Why is gender diversity off the agenda?
August 10, 2009 at 10:29 pm 1 comment
Why as women do we tolerate the situation in Australia today. Yesterday I attended a roundtable with Ines Alberdi of Spain is is the Executive Director of UNIFEM. We talked about many factors that affected the success of women in Australia in organisations and why we are so far behind. Liz Broderick tabled the briefing note on Gender Equality Stats 2009 for Australia. It is a document well worth reviewing although very depressing. Here are a few that resonated with me: Australia is ranked 41st for women’s participation in the workforce, women undertake two thirds of the unpaid work in Australian households, women earan 84.3 cent in the male dollar, 22% of women have experienced sexual harassment and are four times more likely than men to experience this in the workplace.
Many young women believe the problem is no longer there and yet the pay difference starts in the first year of work. Within 5 years it becomes apparent that women get less opportunity to work on the ‘top’ projects and it goes on from there. All this happens long before ‘babies’ although that is often the excuse. How can we make it change?
Entry filed under: Being at your best, Bias, Change, Diversity, Helping women into the workforce, Resiliency, Women at Work, Women's wages, Xplore. Tags: diversity, EOWA results, inclusion, pay equity, performance, remuneration, success of women, Xplore.
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Lynne Lloyd | August 15, 2009 at 10:42 am
These statistics demonstrate that there is an entrenched and deeply-held male paradigm at work and at home in Australian life. The only way to change it is to change this male culture and that is going to take a lot more time and tactics from women.
My view is that women in Australia are still subservient to the male culture and endeavour to fit in and accept the “crumbs” – and even at home sweep them up! – the younger generations are often quite complacent and as you note “believe the problem is no longer there.” They take for granted the hard-won rights to vote and to work on equal terms under the law with men.
The solution(s) include women acquiring increased awareness, increased assertiveness, and increased negotiation and strategy skills. Each and every woman whatever her age, position and status has to be courageous and make the appropriate stand – to not be passive and let things slide by her. We need to be more forceful and convincing leaders.
Further, we need to be more supportive of each other particularly when women are in executive positions, they should support other women in their workplace rather than becoming the “token” woman in the male domain.
There is much work still to be done but I am an optimist for women’s progress in professional, executive and board positions. However, it won’t be handed to us; men will never do that – they are too competitive! Instead, we need to deserve it and take the prizes for ourselves, one by one.