Good morning. I’m delighted to be at Zonta today to discuss how networks and community action can contribute to a more equitable, diverse Australian culture! At EOWA where I have been Director for the past two years, our mission is to promote diversity and equity by helping business get the most out of its workforce – we help Australian companies to put in place principles and processes to ensure that every working person can fully contribute.

More specifically, our mission is to ensure that women’s talent is neither overlooked, nor suppressed. However, it is our view that promoting equity for women workers is not only good for women, it is good for men, it is good for business, and it CERTAINLY is good for society as a whole!

nd yet, when I am introduced at functions as Director of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, I am often met with the common response: “But I thought we had smashed the glass ceiling? I thought women were treated equally? I thought we had fixed that?”

When I then ask them: Where are the women in your organisation? How many women do you have in key decision-making roles? What percentage of your customers are women? And what percentage of women works in your organisation? (and so on) it soon becomes apparent that things aren’t entirely fixed at all.

Yes, we have come a long way since the 60’s when women had to resign from Government jobs when they got married … but, we STILL have a long way to go. Recent research has calculated that, at the pace of change we are currently making, it will take more than 170 years to achieve equity for women! Right now, official Government statistics, for example, show that women are earning … on average … only 84% of what men earn … for doing the same job! What’s more … this gap between male and female salaries went down in the last year, which bodes ill for so-called progress¹.

Furthermore, Australia still has the most gender-segregated workforce in the world, as well as the lowest percentage of women in management in the industrialised world*. We may have our ‘first’ female justice in the Supreme Court and we may have a handful of female politicians, and we may have more women going to university than ever before … but … we still have a way to go before we can say men and women are treated equally in the workplace. I will be talking today about what contributes to the problem – and how each of us can make a positive difference.

Personally, as a mother of two girls under 10, I want to see my daughters enjoy the same opportunities as the boys in their classroom. I feel incredibly privileged - and a bit overwhelmed sometimes - to be in a position where I can do more about equity for not only my children, but for ALL Australian children. Specifically, I’d like to think that I can do something today that will bring my daughters the same opportunities as a man for the same work … and that this will occur … preferably in my lifetime!

That is why I am especially proud to have recently been asked to sit on the board of a newly established Foundation – the Enterprise and Career Education Foundation - or ECEF, as it will undoubtedly become known - which has been set up by the Commonwealth (and some 100 million dollars!) to assist young people to achieve a successful transition from school to further education, training and employment, and to help young people to make the right choices about their futures.

High quality business and career education is essential for young people to make a successful transition to work life and active citizenship; to maximise their employment opportunities; and to make wise choices about further education and training.

An essential element in facilitating successful school-to-work transitions is the development of effective partnerships at the local level between school, families, business and the wider community. In partnership with industry, schools can deliver a greater diversity of learning experiences. Industry too has a key role to play in providing students with workplace experience.

For some schools and industry, this requires a new way of doing business and of working outside traditional arrangements. The new Foundation will provide support to drive the cultural change necessary to extend and enhance school/industry partnerships, to encourage community involvement, local ownership and local responsiveness and responsibility for young people’s education and training.

Together we can build strong, vibrant partnerships between school, business and the wider community to support our young people. (For more information, please speak to me after this talk today, or visit the ECEF web-site, www.gocareer.gov.au) or futurefinder.com.au, that offers parents, teachers and students lots of helpful information in terms of making the appropriate career choices.

Now let’s take a look at where we are historically, as recently reported in a paper put out by the International Labour Organisation (ILO):

First of all, it is noticeable that the pursuit of education over the last decades has contributed to the rising educational levels of women. In Australia for example, there has been a continuous increase in the number of females commencing an apprenticeship or traineeship². As a consequence, the proportion of female apprentices and trainees in-training has jumped from 30.9% of all enrolments, to 32.2% of all enrolments, in the past year alone.

At the same time, the increases in women’s labour force participation have led to a higher value being placed on women’s contribution to family income. Together with changing social attitudes, this has created an environment more conducive overall to women becoming better educated.

It has to be recognised, however, that significant gender differences continue to exist in the nature and quality of education and training. These can represent real obstacles for many women, both at the recruitment stage and later in their careers. Improving the quality of women’s education largely depends on support from the family and community in encouraging young women and providing them with the same educational and training opportunities as young men. Indeed, young women have increasingly been encouraged to undertake further education to increase their chances of finding employment later, though the focus of this education tends to be at lower educational levels. In contrast, young men are often prompted to take on higher-level studies of longer duration.

Equal access for young women and men to education, vocational training and on-the-job training is a prerequisite for women to obtain more highly skilled and better-paying jobs. Until a sufficient number of women have the qualifications and skills required for moving into ‘men’s jobs”, they cannot constitute the critical mass in organisations needed to ensure that all women, not just the exceptional few, have the chance to advance.

The recruitment, full development and retention of qualified women is increasingly becoming recognised as essential to the economic success and competitiveness of firms. Accordingly, one of the main objectives of equal opportunity programs is to remove the invisible cloak that often shrouds women and their contributions.

Many women enter the workforce at the same level as men, only to see their careers progress more slowly. They are often more qualified than their male counterparts and must work harder and perform better to obtain top jobs. For example, a large-scale study of bank employees* found that women equalled or surpassed male colleagues on all important human resources measurements such as education, length of service, dedication and job performance, suggesting that ‘educational segregation’ only partially explains the braking effect on women’s careers. Even women with similar qualifications and experience to men encounter greater difficulty than men in reaching top jobs. It remains true that women have generally to work much harder in order to reach the same career heights as men!

A detailed analysis of the various steps and requirements involved in the recruitment and promotion processes of organisations is necessary to identify and rectify the mechanisms contributing to this difference in treatment. For instance, perceptions of the social and occupational roles of men and women often overly influence appointment decisions. Selection criteria and procedures may also be insufficiently developed to ensure an objective and fair assessment of candidates. Above all, many decision-making structures are wholly or mostly composed of men, contributing to a general condition of ‘gender blindness’ and an incapacity to recognise the presence of qualified women.

In addition, women with family responsibilities can face very real constraints in meeting the seniority or mobility criteria often required for promotion.

The persistent stereotype associating managers with being male is a KEY OBSTACLE in introducing more gender equality into career paths. Characteristics considered to be ‘masculine’ rather than ‘feminine’ are generally regarded as traits required for management. As a result, women often try to adapt themselves to work environments and expectations created by men.

However, management styles are evolving towards valuing a certain mix of so-called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ characteristics. A study of women managers in the United Kingdom reported that the characteristics most highly valued by their organisations were being competitive, co-operative and decisive, while the LEAST valued were being emotional, manipulative and forceful.

Gender-sensitive, human–resource strategies developed by enterprises in recent decades provide the best ways through the glass ceiling and glass walls. These include networking, career tracking, mentoring and succession planning that pay particular attention to the situation of women.

Objective and unbiased recruitment and promotion procedures are vital in attracting and retaining skilled professional women. In the light of the increasing skill levels of women in the workforce, such strategies are necessary: women are increasingly a key resource in the race to create new products and services, and they are entrepreneurs as well.

Competitive companies cannot afford to lose out on women’s talent. Although policies are more advanced in industrialised countries, promoting women in management should not be viewed as a “luxury”. Rather, in the era of globalisation, it is CRITICAL to enable firms worldwide to use and develop women’s talents and potential to the fullest.

Enabling women to break through the glass ceiling requires action on many fronts. The right qualifications and training are central, as are policies and practices in the workplace to eradicate discrimination at all levels. Governments also play a fundamental role in regulating the social, political and economic environments, and ultimately, in making these receptive to gender equality and the guarantee of equal rights.

As Justice Mary Gaudron, Australia’s first and only female High Court judge, said:

“It is short-sighted and stupid to treat women as inferior, because this country simply cannot afford not to fully utilise its intellectual capital, at least half of which resides in the female sex.”

Strategies to speed up the advancement of women have generally focused on the following areas:

• Enacting quality laws and rendering complaint procedures more effective;
• Providing family care assistance
• Revaluing ‘feminine’ occupations
• Moving women into more scientific areas
• Insisting on objective criteria in recruitment and promotion
• Questioning organisational structures in terms of their efficiency and treatment of both men and women
• Building networks; and
• Raising awareness and changing social attitudes.

Despite indications that women’s labour is increasingly in demand, only a relatively small number of companies are investing in women’s career development. Such companies believe that promoting women produces more talent and therefore more long-term profitability.

As competent and qualified women become harder to attract and retain, companies promoting women today expect to gain advantages over the longer term. Moreover, making women visible at the top can provide a competitive edge in selling services and products to the growing number of female customers.

Indications that more such developments can be expected are to be found in a study from the United States, which examined the positive performance impact of women’s presence on the boards of companies making initial public offerings. In 1993, 27% of those companies surveyed had women in their senior management teams, in 1996, 41% had women on their boards.

The study found that “having women on the top management team results in higher earnings and greater shareholder wealth”, and that it is the mix of women and men on the board that results in higher long-term performance. The study also points to the trend for women to leave large corporations for smaller entrepreneurial firms.

(In Australia, women make up 35 per cent of the country’s 1.3 million small business operators, with the growth rate of female small business operators THREE TIMES GREATER than that for men)!

At a more basic level, all of this progress begins with the foundation stones of the family, the school, the community – which is where you and I can make a difference … as parents, teachers, community leaders, as small business owner-operators, as the wives of senior executives, as women in positions of power. We need to have the courage and vision of leadership. It is by NOT speaking up, by NOT acting, by NOT forging networks and discussion and partnerships, that we allow things to remain inequitable. Sometimes it is difficult to see how giving one young person the opportunity to better themselves – even in the smallest way - can make a HUGE difference ultimately to our social and economic future.

Consider, for example, the story of one 17-year-old Australian girl, April Clarke, who through ECEF-funded, on-the-job learning was turned around from a potential ‘dropout’ delinquent to a confident, mature, award-winner. Described as a ‘lost soul’ in her early high school years, April went to a tiny school in Trangie, west of Dubbo, and there was lucky enough to become enrolled in a Structured Workplace Learning programme that boasted a practical approach, on-the-job work placements and TAFE links. The school has introduced the special programme to counter the dramatic drop in retention rates in Years 11 and 12.

April studied four practical courses in Years 11 and 12 – retail, hospitality, childcare and office studies – and spent a total 210 hours in the workplace deciding for herself what appealed to her, and what didn’t. She worked at Dubbo RSL, Narromine Shire Council, Dubbo Base Hospital, Grace Bros and Toyworld. Her career adviser saw April change from a very shy, awkward and inward-looking girl to a confident and self-reliant student determined to create a positive future for herself. On completing high school April was named Student of the Year, and has since gone on to further studies, as she is planning to manage her own childcare business in the future. This is, I am happy to report, a woman with a sense of being in charge of her own life!

This story is just but one example of the amazing shifts that can be made in people, and society as a whole, when people begin to think ‘outside the square’ and rather than becoming overwhelmed by defeatist notions, begin to take constructive and positive action.

In many ways, April’s story reminds me of the anecdotes I hear in my business networks. There are many examples of how one person’s intervention can bring about positive change! For example, after arriving from the United States in the early 90’s as AMP’s new CEO, chief George Trumbell swiftly discovered that there were remarkably few women in senior management – and he wondered why. He invited 10 senior women to lunch and asked them to name the 10 most sexist men in the company. The women came up with a list. He then took the 10 most senior men to lunch and informed them that five of them were on the list. He gave them a choice - stay and change their behaviour, or leave. “You could have heard a pin drop in London,” he said. One of the men on the list was later fired, while the others left of their own accord³.

Similarly, at Deloittes & Touche, one of America’s largest accounting, tax and consulting firms, the CEO realised that too many of the company’s talented women were walking out the door – not to raise families as they had previously assumed, but because they had weighed up their options in Deloitte’s male-dominated culture and found it wanting. Through the CEO’s personal drive, women partners went from 5% to 14%, the highest in ‘the Big 5’, AND saved over US$250 million in hiring and training costs.

As with most social issues, from parenting to education, achievement and advancement, the importance of ROLE MODELS in terms of ‘showing the way’ and proving that ‘it CAN be done’ should never be underestimated. As parents, teachers, siblings, mentors and community leaders, our contribution is to embrace the concept of gender equity in our hearts, in our words, AND in our actions, thus imbuing all young persons with a sense that … in this world, anything is possible!

And so, what DO women want for their future? What do they believe is possible? A longitudinal study being conducted by RMIT over two decades traces three different generations and canvasses the opinions of some 40,000 Australian women. Of these, some 14,000 women between the ages of 18 and 23 were asked what they envisaged for themselves by the age of 35. What do you think they said? And was it remarkably different from what you wanted at that age?

At 35, 96% of young women surveyed said they wanted to be married or in a 'stable relationship'. 92% want children, and more than two-thirds want either one or two children. Only about a quarter aspire to a larger family, whereas 42 per cent of their mothers' generation and 58 per cent of their grandmothers' generation in the study had 3 or more children.

Almost all young women also aspire to be employed at 35, with only 4 per cent aspiring to the traditional role of being at home full-time. Almost two-thirds indicated they would like to be working full-time and almost three-quarters indicated that they aspire to improving their educational qualifications before they are 35.

These findings are in line with other research which shows that women are not necessarily choosing radically new lifestyles, but both family AND employment, which has become a normalised part of women's lives. This is no doubt from necessity as well as a matter of choice, but this has always been the case for men too, and represents a major element in the reduction of difference between men's and women's lives.

Professor Lois Bryson of RMIT believes that Australia’s lower fertility levels is probably the result of women not being able to combine paid employment and motherhood. Where there are family friendly policies and crucially, access to child care, she reports that fertility rates are higher. Where there are no such policies, it is employment that wins out.

And while the differences between women's and men's positions have certainly lessened, women still remain the main family carers. Women, Professor Bryson points out, constantly talk about the problem of dealing with home and paid work. Most women want a job because it is rewarding, apart from needing the money. But even the older women in the study, with older children at home, showed signs of stress from coping with both family and jobs. They too like being employed, but there is the perennial issue of the division of household labour.

In an address she made in Melbourne this week, Professor Bryson said that housework remained “one of the unfinished issues of the gender revolution”. Equal pay for work of equal value also remained a crucial issue.

Like Professor Bryson, I believe that current family-friendly policies are not likely to be sufficient for the 21st century. A bolder approach will need to be embraced and adopted by employers and responded to by our fathers, our husbands, our brothers, our bosses, our boyfriends, our sons, our friends. We women from Venus will have to engage in serious discussions with those men from Mars!

Together, we must all muster the determination and ingenuity for collective solutions, so that we can move towards a reality which more closely matches our aspirations for equity and unity through diversity. Only then will we be able to achieve the fair and just society that Australians mythologised all those years ago when Louisa Lawson, mother of Henry, and premier woman suffragette, launched her first Australian magazine for women, The Dawn, and declared through its pages her vision for Australian women.
If she was alive today, she would surely appeal to all of us today that this was … NO time to rest! Even in the year 2001, the work of woman is still not done!

THANK YOU.

References:
1 Latest ABS statistics reported in Financial Review 28 March 01
2 Australian Apprentice and Trainee Statistics 2000
3 Trumbell G, MGSM Women, Management & Industrial Relations Conference, July 1999

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