When it comes to gender equality, it seems, the work is never done. Having spearheaded decades of public policy change, committed feminists, know all too well how, without continued vigilance and commitment from male leaders, a critical mass of women in leadership can slip away.
The federal Liberal party is the latest casualty of this reversion. Women’s representation in the leadership of our nation now sits in stark contrast with the rest of the country. This is a staggering, if not embarrassing, situation. Even the Prime Minister conceded it is “disappointing” seemingly amnesic to the fact that he is entirely responsible for the parliamentary boys club he installed.
Women’s share of senior portfolios in the previous Howard government – and in each of the Labor governments that followed – far outnumbered those in Abbott’s coalition. How can this be?
In the corporate sector, companies are knuckling down to apply corporate governance and public policy reforms to promote women in leadership and management, and to review diversity and equality in remuneration. Albeit the efforts have procured patchy results but these steps have been preceded by a long period of reform and decades of changing community expectations about the role of women in public life.
A review of reporting and performance disclosures by 32 leading ASX companies, found only one company had less women on their board than the new federal government (Ramsay Healthcare). The average female board representation for the group of 32 was 20%, and 22 of these companies had two or more women on their 8 to 12 person boards.
By comparison the federal government with one woman in cabinet has 5% representation. Including the five women in the total leadership team of outer ministry and parliamentary secretaries, women’s total representation is around 14%.
Companies performed much better in achieving greater gender equality, compared with dozens of other sustainability topics that were reviewed. Researchers concluded this was a direct result of the clear external guidance that was established through the ASX Corporate Governance Principles introduced in 2011. It was also noted that a more activist approach by the federal Labor government in establishing the new Workplace Gender Equality Agency helped.
These results are more interesting because new gender reporting requirements were preceded by a long period of complaint by some corporations who resented the interference of ‘diversity-regulators’ into their business. Many corporate leaders initially bemoaned a lack of ‘female talent’ opining that there simply weren’t enough suitably qualified women candidates for top jobs, or claiming women weren’t putting themselves forward in strong measure.
Today these arguments hold no weight: women graduates and high achieving professionals equal or outnumber their male peers. Countless surveys attest that women don’t lack ambition to exceed in their chosen career.
But not only have many companies embraced the gender reporting requirements, they are having a noticeable (if somewhat slow) impact on improving corporate performance. Many chief executives are proud of their initial achievements in this area.
These results also show there are several areas for future improvement because in some areas the results have been underwhelming. Companies appear to have selectively focused on increasing women at board level, while overlooking the need to increase women in the ranks of senior management. Policies concerning equal remuneration need much more attention and rigour, particularly reporting about pay disparity within an organization.
But the clear message from this review is that companies, once they know what’s expected, will get on and do it.
This could pave the way for a more activist approach around quotas if the pace of performance continues to lag. But more immediately it should suggest to our new Prime Minister that he is greatly out of step with the business and broader community that his government serves.
Achieving diversity in decision making in our parliament is as much a moral and democratic aspiration as it is about equality of opportunity or merit. And with no shortage of talented female members of Parliament, a re-shuffle should be on the pre-Christmas cards.
Schofield relates to the CSR Dashboard, released in May this year.