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women in leadership: understanding the gender Gap

New South Wales

and the ACT
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The John Hunter Building
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Sydney NSW 2001
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Women in Leadership:
Understanding the
gender gap
June 2013

JUNE 2013

with support from:

the case if they face worklife trade-offs, with the research highlighting that many
women start families at this career stage.

Time will heal all

When organisations finally recognise there is a gender parity problem, a common
reaction is to claim time will change the complexion of the C-suite. The pipeline
of well-educated women in the workforce will automatically transform the upper
echelons, according to this thinking. But as the myths reveal, there is very little
evidence to support this position and much to challenge it. The glacial progression of women into leadership has not changed in more than a decade in fact,
the small progress is tantamount to a slide backwards given the growth of the
economy.
Generational change is also held out as
a panacea for the gender gap in senior

Generational change is also held out as a panacea for

ranks. This is built on the hope that a

the gender gap in senior ranks but once again, there

new group of people will take over the

reins and change the dynamics and

is a dearth of evidence for this assumption. Even the IT

standards of workplaces. But once

sector which is generally seen as demanding the skills and

again, there is a dearth of evidence for

aptitudes associated with a younger age group has virtually

this assumption. Even the IT sector,

no women in its managerial ranks.

which is generally seen as demanding

the skills and aptitudes associated with
a younger age group, has virtually no

women in its managerial ranks. The Facebook IPO in 2012 was notable on a
number of levels, including the fact the seven-member board did not include a
single woman (Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was appointed afterward). There
is a tiny number of women in the top management of Silicon Valleys best-known
enterprises.
Generational change and the pipeline are great in theory but remain unproven
in practice. Relying on time to change gender levels has been a disappointing,
passive and time-wasting exercise.

Bridging the gap

Dismantling historically biased attitudes and behaviour patterns to allow women
to climb the career ladder in greater numbers will require a robust dismantling
of the myths that fuel them, along with the will and means to remove systemic
barriers. Given it is mainly men who make key decisions in Australian business at
the moment, they will have to be convinced of this necessity and then motivated
to act.
In the meantime, a combination of factors is required to address this issue and
create a positive cycle. Its about circuit-breaking the business-as-usual mindset,
perhaps through quotas, as well as re-examining the mechanics in recruitment

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and promotion practices to allow a critical mass of the role models so desperately
needed. Most important is the presence of women in leadership women are five
times more likely to be promoters of their organisation when females represent
more than 25 per cent of the executive team.17
Women are held up to double standards that ensure they are judged differently to
men at every step of their career, in the community and in the family. Their failure
to climb the corporate ladder in decent numbers is not about a talent and experience bypass but entrenched discrimination built on familiar models of authority
and the idea that difference is synonymous with risk.
The myths make it clear that as well as re-examining the idea that women are
biologically incapable of higher office, its also time to modify the expectation that
the elite group that runs our major institutions will happily share the power and
influence they wield. Countless arguments based on logic and on the business
case that shows the boost to national productivity from better gender balance
have failed to create a major change. There is nothing in corporate history or the
feminist annals to suggest this is likely to happen smoothly or without a struggle.
But happen it must.

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