How women are infiltrating the old boys network - Women's Agenda

How women are infiltrating the old boys network

Bill Pulver was asked about his ascendancy to the top of Australian Rugby Union at a Carbine Club lunch event in Sydney yesterday. He talked about how a round of golf with old school friend and ARU chairman Michael Hawker resulted in the job offer. By the time the pair had reached the fourth hole, Pulver’s former schoolboy rugby team mate had discussed the CEO role with him.

That game of golf between two old private school friends in November last year resulted in Pulver’s appointment in January to one of Australian sport’s most sought-after roles. That is still how it’s done. We may throw up our hands, bang our heads on the table and shriek with horror, but that doesn’t change the fact that the old boys network is alive and kicking. The boys club has been almost impossible for women to crack because it generally works like this: there is a vacancy at board level or for a CEO and talk turns to ‘who do I know’, rather than ‘how do we find the ideal candidate’. A senior executive at a professional services firm recently confirmed that it’s the single biggest issue confronting leadership diversity in many male-dominated industries. When bright and promising future female leaders leave the organisation temporarily or permanently to have children, stopping the senior men from picking up the phone to tap a mate becomes the challenge.

If we want any of the jobs that are usually handed baton-style from one mate to another, do we need to become a mate? I attended the rugby lunch as a guest of NSW Rugby Union director and former NSW Liberal Party leader Kerry Chikarovski. She hosted the only predominantly female table at an event that was about 95% male. Chikarovski is clearly an embedded member of the rugby union fraternity. During the course of the lunch a number of men came over to congratulate her on the board appointment. She knew them not just by name, but by nickname too. Pulver and at least one other gave her a shout out from the stage and there appeared to be genuine warmth towards her from this blokey group. Rugby Union is Chikarovski’s arena and she shone like a diamond at the Carbine Club event amidst that sea of men.

I witnessed the same when I attended an Australian Olympic Committee board meeting as the representative for netball prior to last year’s Olympic games. Former NSW Premier and now CEO of Basketball Australia Kristina Keneally was in the room and AOC President John Coates referred to her often from his place at the podium. Again the majority of people in the room were male and at the time there were no women on the AOC Board. There are now three.

Chikarovski and Keneally are both strong women who survived state politics so perhaps this environment is a snack by comparison. But clearly there is room for at least some women at the top of these male-dominated organisations that have traditionally had succession plans tightly linked to old boy networks. You just need to be prepared to stand up and out, play on their turf and, for the time being at least, be outnumbered by men. And it certainly seems that learning to play golf should be back on my career-booster list.

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