given we’re all some mother’s child, often somebody’s sister, wife, girlfriend or colleague, the challenge of ‘finding a woman’ shouldn’t actually be that challenging.
We’re pretty much everywhere, and especially easy to find when it comes to unpaid or low-paid work and caring duties.
But in other areas of business, as we know, finding a woman can be difficult.
Women, they just don’t lean in. They’re too busy. They’ve got too many other responsibilities. They’ll probably just want to go off and have babies anyway. They’re unconfident and unavailable. They’ve had weird career breaks. Their experience can look a bit funny on paper.
We know all the excuses. Sometimes and depending on the circumstances, those excuses may be valid.
But what we also know is that if you probe a little further, or if you search just a little bit harder, women in business are actually very easy to find and particularly willing to say yes. They may not be the CEO of an ASX listed company, given women make up such a tiny proportion of such positions anyway, but their experience and ideas are just as worthwhile. Ask a few questions and you’ll find there’s not a huge amount of difference in the ambitions of men and women, particularly when it comes to a desire to reach leadership positions, to grow a public profile, and speak at events.
Former IBM managing director and company director Andrew Stevens seems to know this well. Recently, he was asked to appear as part of a four-person panel, that was all male.
As a signatory of the Male Champions of Change Panel Pledge, promising to not appear on all-male panels (and somebody who genuinely sees the value in diversity), he asked the event organisers to try again. Sure enough, two women were found within a few days and the panel quickly became gender balanced.
Stevens wants to see more leaders commit to the ‘Panel Pledge’, and to continually speak up about the need to for gender balance during public forums. Men don’t have to immediately say no to speaking opportunities if there are no women present, but they should remind the organisers about why including women is important and ask them to go and try harder in finding a suitable candidate (or better still, more than one) to participate.
More often than not, such all-male situations are not deliberately created but rather just happen to fall into place because it’s the status quo and it’s simpler to stick with what you know. A few questions will help: Why are there no women involved? How can we get a woman involved?
“I’ve spoken up and said, ‘I will only join a gender balanced panel’, and it’s been arranged,” Stevens told me, prior to speaking about the power of the Panel Pledge at last month’s launch of the latest update from the Male Champions of Change. “I’ve seen a 100% success rate of hearing, ‘Yes we’ll go and fix it,” he said.
As the University of Sydney’s Michael Spence added when speaking about the Panel Pledge: “The point is not to be dogmatic, but rather to open up good conversations.” Such conversations make those responsible for selecting and inviting people to participate in such events start thinking about the importance of diversity. It starts with gender, but extends well beyond that.
According to estimates by the Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia and published by the Male Champions of Change, less than 15% of panellists in Australia are female.
This sees audiences given a narrow view of the issue at hand. It also sends a message to women in the audience, or who view the line-up elsewhere, that only men can serve in such positions – a lack of visible women perpetuates a lack of women. Indeed, it could even see women not attend, thinking there’s nothing in if for them and ultimately impacting the business success of the event. Meanwhile, it means women miss out on vital profile-building opportunities.
As our now former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick says, “If you don’t intentionally include women, the system will unintentionally exclude them.”
Too often that tiny 15% of panel seats that are female are occupied over and over again by the same women, meaning the pool of opportunity is even smaller. Deloitte CEO Cindy Hook knows this, being a highly visible female leader sees her constantly asked to speak at events. She believes the pool needs to be widened, and makes a point of trying to share the load with other, often less visible, female leaders.
It’s easy to stick with the known, or go with the obvious. And by doing so, we’ll continue to see a lopsided number of men on boards, in leadership positions, in politics and across powerful positions in the community. We’ll continue to see men dominate business conferences and panel discussions.
But simply asking questions disrupts the known. It challenges expectations and forces people to think differently.
The panel pledge is a great step on starting conversations about diversity. Making that constant commitment to ask, ‘where are the women?’ across all facets of business life will extend the conversation much further.
Tip: If you need help finding a woman for an upcoming event, check out Women For Media. Also, see our recent list of female tech entrepreneurs