Cracked logic

When I spoke at a leadership conference earlier this year the focus of my presentation was the emergence of a new breed of leader in rural and regional Australia who was playing a key role in the revitalisation of bush communities. The last event of the conference was a session at which a panel comprising myself and three other speakers took questions from the audience. One questioner wanted to know what could be done to shatter the glass ceiling that was keeping so many promising women from senior positions in business. My fellow panelists answered first and with evident conviction and pained heart shared the questioner’s concern about the glass ceiling. Then it was my turn to speak.

I agreed that there was certainly a lot of talk about the glass ceiling and I was aware of the surveys which showed that women are under-represented on the boards and leadership teams of Australia’s biggest companies. But my view of the glass ceiling? “I don’t believe it; I just don’t believe it.” I saw one woman’s jaw drop visibly.

I pointed out that half of the people in the room of emerging leaders were women; and that almost every business, industry and community leader I referred to in my presentation was a woman. I was too polite to point out that the woman who asked the question was a chief executive and presumably unhindered by the glass ceiling.

I explained that I had become very impatient with claims of the shatter-proof glass ceiling. Yes, I agreed, it is more difficult in some companies and industries than others for women to progress through the ranks. But rather than statistics telling us how many women there are on ASX200 boards or in senior management ranks, what is needed is an understanding of why that is the case.

Noting the growing number of women leaders in politics, government, the law, the not-for-profit sector and business, I said I found it hard to believe that progress made across vast tracts of Australian society stopped mysteriously at the door of our biggest companies.

“I’m sure there are many reasons – some of which will reflect institutional, cultural or historical barriers to promotion beyond a certain level, but I find it very difficult to believe that the progress of women is systematically being stymied by active bias or discrimination. And where that is proven to be the case, the law should act swiftly and to its fullest extent,” I recall saying in my unscripted remarks.

I referred to a national professional services firm whose male chief executive passionately believes in the importance of having more female partners. He has set a target of 30 per cent, but despite a series of programs and initiatives aimed at securing this target, he cannot achieve better than 20 per cent. I had spoken to this chief executive and he was beside himself with shame, but by any measure his company had done all in its power to increase the number of women in leadership positions.

In my view, I told my conference audience, there is too much focus on statistics and targets and too little on learning more about what motivates different people in different circumstances at different times of their lives. I recounted a conversation with the female partner of a small law firm who had left a prestigious national firm. “The last thing I would want is to be a partner at [her former employer]. I don’t want that life,” she told me.

As a journalist, I said, I dealt with too many successful women – chief executives, managers, entrepreneurs, business owners – to believe that there remained systemic barriers to success.

By now on a roll, I expressed displeasure at the inference that the so-called glass ceiling was perpetuated by men and male attitudes. In a personal note, on occasions when I have been an executive editor with recruitment responsibilities, the question of male or female simply did not occur to me, and my appointments included two female reporters who are today among Australia’s most prominent journalists. I also noted that I had heard too many times from women who admitted, privately and off-the-record, that most of the aggression and criticism they encounter in the workplace in their attempt to maintain work-life balance and seek flexible working hours comes not from men but from their female bosses.

At the end of the panel’s deliberations, a line of half a dozen women formed, each waiting patiently and purposefully to speak to me. I was girding my loins preparing to do battle with the sisterhood. Instead, to a woman, they congratulated me on speaking so frankly; they were sick and tired of the nonsense (and I’ve cleaned that up) being spoken about the glass ceiling, pointing out that they were all successful in their chosen careers, and no one or nothing was holding them back. Among them was the woman whose jaw dropped to the floor: she explained that was because she couldn’t believe I had the guts to say what I said in a public forum.

There were also a couple of blokes who congratulated me for speaking out - both noting that they reported to women.

Last week, as it happens, I heard from one of the women in the queue who told me that she been appointed to a senior executive position with a large multinational corporation.

In the July 8 issue of BRW, my column considered the issue of the glass ceiling in the context of Julia Gillard’s elevation to the Prime Ministership (The glass ceiling has left the building). A correspondent wrote in response that, “one female PM does not shatter the glass ceiling”.

Well, Mr MS of Melbourne, I beg to differ.

BRW

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