Working at opposite ends of the female talent lifecycle; Teigan Margetts, Graduate Program Manager and Amy Cato, Owner and Director of Executive Women Shortlists, met to have what they thought would be a very positive discussion about the future of women in leadership. Their discussion, however, uncovered what appears to be a ‘gaping chasm’ in the development of future female executives.
From Cato’s perspective, everything seemed fairly positive, albeit on the surface. “I founded Executive Women Shortlists in early 2014 in response to increasing demand from my clients to find talented female executives,” Cato says. “Since then, I have seen an exponential increase in the amount of organisations looking for female talent. There has never been a more encouraging time to be a female executive.”
Discussing why there had been such an increase in the demand for female executives, Margetts and Cato agreed that organisations today were in a post-business case world. “The benefits of diversity really speak for themselves,” Cato says. “Diversity leads to a more inclusive culture, better employee engagement, higher levels of innovation, and a diversity of perspectives that reflects the needs of an organisation’s customers. This leads directly to better business bottom line results. Fortunately, most organisations now realise that. So the next step is making it happen.”
Making it happen is what many organisations are trying to do but Cato says that, currently, the demand for female executives is beginning to outweigh supply. “I have many talented females who are getting approached [by recruiters] weekly, and if they were to say they were on the market, they would get 2, 3 or 4 offers. Therein lies the beginning of the problem, though,” Cato admits. “Whilst talented senior women exist in all sectors and industries, there is not enough candidates to get anywhere near parity. And although organisations are being very proactive in searching for them, they don’t appear to be organically ‘growing’ them. The number of female executives is definitely flat-lining. Or even decreasing, if you look at the drop in female representation of ASX CEO’s with Gail Kelly’s departure.”
Margetts believes that, whilst positive discrimination is viewed as necessary and warranted at senior levels within organisations, many companies are simply turning a blind eye to the fact that females, at all levels of their careers, experience some level of disadvantage, whether it be through unconscious bias in the promotion process, maternity leave, being funnelled into ‘traditional’ female roles (in support or administration), or simply lacking role models and the appropriate social networks to succeed.
“The path to being a senior executive starts at graduate level,” Margetts says. “And most talent management systems and programs I see seem to say ‘you either have it or you don’t’ and if you don’t have it from a young age, you’re not going to get it. At those early stages, no one is paying much attention to gender equality; they just assume everyone is equal. The female talent pipeline then slowly erodes, and when only a handful of females reach the top echelons, everyone is scratching their head wondering why.”
Margetts says it’s because we fail to recognise and redress the different way we think about men and women. “The gendered society in which we bring up children, the ideas of which are reinforced in early adulthood, profoundly effects what each individual brings to the workplace,” she says. “Females, realistically, start from a position of disadvantage, and this is compounded at every stage of their career.”
So what can organisations do to address this gaping chasm in the female talent pipeline?
Having senior females role models is absolutely vital in every organisation. The next critical step after this, though, is to take the gender lens to their entire talent management process and ensure that they have an equal gender split. Companies that don’t plan ahead to develop their female talent will end up being less competitive, less innovative, less financially successful than those that do.
If organisations don’t have at least 50% female of any given group of talent who will be ready for senior leadership in 5 years, then equality will never be reached. The same goes for 10 years. 15 years. 20 years. We need to start now with grooming our female leaders of the future for us to even have a hope of achieving equality, and fully realising the benefit of diversity.