In a year when sexual abuse and harassment scandals marred the very top of federal politics, corporate Australia quietly marked another milestone in gender equality in the workplace.
“Targets need to be set and targets need to have teeth,” says Diane Smith-Gander, who chairs the Committee for Economic Development of Australia and buy now, pay later group Zip.As progress has been made, attention is now turning to getting more women into senior management roles, such as chief executive and chief financial officer positions. As part of that push some banks and other financial institutions are linking a company’s borrowing costs to gender equality targets.
It will take 65 years for women in Australia to reach parity with men in CEO roles at companies that have 100 or more employeesFitzsimmons says while the strong growth in the number of female board directors in the past decade has been impressive there remained a long way to go for increasing the number of women in senior management roles. He estimates it will take 65 years for women in Australia to reach parity with men in CEO roles at companies that have 100 or more employees.
Nicola Wakefield Evans, a director of Lend Lease and Macquarie and who also chairs the Australian chapter of the 30% Club, says it’s not until you get women onto company boards or in senior management that the conversations begin to change around gender equality. “It’s very hard to shout down 40 per cent of the board if 40 per cent are women. It’s much easier if there’s only one woman on the board to dismiss whatever she says.