In twenty years, what’s changed for women in business?
That was the question asked at a Telstra media event in Sydney this morning, with a number of leading businesswomen and former Telstra award winners presenting an optimistic view off how much progress has been made.
We have, after all, seen a female prime minister and female Governor General in this country. The number of women on ASX 200 boards has jumped from somewhere close to zero to more than 18%. We’ve seen the introduction of government paid parental leave and the gender discussion move from something occurring on the sidelines to a genuine business concern for powerful male CEOs. Women can now serve on the frontline in our armed forces. Female business owners are challenging industries by breaking ground on new ideas and service offerings. There are a massive 1.6 million more women in the workforce. Yesterday, the first female assistant coach was appointed to the AFL. Indeed, much (but not all) of the overt gender discrimination that once plagued organisations has now gone.
And yet the gender pay gap remains pretty much the same. While the number of women in senior leadership positions has increased, the pace of change has been glacial. Sexual harassment and violence against women is still a real and significant problem. One in two women who’ve had children report feeling discriminated against either during her pregnancy, on maternity leave, or in the period after they first have children.
So while we’ve seen some progress in twenty years, the challenges that remain might be the really difficult ones to remove. As Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick told the panel, we’re now dealing with “gender asbestos”. It’s in the roof, the walls and floors of our organisations. You can’t see it. Can’t touch it. But it exists and it’s dangerous. “It’s more difficult to name and therefore more difficult to do anything about.”
And much of it comes down to the assumptions we make about men and women. They’re long-held societal and business norms not only regarding which gender should do what at home and at work, but also the ‘gender-based limits’ we use to determine how we believe others should behave.
As Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Perron told the panel, that ‘gender asbestos’ holds many of us back from speaking up. “One of the situations we’ve all been in is the feeling that, ‘this has been the most sexist things that’s happened to me’ and yet I can’t do anything about it because if I do it’s going to look like I’m weak or playing the gender card.”
And as Broderick added, it’s here that bystanders can help. Men and women who can step in and speak up if they see a woman being treated unfairly. “This is not a women’s issue. This is all our issue,” she said.
So what else can help? Telstra Group Managing Director of Strategic Finance, Cynthia Whelan, said more accessible and affordable childcare is essential. She believes far too many women can’t actually choose to work or have the career they might desire because they can’t find suitable caring arrangements.
Commonwealth Bank executive general manager Rhonda Brighton-Hall said she’d like to see big changes in the way we currently structure work — that’s something already being done in some start-ups business, with Shoes of Prey founder Jodie Fox noting the benefit of being able to apply new structures of working into her legacy-free new business. Telstra is proving the desire for such change is also possible in large corporates, announcing in December that all advertised positions will now include flexibility provisions.
Louise Herron added that the conversation about women on boards is overplayed, and we should be applying metrics and targets to other senior leadership positions in organisations.
Meanwhile, Broderick concluded her dream for a more equal and fairer society would be to see the social norms that constrain men and women all over the world removed. Changes that would see men take a greater and more acceptable role in managing the caring responsibilities — a role she believes many men actually want to take.
As for that persistent gender pay gap — which still sits somewhere around 17.5% despite all the ‘progress’ made for women in the last twenty years, that too needs to be addressed. “For men and women to make true choices about who takes care of the children they need to be paid equally first,” said Broderick.
Accountability and transparency will help. “We have to look the gender pay gap in the eye and not be okay with it,” said Brighton-Hall.