I started the day thinking all was as it should be. And then I read the following tweet: RT @HarvardBiz: Women on Boards: America Is Falling Behind. If America is falling behind, Australia, our magnificent country, full of amazing women, is in the dark ages.
When I left university twenty years ago, to enter the male dominated world of investment banking, I was aware of the issue that women weren’t represented on the boards of Australian companies. However, like so many of my female peers, we simply thought the issue would disappear. We were told by our mothers and our fathers, our teachers and our professors that we could do anything. Be anyone. I now recognise this for what it was: naivete in the extreme. Twenty years later Australia has one of the poorest rates of female representation in the boardroom in the world.
What happened to gender diversity? What happened when a generation of highly educated Australian women entered the workforce? SILENCE. You are not hearing the sound of the glass ceiling shattering above the boardroom table. 84 boards in the ASX 200 still don’t have ANY female representation. That’s right ANY.
I know we have a female Governor General. And yes we have a female Prime Minister. And a female Premier. For this I am thrilled and delighted to be able to say to my daughters ‘that could be you’. But shamefully I can’t say this about reaching the highest levels of Australian business. Females simply don’t have the representation in the boardroom that we should and that is a problem for all Australians. And not just because the evidence shows that companies with a gender diverse board outperform. If we don’t have gender diversity on our companies boards then we don’t have gender diversity. Period.
It’s a disgrace of national proportions. Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia have greater female representation in the boardroom, to put it into global perspective. Call me impassioned on the issue but having watched the male status quo for the last twenty years I say “enough”! If your employer has an all male board, but the employee handbook says that they don’t tolerate discrimination based on gender, then it is a blatant case of do as I say, not as I do.