March 1, 2016
In Australian workplaces, there is no silver bullet to fix gender inequality. When the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released its 2012 census report, it showed evidence of the under-representation and under-utilisation of women. Subsequent research reports and articles that followed supported this evidence and was done in a very constructive way. In 2015, WGEA released its Gender Equality Scorecard, which wouldn’t even shock the most seasoned diversity practitioner. All this inequality is at odds with the fact that more women have successfully graduated from Australian universities in the past 15 years than men. This is usually my first conversation starter with an executive assigned with a gender KPI, followed by an explanation of the Stupid Curve.
Should we shrug our shoulders while we read about the glacial movement of gender equality, new fad strategies, buzz words, new saviours (usually male) and diversity strategy overhauls or refreshes? Ask anyone on the street where to start. In fact, I did this years ago. I went to a Work-Life Balance conference in Sydney. During a panel session, an Executive from a large fast food company was bragging about how all their employees understood work-life balance. So, at lunchtime, I went to their fast food outlet in the CBD and asked the guy behind the counter if he had any work-life balance. He was about to call security. So I walked with my take-away coffee cup back to the conference but the panel members had long gone.
Do all these reports and articles make a difference? Does it make a difference to those in power? Does it change or challenge the status quo? Does it dismantle self-interest, spin, agendas and shallow rhetoric? Yes, it does. However, I do shrug my shoulders when I hear, ‘We’re all about merit based selection’ without the supporting data or evidence and when men go missing in action. You need to earn a title of Champion, not just assume it.
Having worked in gender equity for some time now, I am starting to believe that the main reason gender inequality exists in Australian workplaces is because of poor (add your adjective here) culture. Why? Because you can have best practice strategies and the WGEA’s Employer of Choice citation and still not reach a 0% pay gap between men and women. To date, I don’t know of any large organisation that has reached an overall pay gap (total remuneration) of 0%, not to be confused with in-band pay gaps, as one CEO did on Q&A. If they did, we’d be hearing about it. And based on trends, it will take many many years to get to zero. There are a few brave organisations that have recently published their pay gaps, but most are secretive, because a wide gap may be perceived as a form of systemic discrimination. Pay gaps are not that difficult to explain (See Part 2, next article).
One of the most important piece of information I have uncovered as a practitioner is when I developed and implemented a gender action plan for a large organisation, which after a period of stagnation, started to see positive results in its fourth to fifth year. By then, the organisation had an unprecedented number and percentage of women in senior positions and the its pay gap was reduced. It would have been interesting to look at the next stage of gender strategy development and investigate the diversity within the gender cohort (race, disability, LGBTIQ, Indigenous, age, etc.).
However, all this good work can come undone or go backwards, if, for example, you lose line of sight of your executives and middle managers, if there are factors or challenges beyond an organisation’s control, if you have a finding of sex based discrimination, if you don’t understand the complexity and connections between different evidence (data sets), or if a champion, or two, leaves the organisation.
If you have poor leadership, a clumsy diversity narrative, diversity blind practices, rhetoric not matching reality, no critical mass at the leadership level, no transparent or longitudinal evidence, no KPI’s (no accountability), no sense of urgency, no groundswell of activity, lack of male engagement, an inflexible manager, a nasty sexual harassment complaint, ineffective EEO training, your gender equity people and diversity strategists buried a few layers down in your organisational structure, your D&I function having minimal staff and limited resources, then you are not really serious about tackling gender inequality. These traits are indicators of a poor culture and complacency.
However, if you have the opposite then you are destined to see some great achievements. Gender equality needs to be a lived and breathed experience, and at the core, a great culture. That’s the ultimate benchmark. So, once you have established that you are working in a supportive and genuinely inclusive environment, and you actually believe it…. what next?
Please see next article “Gender inequality in workplaces – using your evidence effectively?” (Part 2)