Grim new statistics have revealed that we still have a long way to go in Australia before we come close to achieving equality in the workplace between binary genders if the big businesses are anything to go off.
Of the 25 bosses appointed at Australia’s top 200 companies in 2019, only two were women (Macquarie Group and Spark New Zealand Limited), with 17 companies having no women in their executive leadership teams.
You can find the research at the CEW site here
The annual census by Chief Executive Women (CEW) criticised this “slow” progress, with president Sue Morphet noting that “there are some figures saying that we’ll be waiting about 80 years for it to be equal.
“My granddaughter will be 84 by the time we have equal representation.”
CEW President Sue Morphet
Ms Morphet noted that many companies felt they could check a box by appointing women to rolls outside the top leadership group.
“We have to be mindful that boards just don’t bring women in and say ‘we’ve got one woman and we’re going to pop her in human resources and then we’ve done the job”, she warned.
“They do give up because they just can’t see that women make it to the top.”
Whitehaven Coal, one of Austalia’s top 200 companies on the ASX, is one of the companies with no women on their executive leadership team
These comments were given more weight by the fact that 114 companies still have no women in “line” roles (meaning they are responsible for answering to executive leadership teams).
While the findings are hugely disappointing for the Australian workplace, there has been a slight improvement in the appointment of women to the role of chief financial officer (CFO) in the top 200, rising to 16% (from 12%) this year.
In addition, action has been taken against workplace sexual harassment (which 10% of working women experience), with an enquiry launched last year.
However, this shouldn’t take away from the brutal reality that, given the current progress, we’re on track for equality in the area by….2100.
“It’s more than quotas”, said Ms Mrophet.
” It’s nonsense now that we are not being treated equally when it comes to opportunity in corporate Australia.”
Check out this informative TED talk on the issue
