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Executive women:

Unequal opportunities in Australia

by Simon Longstaff

In an intensively competitive world, one would think that rational self-interest would lead Australian business to maximise its access to the skills, knowledge and experience of Australia’s women.

Yet, as the results of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency EOWA 2003 Australian Census reveal, Australian business has barely tapped into the rich vein of talent that is Australia’s working women. The figures speak for themselves – with less than 9% of senior executive and board positions filled by women.

At one level, the failure to engage women could be seen simply as evidence of a lack of commitment to equal opportunity. However, it is likely that the explanation is at once more complex and challenging. It is nearly a decade since I shared a most illuminating conversation about this matter with my former colleague, Attracta Lagan.

Attracta had just completed a significant piece of work with one of Australia’s leading professional firms in which she had sought to help them understand why talented women were not rising to the upper ranks of its partnership. Attracta had found that the best explanation for this was not to be found in the presence of formal barriers. Indeed, she believed the senior management to be sincere in their desire to encourage women who were amongst the best and the brightest to advance within the firm.

So, what explained the phenomenon? Put simply, the evidence was that talented women were choosing not to advance in the organisation because they could not relate to its values. That is, instead of colluding with a way of life they opposed, women who could afford to do so were voting with their feet – often establishing their own businesses either alone or in the company of like-minded individuals.

I suspect that if we drilled down into the results of the EOWA 2003 survey results, then we would probably find further evidence to support Attracta Lagan’s hypothesis. At the very least, I can confirm that in a decade of speaking to women about this issue, they have frequently confirmed to me that Attracta’s findings resonate with their own experience.

Given all of this, the challenge of breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ is far more profound than simply reforming the systems and policies that otherwise block advancement. Some have thought that the greatest challenge would be to change the attitudes of men-in-power – especially those who feel threatened by the additional competition posed by women. However, the required change in attitudes seems to be well under way.

As the social researcher Hugh Mackay has found, a younger generation of men is emerging who remain ‘bloke-ish’ while, at the same time, genuinely accepting the absolute equality of women as an unquestioned fact in their lives. An appropriate change in attitudes is probably just a matter of time.

However, changes in attitudes, systems and policies will not be enough. What is needed is for the DNA of organisations (their core values and principles) to change in ways that women conclude to be worth supporting through the gift of their time and talents.

Of course, the values supported by women vary across the population. As such, it would be foolish to claim that there is some kind of ethical ‘template’ that all will support with equal vigour. Yet, my experience suggests that women are more likely to share the following traits: they focus more on the reality of relationships rather than the ‘mock’ form enshrined in the rules contained in documents like contracts; they expect more than a rhetorical commitment to ‘work/family’ balance; they are less inclined to believe that the ‘ends justify the means’; they are far less receptive to the oft-repeated claim that ‘business is war’.

The challenge of creating cultures in which women feel that they can flourish involves a paradox that is worth considering. Given the current structure of power within most organisations, it is likely that the decision to create workplaces that inspire women will have to be made by men!

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