Introduction
Good morning everyone, I am delighted to be here in Bunbury and to see so many women dedicated to working together and supporting each other to advance women’s careers. Organisations like Zonta provide us with invaluable support in terms of mentoring and networking which are important strategies to advance women and business.

This morning I would like to share my thoughts about a subject that is very close to my heart the importance of Woman as Leaders in the business community today. I know that many of you are already leaders so I would like to talk about the issues and frustrations that impact women like us.

How can we advance our careers further? How can we achieve a critical mass of women leaders in business, government and academia and what are the issues we face today in the Australian workplace and how do we address these issues?

When I think about how far we have come in achieving Equal Opportunity for women in Australia, I feel a mixture of emotions. On one hand, I feel excited because I had access to opportunity my mother never had: a quality education at school and at university; a professional career with access to workplace flexibility; affordable accessible childcare; and support from my partner and family – all enabling me to be where I am today. It is also pleasing to note that young Australian women are doing just as well academically at school and university as their male peers.

When you look at Australian business, we do have some great women in leadership from whom we can derive inspiration … Gail Kelly from the St. George Bank, Christine Nixon the Chief Commissioner Victorian Police, Elizabeth Proust Managing Director of Esanda and ANZ’s just to name a few. But, unfortunately, it is still just a few!

Hence … I also feel very frustrated. Frustrated about the time it is taking to see significant numbers of women in CEO and leadership positions, with a pipeline of female talent coming up behind.

For despite the business case for change being stronger than ever, women in leadership and decision making roles in the workplace still remain the minority. The truth is that the current Australian workplace still does not enable women to contribute fully to the best of their ability … and the majority of Australian employers still do not effectively tap 100% of the talent pool to create sustainable organisations.

When you survey CEOs they will tell you that they want their company to be around for years, but they are not looking at long term solutions for complex problems – such as women in leadership.

The world has changed dramatically, and I think the women in leadership debate that we at EOWA tapped into with the launch of our census last year is just an indicator of how badly we’re doing in advancing women to leadership roles in this country.

In my own experience as Equal Opportunity Manager at Esso Australia, I challenged the moulds of existing workplace arrangements such as lack of workplace flexibility, child care arrangements and looked at what the company was doing to retain female employees. Esso calculated that every female engineer who walked out the door was costing $150K to replace. So in looking at female retention there were great cost savings to be achieved.

To achieve results I had to work at the top and the top is mostly occupied by men. And, it is the male business leader who is critical for driving successful change inside corporate Australia; he is the key if progress is going to be made.

Today, this is one of my greatest frustrations, that we have not been successful in engaging sufficient Australian male CEOs to take the lead and action to advance women in their organisation.

This is where the Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) comes in.

EOWA – What we do
Operating at a nationwide level, the Agency works with more than 3,000 private sector organisations; inspiring them to take action to advance women and business. After four years as the Agency’s Director I still feel inspired and excited by the many challenges that lay ahead.

Our focus at EOWA is to deliver real equal opportunity for every working Australian woman.

Our mission is to inspire Australian employers to take action to improve equal opportunity outcomes for women in the workplace.

My 20-person staff work with HR staff and managers in the private sector and in non-profit organisations who employ more than 100 people, assisting them to get EEO /diversity for women on the corporate agenda – which means engaging the managers who hold the resource strings – who remain predominantly male - and convincing them to integrate these changes into the business strategy.

What we do is deliver practical solutions to business, tailoring ideas to suit employers at their particular stage of Equal Employment Opportunity integration, so that individual employers can move to becoming a real equal opportunity employer for women.

We’re also building strategic partnerships with leading corporations and educational organisations through tripartite arrangements with government and non-government organisations, academia and industry. And, more importantly, we are leading public debate to increase the pace of change in issues such as women in leadership and work / life concerns.

We have taken a strategic approach at EOWA to inspire employers to act, emphasising education and partnership, and working with employers rather than telling them what to do and this has paid off.

It is inspiring to know that we are making a difference to women’s lives, slowly breaking down the barriers they face in achieving leadership positions.

By achieving this not only will women win, so will Australian business, Australian families and Australian society.

It is my experience that many business leaders think that women in the workplace are everywhere. When I am at senior executive functions and asked what I do – the response is often “haven’t we fixed that yet”? Yet when I ask how many women report to them, do they report to a woman, and how many women are their peers, these senior executives count slowly on one hand oh there’s….. Susan oh….. and yes Rebecca – and that’s it! So you see, we still have an imbalance.

The Statistics
One look at the statistics shows us the real situation in 2003.

Although Australian working women make up 44% of the workforce, they hold a very small percentage of the crucial decision-making roles in the workplace.

Our inaugural EOWA Census last year highlighted this very real imbalance.

For the first time in Australia we had a definitive picture on the representation of women in the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. This is very, very significant information, because these companies control more than 89% of the market capital. So what they do has a big impact on Australian business.

What our 2002 Census showed was that women hold just 8.4 percent of the most senior executive positions. The picture is even worse when you break this down into the real power jobs. Women hold only five percent of the executive positions in the core business areas, which are the main feeder group for CEO and Board positions.

The representation of women on boards is no better. Here, too, women hold less than 9 percent of the available positions.

These figures put us back where the US was more than a decade ago, when the influential Catalyst organisation began its Women in Leadership Census there.

What is very challenging is that the calculations indicate that it will take over 170 years, at the current pace of change, before we achieve equal representation of women in senior management.

Scary!

Well, I can tell you right now, I’m not prepared to wait that long! As the mother of two daughters aged 13 and 8, I want my daughters, when they enter the workforce in roughly 15 years’ time, to have the same opportunity as boys their age. At this point in time, however, this seems unlikely.

And it’s my belief that many of you are here today because you believe the same.

And let’s remember, it’s not just in leadership that we see a problem. Women throughout the workforce who are working full-time earn only 84c for every dollar earned by men working equivalent hours.

Pay your daughters less pocket money than your son – get them used to working life! This is the slogan recently used in the UK to educate workers and companies.

You can see that despite the fact that Equal Opportunity has been around as an issue for so long, and despite the fact that every Australian jurisdiction has embraced anti-discrimination legislation, change on the ground has been slow to come.

Time is clearly not going to fix it. The story of what is happening in EEO is really one of those occasions when the saying about seeing the glass as being half-empty or half-full springs to mind.

Or more accurately in terms of EEO in Australia - a quarter full, and three-quarters empty.

On October 1, EOWA will release the data and statistics for the 2003 Census and we will see how far we have progressed over the past year.

Last year the Women in Leadership Census data was picked up by every major media outlet and we achieved excellent coverage on this issue. We hope this year will be no different. We will continue to release data such as the Census to ensure that the actual facts on women in leadership are presented to our business leaders and government to inspire strategic action.

Last year’s data showed that we are trailing 10-15 years behind the US and Canada. Australia is globally competitive in so many areas such as sport, the arts, film, science, design, music, why not business? Women in the workforce are here to stay. Why aren’t women making it into the top positions in companies?

Let’s examine some more statistics, women comprise:

• over 50% of HSC leavers (and are out-performing boys in the classroom)
• over half (58%) of all university graduates including in law and business (and consistently out-perform men).
• 49% of professionals
• 49% of property investors
• 47% of shareholders
• "35% of small business owners (and this figure is growing 3 times faster than men)
• 90% of household spending
• 44% of the workforce

Yet women are still significantly under-represented in leadership roles across the public, private, political and community sectors.
Despite our efforts at EOWA, I have to say that the majority of employers see EEO for women as a risk management issue not a strategic business priority.

You do not achieve EEO for women by being compliant to any Act. It is about driving benefits for the business’ bottom line.

According to a recent Harvard Business Report, a study of 215 Fortune 500 companies found there is a strong connection between high profitability and the promotion of women to executive positions.

Strategies for action
So what can we do? How do we achieve our leadership aspirations?

The first thing women need to do is plan our careers. The roles we occupy in our 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions after graduating from university or upon entering the workforce are crucial to advancing our careers. I believe we need to promote the mantra; it is about ‘pathways not positions’.

Let me explain further. Diane Grady, a non-executive Director of several public companies including Lend Lease and Woolworths, also believes that the problems start very early on in a woman’s career.

“Women”, she says, “are not being given career-making opportunities in their first, second or third positions ... they’re not assigned to the most critical clients ... they don’t have an opportunity to make a name for themselves early enough in their career”.

We know from research that one major factor in this is male managers unconscious assumptions about what women can and cannot do.

The fact is that the majority of Australian organisation do not have a pipeline of high performing women who have been identified for promotions and advancement – unlike men, typically few woman are earmarked for organisational advancement from ‘the sticky floor’ of their entry level jobs.

Our leading employees such as ANZ Bank, Autoliv and Sara Lee set targets for the number of women in Corporate Executive and Board positions and offer programs to achieve such targets. They argue that they measure everything else in their business – why would they not measure talent development.

Deloitte Touche is also committed to providing equal opportunity for women in the workplace via their Vision 2005 program; a program designed to actively support the retention and advancement of women in the firm and focus on the issues that confront and influence their career decisions.

Deloitte have researched several options for a Leadership program for women, as well as offering mentoring and networking programs. Women on maternity leave are updated via regular newsletter and the company is allocating breastfeeding rooms for women who wish to return to work while nursing. These are important steps in assisting women to achieve and advance their careers.

But another crucial factor is that – unlike men – women often lack a long-term view of their careers.

For example, if I were to ask each one of you here in the audience today what you plan to be doing in 10 years time, I have no doubt that many among you would be undecided or ambivalent. And yet, if I were to ask a man the same question, he’s likely to know the level he wants to reach at his current company or another, as well as what income he expects to be earning by a specific age.

The challenge for today’s working women is to make the shift from thinking in terms of jobs – to thinking in terms of careers.

And in today’s world, a career most often evolves as a series of related or even unrelated jobs. That doesn’t mean simply leaving it up to chance. Far from it – you need to control your career, and that requires planning. Let’s talk about this in more detail…..

Look at the organisation you work for and ask yourself some important questions:

Is the organisation toxic to diversity?
Diversity is important because it heightens the focus on an organisation’s people as a strategic resource, as well as on the importance of these people achieving business objectives.

Organisations whose executives are comfortable with diversity, often demonstrate more creative and less predictable decision-making processes. It is widely acknowledged that it will be those organisations that adapt the fastest to change in technology, culture, style that will have a competitive advantage over those who don’t.

Look at the talent management in the organisation, what does it say about the organisation. Are women promoted? Are women present in the board room as board members? What is the organisation doing to retain you?

What is the succession plan for the managers in the organisation? Look at who succeeds in the organisation and who doesn’t. How does the organisation respond to woman’s availability all the time, attending delayed and emergency meetings? How can the people issues and culture of the organisation be realigned? How can a better balance for people’s work and family life be instigated?
Is the organisation willing to take your career seriously? Are you able to take that transition from a staff role to a line role? Without experience in the ‘profit centres’ of organisations women are not going to achieve leadership positions.

Women continue to be clustered in low-paid, low-status work. In the private sector women are advancing into senior roles in staff areas such as Human Resources, Legal and Government and Public Affairs. These are important parts of the organisation, but they are not profit centres; typically these areas support the main business but are not part of the operational focus and these roles tend NOT to lead to key decision-making roles or key organisational leadership positions.

What you can do is to seek guidance from mentors about how you can move into line roles and get the necessary experience in these ‘profit centres.’

As you can see, it is very important to work for an organisation that is committed to advancing women. Let’s look at some of these organisations that exist in Australia today.

Leadership
In Margot Cairnes’ book ‘Approaching the Corporate Heart,’ she talks about two styles or organisations, the Old-style organisation and the New Style organisation.

The Old-style organisations and the warrior management principles they support are best suited for stable environments, where things are predictable and knowledge and information is restricted. Such conditions breed old-style warrior managers, whose skills are their ability to:

• imitate, administer, maintain
• focus on structure
• rely on control
• have a short-range view
• accept the status quo
• be classic good soldiers

New organisations, however, are post-information age. In today’s reality, change is the only constant; knowledge and information are open, plentiful and incomplete. The reality of new-style organisation is characterised by chaos, complexity, uncertainty and paradox. The rate of change is such that we can no longer even pretend that we can know what is going to happen next. Whole industries come and go overnight. Mergers, takeovers and technological innovation revolutionise the industrial landscape daily. Leaders in this environment need to:

• innovate, originate, develop
• focus on people
• inspire trust
• have a long-range view
• challenge the status quo
• ask what and why

This is how woman today need to lead. We are not about leading in the Old-Style, we must adopt the New-style organisation leadership approach.

So how do you do it? How do you pursue a women’s agenda in a man’s world – I can imagine that we have a great cross section of industries in this room, some of you may be working in education, agriculture or the oil industry – or even the finance sector – when 65% of the whole organisation is female, the top management is 90% male!!

The good news is that in my experience a number of employers are willing to be engaged and take a leadership role in the agenda – you just have to find them!!!

But …! You have to identify “what’s in it for them” to support you.

Strategy for Change
You also need to go where the door is open or slightly ajar. I learned early on to not bother knocking on doors that were tightly closed. The good news is that time finally catches up with these managers (although sometimes it can take too long for my liking!!!)

As the EO Manager for Esso, I was fortunate to work with 2 inspiring men – one head of succession planning in HR – and the other the technical manager – (probably the best manager I have ever worked with in terms of technical skills and people skills). He was responsible for growing the organisation’s talent.

Both had extremely high credibility in the organisation and I worked in partnership with them to drive a change agenda that saw the company win the Corporate Work & Family awards twice, as well as an Institute of Engineers award for turning around our female engineer attrition. We cost- benefited work-based childcare on the basis that if we retained 2 middle management women a year in that organisation after having babies we would be ahead!!!

At the same time we also had a female Director who was a wonderful supporter of women and who actively supported me through the change process. She asked all the right questions in the Board room – but allowed the men to take the running on the change process – and we achieved great outcomes for both the women in the company and the business itself!!!

Fiona Krautil Leadership:
I have learned that the impetus for change may come from the bottom of the organisation but to effectively deliver change it must be driven from the top. Why? Because we have to change the “way we do things” in organisations if women are to fully contribute to the best of their ability.

We have to put in place contemporary human resource policies and practice that support the flexibility and caring responsibilities of women and more and more men, i.e that reflect the needs of today’s diverse workforce.

Managers at all levels have to “walk the talk” of these policies e.g. appoint a pregnant female to a managerial job if she is the best candidate and create a workplace culture that is diversity friendly – not diversity toxic - that is, that female staff are not seen as “lesser” contributors or not committed to the company, and that its OK to leave the organisation at a reasonable time to meet family commitments.

I have also learned that not all women will engage in the change agenda unless key senior male managers with high organisational credibility take the lead. In my experience many young women see it as potentially career limiting to be labelled as someone who speaks up on women’s issues. These women are not willing to take the risk – unless it is clear that the organisation supports women who speak up and demonstrates that it wishes to learn what to do differently in order to capture female talent.

For women working in the corporate world today – and particularly for women working in what are still men’s worlds - many remain reluctant to become involved on women’s initiatives – such as female networking forums, women’s only career development etc – because they don’t want to “stand out: and be seen to be different.

The sad part is that they are in denial because however much they act like a man, they are different, and in my view the sooner they realize it the better.

In each of the three organisations I worked in there were also a number of women who were willing to support me and stand up and be counted on women’s issues – but it was much better to engage the majority of women in the organisation, and encourage them to share their stories with key male managers rather than one person becoming the advocate for all women in the organisation.

So how do you do that?? You ensure the senior male manager invites the women to the networking function – and the majority of them will come.

You make sure that as part of their welcome they “lay it on the line” that the reason they are there is their commitment to an inclusive workplace for women and that they are keen to hear from their female staff what was working well - but also, what needs to be improved.

The major challenge women face is to get male executives to put women employment issues on the strategic business agenda and not to delegate it to the HR Department. We also need to help these senior executives to “get it”. For many men, the corporate culture is like water to a fish – they actually can’t see the “small” but frustrating day-by-day challenges women are facing at all levels of the organisation.

For many men, it’s not until their highly assertive daughters start to experience some of the discriminatory behaviour in the workplace that they open up their eyes.

Companies that make a difference create a safe working environment for women to speak up and share their stories about what it is really like working in the organisation. However, it takes courage and strategic commitment to action to deliver sustainable results.

ALCOA case study
In Western Australia, the mining company ALCOA has adopted a long term commitment to the advancement of women in their company. They have appointed a female manager to run one of the 3 Alcoa mines and put another woman in charge of one of their plants. They are shaking up the culture and have had to deal with a male backlash – but they are willing to do so because they believe this is something the company has to do to maintain its competitiveness.

Autoliv case study
Another example is the Melbourne based manufacturing company, Autoliv. This traditionally male-dominated, often industrially-troubled sector of automotive parts manufacture, Autoliv has a female dominated workforce, a phenomenally low turnover and impressive annual growth. This is in no small part is due to the commitment of their CEO, Robert Franklin.

Autoliv identified the areas of the business where women were under-represented and set specific targets. For instance:

• currently 25 percent of managers are women, almost double the national average.

Not satisfied with that achievement, the company is working towards a target of 50 percent female managers in five years time.

Similarly, currently only 14 percent of the company’s engineers are women. The five-year plan sets the target number at 30 percent.

To achieve these targets, Autoliv requires managers to build them into their unit’s business plan. They hold quarterly reviews of performance against these targets.

They also build it into personal performance reviews. Executives are judged, in part, on their leadership performance, and equal opportunity and equal participation are seen as very strong components of leadership performance.

Autoliv has also been great at coming up with creative solutions. Having identified that they were not attracting female engineering candidates in the numbers they wanted, Autoliv has funded a female engineering scholarship program at Swinburne University.

The company has also implemented paid maternity leave, carers’ leave, flexible starting times and an early knock-off on Fridays plus one RDO a month. Quite an achievement for a manufacturing organisation.

The results of all of this is very high morale and impressive performance statistics are clearly evident:

• 0.5% staff turnover
• less than 3% absenteeism
• business growth of 20% annually
• and no industrial relations disputes for over a decade

A STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS
I’ve talked about the challenges women face, and also the benefits to be gained from work redesign, from career planning, and from networking others who can support you.

But the truth is you need to work out what works for you in pursuing effective career management strategies of your own.

In 2001 I attended a conference in New York for Catalyst, a non-profit organisation that works with Fortune 500 companies in the United States to advance women and business. At this conference, the president, Sheila Wellington, who has written a book entitled, How to be Your Own Mentor. developed a list of “get-ahead basics” for achieving your full potential in the workplace, and I’d like to leave you with that list – a list that reflects my own Australian experience and also a couple of my own key learnings and drivers.

GET-AHEAD BASICS by Sheila Wellington

1. The best isn’t good enough.
You’ve got to deliver on the expectations of your manager – and more. Deliver results on time or ahead of time and deliver more than they expect. In this way, you begin to build a good track record.

2. Time is of the essence.
Good time management skills are crucial, especially for women who often take leave or use flexible work schedules to navigate work and family commitments.

3. If you don’t blow your trumpet, nobody else will.
Successful work deserves public recognition, so don’t sit around and wait to be noticed. Men keep their managers informed about their progress on a project and so should you.

4. Expertise impresses.
Investigate training that will help you develop an expertise in a unique, relevant specialty. People will turn to you for that expertise which in turn enhances your reputation.

5. Nothing comes to she who waits.
Men don’t wait to be asked to do things – they just do them. And often they bluff their way through when they don’t know how. If you see a task you’d be good at, tell your boss your plans for dealing with it. Then – do it!

6. It’s not just organisations that need to diversify.
To succeed you need to diversify your experience. If you are aiming for upper ranks, you need to get broad experience in many aspects of running an organisation. You need to learn how things work.

7. Fortune favours the brave.
Performing well at what you’ve done before will not move you ahead. You need to demonstrate your readiness for the new, the bold, the daring. You need to take on stretch assignments, ones that will cultivate new abilities and show them off.

8. And finally, money matters.
Many women believe that money doesn’t matter and later, usually too late, they find out that it does. Make it clear what salary you’ll accept when you’re applying for a job and expect what you’re worth!

If you’re feeling fired up and want to take the system on too, here are some organisational goals you can strive for as well!

• Educate your CEO and managers
• Identify and address the EO issues in your workplace
• Use EOWA’s website and tools!
• Aim for your organisation to become an “Employer of Choice for Women”
• Win an EOWA Business Achievement Award!

I would like to conclude with a quote from Cathleen Black, who was, until recently, president of Hearst Magazines and the most influential woman in magazine publishing in the US, which I think encapsulates this strategy for women to advance in the workplace:

“When women are faced with a barrier – and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the old boys’ network or backlash from your visibility – the way to react is not to simply complain; it’s to plan your attack. Success is the ability to use your leverage to get where you want to be. It’s the ability to use all your tools. It’s keeping your head out and up. It’s the willing to take the risk, to step up to the opportunity.”

Remember that “only you can ultimately imagine, shape and move your own career forward.”

It is critical that we at EOWA and all of us here today continue to educate Australian business leaders that ‘Women = Profits’ and that diversity is a strategic business imperative for all Australian organisation who want to remain competitive.

Let us rise to the challenge and show our true potential.

Thank you. I welcome any questions you may have.

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