Thank you for inviting me to join you here today to share the things we have learned from business about making change, and talk about how that might apply to the world of sport. It’s wonderful to be part of such an important forum.

As you know, EOWA’s own focus is on business, rather than sport. But in my mind there are many connections between the two. Sport is big business these days. And business is driven by the same competitive spirit that inspires individual sportspeople. But there’s more to it than that.

I believe that when you look at the way both sport and business are generally organised, at the stereotypes that pervade them, and at the unchallenged assumptions on which they operate, there is a good deal in common between Australian business and Australian sport. Both present specific challenges for women in particular, and both have a long way to go to achieve true equal participation.

I am excited to be here today because forums like this one are a very positive step along that path to achieve change. What I’d like to share with you are the insights that we at EOWA have gained on how we can get effective change for women.

Our vision is to create an Australia where every woman can achieve her greatest potential in the workplace. We have an unrivalled view into the realities of life for working women because under federal law all private employers with 100 or more employees must report to us annually on the issues for women and the actions they are taking to address those.

This means that we have the big picture view—and although we’ve come a long way, it is clear that there is still a long way to go overall. But one of the most exciting parts of being at EOWA is that we are in a position to identify those employers who are at the leading edge in this area.

Each of these businesses have their own particular challenges when it comes to improving the outcomes for women, and each of them has come up with their own particular solutions. But what they have in common is an understanding that there is a problem, a recognition that this is costing them money! and a commitment to taking a creative approach to bringing about real change.

Their stories have a relevance that stretches far beyond just the business world. I think there are many aspects that apply equally to all of you here today, who are wishing to bring about more inclusion for women in sport, too. And so I’d like to share a couple of those stories with you.

There are some recurring themes in all of the organisations we see achieving real change. The first, and in many ways the most crucial, is commitment from the very top. I’ll talk more about that in detail in a moment, but the bottom line is that if whoever is at the very top of the organisation doesn’t get it you will never see real change no matter how perfect your policies are on paper.

Another recurring theme is the importance of consulting with the people who are most affected. In companies this means actually asking your employees what their issues are, and giving them the freedom to speak up—and be heard—without it being career-limiting.

Some businesses bring in policies that look great on paper—and may have even worked a treat back in head office!—but do not work for the people they’re supposed to benefit. Unless you know the real nature of the problems you’re trying to fix you’ll continue to address the symptoms and not the cause.

The third recurring theme common to organisations that bring about true change is that they succeed in engaging men. That might sound odd at first coming from the director of an organisation whose title specifies that it is concerned with “equal opportunity for women in the workplace”, but I don’t see it as odd at all. It is perfectly clear to me—after 15 years of working in this area, in both the public and private sectors—that engaging men is crucial to success.

That’s true first of all because men hold the decision-making power in the majority of organisations. And in an organisation where men are indifferent or hostile to change, it simply won’t happen. And second, because with the kinds of changes we all want to see—the kind that enable people to get ahead based on their abilities rather than their gender and to find a more satisfying navigation between work and life—men benefit too.

The first example I’d like to give you today of an organisation that has very effectively brought about real change is a Melbourne-based company called Autoliv, which manufactures seatbelts and airbags. In the male-dominated, traditionally run field of automotive parts manufacture, Autoliv has a female-dominated workforce, many from a non-English speaking background, a phenomenally low staff turnover and impressive annual growth.

The company’s CEO was named Leading CEO for the Advancement of Women in EOWA’s last annual Business Achievement Awards, and the company itself was named Leading Organisation for the Advancement of Women in its category.

The reason that I think Autoliv is a particularly useful example for you is that it is part of the manufacturing sector, which is traditionally very resistant to change and usually cites supposedly immovable constraints whenever change is mooted. And, as I said, it’s operating in an industry that has been traditionally male dominated.

If a company like Autoliv can show so convincingly that real change is not only possible but in fact produces better results for the organisation itself, no-one can argue convincingly that it’s too hard for them—be they in sport administration or in business.

Clearly this is one company that is doing a great deal right. But what, specifically? Well in terms of the recurring themes I mentioned above—commitment from the top, consulting with the people affected and engaging men—Autoliv shows how it can be done.

The biggest single success factor is the complete dedication of the CEO to enabling people to fully contribute to their best ability. From this everything else flows. I’m not saying that CEO dedication is the be all and end all. Of course it isn’t. The company needs well thought-out policies across a whole range of areas, and it needs to make sure these policies are effectively implemented in practice.

But without the CEO leading the way nothing will really change. Any changes that do occur will, in effect, sit on a shelf somewhere—they will never come to life for people and they will disappear when things get tough. To achieve genuine culture change, the person at the very top is key in ensuring that it happens.

As Autoliv’s CEO, Robert Franklin puts it, “If whoever’s leading the organisation is committed and continually demonstrates that commitment then the rest of the people will either follow or choose to go elsewhere.”

So, you have a committed CEO. But what else does it take? Identifying the scope of the problem is also crucial. In Autoliv’s case this involved measuring female participation in various aspects of the business and, where women were under-represented, setting specific targets (not quotas). For instance, currently 25% of managers are women. (This, by the way, is almost double the national average.) The company’s business plan states the improvement the company is working towards: 50% female managers. And it sets a very specific time-frame for this improvement: five years. It does the same thing for female engineers.

OK, fine, it’s in the overall company business plan, but how do you actually make sure those targets are achieved? At EOWA we believe that you get what you measure. In Autoliv’s case you require managers to build these targets into their unit’s business plan. Then you hold quarterly reviews of the unit’s performance against these targets. You 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 this. If managers perform poorly in these areas they are financially penalised—producing great dollar results is not enough to land you a great big bonus.

So, you need a dedicated CEO, identification of the key issues, a specific plan to tackle these, and a way of ensuring that your line managers carry through the plan. What else? Thinking beyond your own backyard helps: 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.

hey also don’t take “sorry, we just couldn’t find any women” as an excuse from recruitment agencies. Instead, the CEO personally oversees the recruitment processes, and he describes his role here as “a policeman”. This means the company requires the recruitment agencies it uses to submit their selection criteria for approval, and if they supply insufficient female candidates—there must be at least one on the shortlist—they have to go back and try again.

A lot of work has also been put into ensuring that the benefits and conditions of employment are appealing to the women the company wants to attract and retain. Among the results have been paid maternity leave, carer’s leave, flexible starting times and an early knock-off on Fridays plus one RDO a month. As you can imagine, some of these took quite a bit of work to make happen. Staggered start and finish times in particular is a real challenge for a manufacturing organization. But a lot of effort by managers and staff was put into making it work.

There also are various other uncommon benefits for employees such as 100% income protection insurance, a funeral benefit for employees or their family members, and a crisis fund for people who have family emergencies and need to travel overseas. These are innovations that come from effective staff consultation—from asking employees what exactly they need and then examining the business case for each.

The result of all of this is very high morale and those extremely impressive statistics to which I alluded earlier: annual staff turnover of less than half a percent, absenteeism of less than 3%, business growth of 20% annually and no industrial relations disputes for decade. For the CEO the overriding philosophy couldn’t be simpler. What he says is, “We’re really trying to make ourselves an employer of choice in order to attract the best people.”

Another company leading the way on equal opportunity for women in Australia is Sara Lee Household & Body Care. It was also a winner in our 2002 EOWA Business Achievement Awards.

Its CEO is Stephen Goodey, and in common with Autoliv’s Bob Franklin he is devoted to bringing about real change in this area because he sees diversity and equal opportunity as providing a critical business advantage.

He explains it by saying, “The size of our business means we need to keep good people - particularly women, who after all are the majority of business graduates - that we otherwise might have lost. We simply couldn't afford to recruit and retrain replacements. It’s also a competitive scenario - if we can position ourselves as an employer of choice by embracing diversity that will give us an edge in the marketplace.”

In order to achieve that Employer of Choice status, Sara Lee Household and Body Care has introduced many of the same innovations as Autoliv: flexible working hours, paid maternity leave and targets for female recruitment that must be met.

Again, we also see the importance of accountability in meeting these targets. In Sara Lee’s case the target for women in senior management is 50%, and both the CEO and HR manager’s performance bonuses are linked to meeting this. When the CEO links their own pay with equal opportunity outcomes, they are sending a message that can’t be ignored!

These examples show what can be done when the will is there, and they show in business terms the bottom-line benefits for everyone involved. Individuals benefit—both men and women—their families benefit, and the business itself benefits both financially and in terms of competition. And this will be as true for sport as it is in business.

Equal opportunity makes just as much sense in a sporting context—whether it be in terms of participation or management—as it does in business. In both arenas, to quote the old song, the fundamental things apply. If you give everybody an equal chance to shine you will get a better outcome, whatever your field of endeavour.

One of the ironies of me passing on to you what we have learned from business, is that in the area of management you are often already doing far better than Australian business is overall! Last year EOWA introduced a major initiative, the inaugural Australian Women in Leadership Census. This Census marked the first time we have had definitive data—as opposed to more ad hoc, hit and miss survey data—on the number of women in the crucial top decision-making roles in Australian business.

Using methodology developed by the influential Catalyst organization in the US, we examined Australia’s Top 200 publicly listed companies to see how many women each company had in executive management positions, and on the board of directors. The results were very disappointing, if unsurprising to us.

In each case, women occupy less than 9% of those roles. And 54%—more than half—of these companies have no senior female managers at all. It gets worse. Of the 8.4% of senior executive roles held by women, only 5% are in core business areas, which are the main feeder group for CEO and Board positions.

In other words most executive women are in the support areas often perceived to be “softer” and “more women-friendly” such as legal and HR. Only one in 20 of the key profit-and-loss making jobs—the jobs, with control of resources, that also serve as launch-pads for the very top of the corporate tree—only one in 20 of these jobs are held by women.

The situation is much better in certain areas of sports management. On the AOC executive board, for instance, women hold 17% of the positions. On the board of Sport Industry Australia it is 20%. And on the ASC Board women the figure is 41%. That’s more than four times the average figure from Australia’s Top 200 listed companies. When it comes to the executive level of the ASC, women occupy 25% of positions.

Again, that is far, far better than the current situation in Australian business. Still, it means that only one quarter of these executive positions are held by women—who make up half of the population. And, of course, the percentages in many other areas of sports administration don’t look nearly as good as these ones doe. So while you have made definite gains in some areas of sport, there is still quite a way to go yet. And one of the keys to getting there is getting strategic and engaging men.

Doing this successfully means thinking about why men are resistant to change or indifferent to it. Firstly they often can’t see the problem. I have often heard men express beliefs along the lines of ‘Look, there is no problem anymore. Women in the workplace are everywhere.” Often statistics such as the ones I’ve just shared with you from our Women in Leadership Census come as a genuine surprise to these men.

Then there are men who resist a move to greater equal opportunity because they see it as a real threat to their own position. They believe that what’s really going on is reverse discrimination. That, far from true equal opportunity, from now on men will be relegated to second place.

Often it’s only when men have a personal epiphany—when their talented daughter starts to talk about her own ambitions one Sunday over the roast, or when their sister in effect has to choose between a family and a career—that they truly begin to understand the reality. And when men have had such a personal epiphany they usually become great champions of the change.

But we can’t just sit back and hope for these Sunday roast epiphanies. Instead we have to understand the concerns and fears men have about the process and work to show them how the changes will benefit everyone and not just women.

Finding a more satisfying navigation of work and life balance is often a productive way into this discussion. The old model of always being at your desk if you want to get ahead has been responsible for far too many talented women staying on the middle rungs of management instead of progressing to the top. But it has also been the cause of a lot of dissatisfaction for men, too. The realization that there can be another way of doing things, and that men can benefit from that just as much as women can, can often win men over.

And given that men are, by and large, still in control of the decision-making processes and the purse-strings in business and in sport, getting them on board with the changes that need to be made to move us to a position of true equal opportunity is crucial.

It is still the case that women have to work twice as hard as men to achieve the same level of success. And certainly women have achieved a disproportionate level of success in Australian sport. For instance, I’m sure I’m not the only speaker at this conference to have been struck by the fact that while women made up only 29% of our Olympic teams between 1948 and 2000 they brought home 39% of the medals. And that’s just one example of this kind of disproportionate success, there are many more.

So, we know women have the talent and we know they have the ambition. And we know that despite all this they are still not getting ahead relative to their numbers—in sport, in business, and in too many other fields. And we know that this has to change.
It has to change because by doing so we will get better outcomes for sport and for business and for any other field you care to name. And it has to change because otherwise the waste is criminal.

As a country we put so much money and effort into educating girls and into making them believe they can do anything they want to if they are talented and determined enough.

Why do we bother? Did you know that women still only earn 84 cents for every dollar earned by men? Perhaps we should prepare our daughters for the real world by only giving them 84c of pocket money for every dollar their brothers get. Or by letting them influence only one in twenty major family decisions.

Of course none of us would ever do this. Instead most of us probably think we can arm our daughters with the vital information they need to become the lucky ones who slip through the system.

But we can’t. There are too many talented girls, there’s too much ambition out there to make it through the small holes in the net currently available. What we need to do instead is to work towards changing the way we do things.

Yes, sport needs more women, and so do business and politics. Equal opportunity for women in the workplace makes sense on every level including, crucially, business sense. Knowing that and working towards changing things for the better so that my two young daughters will have real equal opportunity is what inspires me every day. It’s what ensures that the passion I have for EOWA and the work we do never lessens. And I have very much appreciated the opportunity to come here today and share that passion with you.

Thank you.

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