It was in medieval times that the Queen first appeared on the chess board. She had her tiara, but little else. She could only move diagonally, one space at a time and could only reach 32 of the 64 spaces on the board. The weakest on the board, she stood beside her King, who, while also just one step at a time had the opportunity to move to all 64 squares.

It took 500 years before the Queen became the most powerful piece on the board. For the unfamiliar, while the rules of the game did not change for her King, the Queen can now move in any straight line, horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. Her advancement is restricted only by her inability to emulate the knight in battle.

The similarities of the game to the emergence of women into prominent and powerful positions in society today are striking.

Women in Australia today like our chess queen are restricted from only one workplace, the battle front, Australia’s last exception to CEDAW. In addition, we both experience somewhat of a gender wage gap. The Queen’s worth is just 9 points when her King 200 and Australian women on average experience a wage gap of 8%.

So while it took our chess queen 500 years to have both her tiara and power, is time moving too slow for women in Australia today?

Equal Employment Opportunity and future directions – is it backwards and the end of equality like some believe or still moving forwards.

Data on women in management that I will release today tells us the future direction is both forward and positive for women in the workplace.

However despite the gains, challenges still exist. The issue of pay equity; improved access to workplace flexibility for all working women who need to balance competing priorities; workplace exclusion by age, disability and race; and the segregation by occupation, industry and type of employment.


WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT
Twenty years ago women in management were just over 20%. Despite significant increases in workforce participation, representation increased only marginally over the two decades since, hovering around just 25% in the early part of this century.

What we are seeing today however and what we can track over the past three years in particular through the EOWA Census of Women in Leadership, ABS Workforce data and new EOWA reporting data is a substantial jump in the numbers of women taking on leadership roles within business, many on the back of greater flexibility and access to part-time work.

Taken independently the increases might seem insignificant, but the three data measures all point in the same direction and demonstrate that women are continuing to increase their presence in management.


The 2004 EOWA Census of Women in Leadership, produced in partnership with ANZ, Esanda and Macquarie University was released not long after last years conference.

Many of you would be familiar with the results, so I would just like to focus on one aspect – women in executive management. In the first year of the census women in executive management positions in the ASX top 200 companies were just 8.4%. This rose just slightly the following year to 8.8%. Then last year the Census saw a 1.4% increase on this indicator from the previous year – with 10.2% of women in the top jobs.

While it might be too early to tell, 2004 would appear to have been a turning point for women in business. Is it the beginning and not the end of equality?


The latest ABS data shows a 3.4 percentage point increase for women in management across Australia from May last year to May this year, reaching a high of 28.4%, following a small increase the previous year.

This is the largest increase for the ABS and for the first time brings women’s national representation in management close to that of the medium-to-large employers that report annually to EOWA.


The EOWA women in management data, drawn from private sector employers with over 100 staff, indicates an upward and steady trend in the number of women in management.


In 2003 women represented 30.0% of managers in organisations reporting to EOWA. This was significantly higher than the ABS figure for all organisations of 24.3% and, indicates that Australia’s larger employers – or equivalently, those reporting to EOWA – are leading the way in supporting women’s continuing progression into management.

In 2004 a further increase had women representing 30.8% of managers in reporting organisations, and the interim results for 2005 indicate a further increase to 31.7%.

While the ABS figures and EOWA data differ in the amount of increase, the trend is encouraging. While these increases in women in management are moderate, the fact that they are on the up, that they are consistent across the three measures mentioned, and that they all show some measure of acceleration, suggests an all important growth in critical mass.


WORK AND FAMILY
Despite these welcome increases, the ever present challenge to balance work and family for many remains, placing limits on participation.

For some, those limits are set by the women themselves. According to the ABS, 76% of women working part time say they do not want to work more hours. For the remainder, limits are imposed by a lack of availability of more part-time hours or full-time work with necessary flexibility, an inability to access affordable childcare, and assumptions about women and their commitment to careers.

On the whole however, the increase in workplace flexibility as well as the increase in casual and part-time work has delivered greater options for women to balance both work and family. The challenge ahead is to ensure that balance, is not so precarious as it is for many women today.

While some businesses think a part-time job is a part-time commitment, another welcome story in the ABS statistics is the increase in the proportion of part-time managers that are women, increasing by 10 percentage points in one year from 2004 - 2005. In actual numbers, the number of part-time women managers has almost doubled in the last 5 years.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REFORM
At the last election the Australian Government committed to ensuring that high productivity, increasing real wages, choice and flexibility remained the central focus of the workplace relations reform program.

While the Government is yet to reveal the legislation to support the reforms, some argue, that women will end up worse off under the flagged changes because women are generally regarded as – on average – having less bargaining power than men, and therefore as more vulnerable under a system that relies more on bargaining than arbitrated outcomes.
However, it is important to note, under the old heavily arbitrated centralised system fewer women were participating in the workforce than today, women were almost completely absent from management and women were not getting equal pay for equal work.
At the same time as the shift to a less regulated industrial relations system, women’s participation in the workforce has increased, both full-time and part-time work, there has been an increase of women in management and senior management and women have seen a significant increase in wages and a narrowing of the wage gap.
For women in particular, increased flexibility in the workplace will be a key driver for opportunity and advancement at every level, from the factory floor to the corner office.
Increasingly, business is seeking greater flexibility of its workforce in order to meet the demands of greater competition, customers and stakeholders. It is imperative that employers and employees work together for a common understanding of flexibility which will meet the needs of each organisation and its workers. It is imperative that the frameworks in place do not allow the strong to discriminate against the week.
The Government is committed to ensuring that the reforms have in place measures which protect the vulnerable. The Government will set out in legislation key minimum conditions of employment – annual leave, personal carers leave, parental leave (including maternity leave) and maximum ordinary hours. These legislated conditions together with the minimum wages set by the Australian Fair Pay Commission will form the Australian Fair Pay and Condition standard.
The new standard and safety net of fair pay and conditions will be the test for all agreements. The Government will also continue to protect all employees regardless of size of organisation, by providing a remedy for unlawful termination, which prohibits dismissal for discriminatory grounds such as race, colour, sex, union membership, pregnancy and so on.
As the legislation is drafted, the Government has indicated that it will consult.

In the implementation, EOWA will stand watch over business to ensure women have continued access to equal employment opportunity.

PAST & PRESENT
Increased workplace flexibility is just one of the drivers of change that has seen an increase of women participating and advancing in the workplace.

As you know EOWA works with over 3,000 businesses annually on their workplace practices and programs. The EOWA staff are seeing a noticeable shift in business as Equal employment opportunity and diversity penetrates the core of many businesses and is becoming an integral part of the strategic development of an organisation.

I have shared with you the top line figures, and will now talk briefly about what we are seeing at the workplace level resulting in the greater participation of women.


It is becoming apparent that many businesses are moving beyond policies and now focusing on the implementation and execution of policies and practices. They are grappling with how to imbed EO into the workplace culture and create sustainability.

Those getting it right are seeing policies including paid maternity leave, flexible workplace practices, merit based promotion, succession planning and job pathways, turning into higher retention rates of women.

Over the past three years we have seen a significant increase in the number of organisations offering paid maternity leave. In 2001, 23% of surveyed EOWA reporting organisations provided paid maternity leave to their staff. By 2004, this figure had almost doubled to 41%.

Most recently we are seeing an increase in requests for part-time work after maternity leave being accommodated. We are seeing an increase across the board in part-time management roles, as supported by the ABS numbers. Importantly, this is happening at the most senior levels.

We are observing a greater focus on formal succession planning with a significant increase of women into middle management. Talent management of high performers is drilling down into lower management and non-management ranks to identify and foster high potential women.

Organisations have been criticised for focusing on the white collar workers, so it is encouraging to see the increased offering of education and training to blue collar workers. Cert 111 and Cert IV programs (often in conjunction with Workplace English Language and Literacy programs) are being offered to provide talented women who may not have had the opportunity to progress beyond entry level jobs because of lack of education, lack of English language skills and family responsibilities.

For office based jobs, hour flexibility and personal work arrangement is high, so too is telecommuting. The recent Toshiba add, “Because she’s having a baby, not a lobotomy”, highlights how business is changing, when the marketers are playing to the shift.

FUTURE
So what aren’t we seeing and what of the future?

Earlier this year EOWA launched its Pay Equity Tool kit in a response to what we were not seeing, across the board pay analysis. We are encouraged by the great interest in the tool because pay equity remains an issue in workplaces today. Some businesses are finding the gaps and courageously addressing the issue. Others hide behind tired excuses like length of service. Why time served should scissor-paper-rock, experience and outcomes is beyond me.

Organisations need to let go of historical baggage and reward individuals by drilling down and looking at the many faceted dimensions of the pay equity issues.

What we are not seeing is organisations putting into place mechanisms and programs to encourage and develop women to move into non-traditional areas. What many organisations tell us is that they have asked the large numbers of women concentrated in their administration areas if they would like to be trained to move into the non-traditional areas and access higher benefits and career paths and the women have said “No”. What many organisations have not done is asked these women the second question ”Why” to find out what lies beneath the no and act accordingly.

Despite increasing awareness about future demographic change, their appears little focus on female mature age workers, their particular challenges or indeed the incentives to encourage longer workforce participation.

The ongoing challenges business share with me are the ability to increase the number of champions, to filter the business intent and strategic necessity to line managers, to really go beyond policies and practices.

I encourage you to continue to share your challenges and issues with EOWA and your initiatives and interventions, particularly with the EOWA staff here over the next two days. My priority is to use the shared learning and experience that we collect, to give back to business so that women in the workforce can achieve their greatest potential.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion I will return briefly to my Queen and King.

Needed in business today is the repositioning of the issues of work/life balance and flexibility. Traditionally, exclusively seen as women’s issues the tide is changing as access to these workplace flexibilities are seen as central to all employees enjoying a fulfilling and rewarding work/life balance whilst making significant contribution to the company.

Interestingly the Queens role on the chess board, using her flexibility, has been to protect the king at all costs, including even her own survival in the game.

Have we? And are we now? moving into a time where men seek the same level of flexibility in relation to work/life balance and its many configurations of eldercare, access to part-time and job share (at management level), telecommuting, parental leave and flexibility in working hours as women?

A recent work/life balance survey of employees in a male dominated Australian company showed that 73% of men in that company wished to realise greater work life balance compared to 54% of females looking for greater work/life balance. The need is there and growing, but are companies listening closely enough to the new needs of employees?

These matters of access to flexibility and work/life balance are central to an organisations sustainability, capability and thus competitive advantage and it is the smart businesses out there taking action to position themselves as a marketplace leader and reap the benefits.

In fact smart companies are ensuring that all their pieces on their game board have optimum access to flexibility so that they can retain talent and innovation and outmanoeuvre any competitor on the business chessboard.

Thank you.
 

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