Attorney-General’s Department Talking Heads Series

Thank you for inviting me to be part of the Talking Heads Series.  It is a great pleasure to be here. 

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on today, the Ngunnawal (Nunna-Wai) People. I pay my respects to the Ngunnawal Elders – past, present and future. 

When I first came home and told my 12 year old son Tom “Guess what Tom, mum’s going to be Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner!” his jaw dropped in horror. “Oh Mum” he replied “that is sooo gross!” 

What other job takes you from 200 metres under the sea in a submarine to the United Nations in New York, to spending time with young women survivors of acid attack in Dhakka, to camping out with aboriginal women in the Kimberly, to the White House, the Pentagon and the World Bank ALL in the same month. 

That is the tremendous privilege of this role – whether you are working to support refugee women, defence force personnel, sex workers, women with disability or women in low paid jobs – every day you meet inspiring individuals – individuals committed to using whatever influence they have to create a more equal world.

Today I have been asked to share a little about my career, my personal journey, and how I see the future for equality of men and women in Australian society with reference to some of my current work including the Male Champions of Change.

So let me start with painting a personal portrait – I think to know something personally about the speaker often helps you put their comments in context.

I come from a family of girls.  I have two sisters Jane and Carolyn.  Carolyn is my younger sister and Jane is in fact my identical twin sister.   Jane and I always argued over who was born first.  It was a source of most arguments from about age 2.  It wasn’t until Jane went to get her birth certificate to acquire a new passport that we finally knew.  Beside her name were the words “First Born”!  Of course, I always suspected this to be the case coz she was the bossy one!!

For this reason and because my parents didn’t want us to be the subject of endless comparison, they decided to send us to different schools - even from kindergarten.  So Jane went to MLC and I went to Meriden, two schools in Western Sydney.  With the teachers blissfully unaware, we would regularly dress up in each other’s uniforms and swap schools for the day. 

I remember one year when we swapped schools, I absent mindedly forgot to tell Jane that it was the day of the big Year 9 Science Exam.  How unkind of me!  I did very well thank you very much, coming third in the class.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of my performance at MLC in Jane’s German class.  I had never studied a foreign language before and that class demonstrated to me that neither had she!  Having never spoken a word of German in my entire life but still being able to convince the teacher that I was Jane, demonstrated to me the level of competence Jane had in German.  Fortunately she’s gone into the medical field rather than languages!

My parents ran a small medical business so we grew up involved in my parent’s surgery – as we became older we would pick up patients from the hospital and drive them to the surgery for treatment.

I remember picking up one particular older lady one day.  She asked if I had any brothers.  No I said but 2 sisters.  “Oh No! Your poor father.  He must be so disappointed.  No one to follow in his footsteps.  Well I was completely astounded – I couldn’t believe that people still thought like that. 

When I thought about what I wanted to do at uni – I knew I wanted to do something where I could combine career and family – how I happened on law is a great mystery but it’s interesting the way in which 18 yr old minds work!
I combined my law degree with a computer science degree – worked and lived overseas for several years and then returned in my late 20s to Australia. 

After working overseas for a period, I came back to Blake Dawson Waldron and accepted a job setting up the technology for a high profile case in PNG. Telecommunications to the court cut - Man axed and I don't mean sacked. By 1991, firm had appointed me to head the LTG - sounds grand.

We went on to build the group - multi million with around 50 employees. We moved into the development of online products in a big way.  It was also at that time that I became very interested in the impact of technology on work practice.  This interest came to the fore in 1996 when it looked as if our LTG might crash and burn. About 5 years after we had first.   

Now I had a solid business reason to reinvent the business.  We developed a number of family friendly initiatives and built a culture based around high performance, honest communication and support. We realized early on that we needed support staff who also shared the vision - Michelle. It wasn’t always easy – but we continued to advocate for change, to ask “is there a better way”.   I know these are questions continue to be asked in high performing organisations and even though we have made great strides in the last 10 years around flexible work we still have a long way to go.

Workplace flexibility allowed us to build a supportive and productive environment like nothing else. It built a loyalty among staff that money could not buy. As Mother Teresa said "There are no great things, only small things done with great love." We didn't set out to change the world but to make flexibility work in our small team.  But that had some amazing flow on impacts.

It was through those shared experiences that I continued to grow my interest in using technology to change work practice.  Having a year as Telstra’s NSW Business woman of the year expanded my horizons and allowed me to see how technology was changing work practice outside the legal profession.

It also enabled me to consider more generally issues for women in business environments.  So that when I was approached last year about having my name put forward for the role of Sex Discrimination Commissioner I jumped at the chance.

But enough about me personally – I want to spend a few minutes now talking about what I have learnt in my 5 and a half years as Australia’s SDC.

I recently was asked to speak on the topic “Women’s leadership – are we there yet?” I must say that I went back to the organiser and said that “based on the data... it might need to be a very short speech.” 

No, we are not there yet.  I think that is something we can all safely agree on. We continue to see unacceptably low representation of women in leadership. 

Yes, we have made moved forward in some areas of gender balance in Australia – for example if we take the women on board’s agenda we have moved from 8.2% in 2010 to 15.4% as of mid-February- a significant increase given we moved 0.2% in the previous decade!   We do even better on government boards, but even there, fewer women are leaders in the organisations.

And unfortunately, we are not yet seeing the same trajectory for women in the corporate executive ranks.  The numbers are incredibly stubborn.  There was almost no good news in the recent Australian Census of Women in Leadership, produced by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

We should acknowledge that there are already many successful women in leadership; and that they are already driving change across organisations - influencing policy and programs, setting agendas and signalling possibility to other employees.

Of course, this is about cultural change, which is needed to see more women in such roles in the first place. In fact, to achieve a critical mass of women in senior positions, most organisations must experience a significant degree of evolution - the structures and conventions that prevail still functioning as a barrier to women’s progression, in turn perpetuating a cycle of absence. We still have a long way to go in combatting myths about women and leadership.  For example, how often is there conversation in your organisations about the facts that:

Workplaces are meritocracies
The gender pay gap is exaggerated
Women don’t want the top jobs
Woman and children don’t want a career
Quotas and targets are dangerous
Women should act more like men
Time will heal all

While these kinds of conversations are critical, they are also symptoms that we have a long way to go in terms of getting serious about gender balance.  The good news for a place like Treasury is that I understand that you are all incredibly analytical, and all of the myths that I describe above yield to study and analysis. 

I’d like to shift now and to share a bit about something that I’ve spent a significant part of the last 2 years of my life on - the Commission’s Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Force.

During the Review we visited over 40 military bases, across Australia, including naval, air force and army bases, training colleges and recruit schools.  We observed exercises and demonstrations. We spent time under water in submarines and above in skimmers. We have been in helicopters and C130s, in tanks and armoured vehicles. We visited 6 bases in deployed environments (including Afghanistan) and spoke directly with almost 2,000 ADF personnel. Meanwhile, the Review also surveyed over 6,000 ADF personnel; and conducted voluntary focus groups and one-on-one discussions, interviewing both male and female personnel across all ranks and occupations. In short, the Review’s access to the ADF was extensive, the many views we heard – many of them positive, some ambivalent, some highly distressing - shaping our thinking and our eventual recommendations.

While the defence environment may seem an unlikely comparison with the Treasury, as one of the nation’s largest employers, the ADF nevertheless faces challenges that would sound distinctly familiar to most employers.  With escalating recruitment and turnover costs; personnel often drawn to the greater flexibility and pay available in other sectors; and military theatres demanding an expanding range of skills, the ADF must seek variety, rather than sameness, to continue to function effectively. 

This means that, like all contemporary organisations, the ADF is looking to tap into a wider range of personnel; and to maximise the potential of those already in its ranks. To do this, it must grapple with a range of cultural and structural barriers which, left unchecked, will militate against future success.

Just to give you one example - occupational segregation is widespread, with women largely concentrated in specific sectors, many of which offer limited progression. This situation is echoed in the civilian realm, women often channelled into what is known as the ‘mummy track’, and employers depriving themselves of those same women’s skills and experience when those roles are not viewed as leadership material. 

Another example - despite the existence of flexible work policies, many ADF women feel they cannot access these without jeopardising their career. Even when they try to do so, some told us of management not understanding or supporting the policies; or of a lack of systems to backfill positions or as one male member told me “Well, what’s your wife doing?”. Again, this experience is not confined to the ADF.

As one woman said: “I think we know how to treat a young girl in the military, but the moment she becomes a mother we don’t know how to manage her”.

Meanwhile, another challenge facing the ADF concerns assumptions about the skills that are necessary for career progression, and the point at which they are acquired. Similarly, many civilian sectors promote candidates with very specific, often technical experience, rather than considering broader leadership qualities and potential.

Equally, unspoken conventions may expect employees to complete courses or gain certain skills within a defined period, with those working flexibly sometimes assumed to have stalled. As a result, the absence of women in leadership is perpetuated, with other women less likely to aspire to leadership if it requires assuming pioneer status.

The lack of a critical mass of women in many organisations, as suggested at the outset, means that a vicious cycle of absence can take hold.

Clearly, many of the challenges faced by the ADF confront a range of Australian organisations.  If I have learned anything in my time as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, however, it is that there is no one solution, no magic bullet to increasing women’s representation - either in leadership positions, or throughout an organisation or industry.

Rather, a range of strategies need to be employed, at both the strategic and practical levels. Some involve much energy, yet have little initial impact; while smaller changes can have greater repercussions. Equally, progress can often be electric, while at other times momentum can slow – policies and programs firmly in place, but failing to deliver tangible results.

One reason for this lag between rhetoric and reality can be that many initiatives tend to focus solely on engaging and changing women. In fact, too many workplaces look to women alone to change the practices that maintain the status quo, an illogical approach when considering the site of most organisational power. Placing the onus on women also means that any failures will be laid at their door, rather than identified as systemic deficiencies.   For example, I see this in corporations whose diversity councils are filled with well meaning, hardworking people (often women) with a strong interest in diversity and how advice the leadership, rather than by senior decision-makers who are responsible for driving change.

Encouragingly, many organisations are realising that they need to stop treating gender equality as if it is just a women’s issue. Instead, women and men must be part of the solution together - transforming workplace norms that entrench existing gender inequalities, including those that reinforce the male model of the ideal worker. Without the proactive engagement of men - who currently dominate leadership in most large businesses, as well as in organisations like the ADF and Treasury – progress will stall.

Gender equality cannot occur without commitment from men.  This has long been recognised (historical – thousands of years). But what has not been so well recognised is that to take men from interest to action, we need to make it personal.

I want to show you how this idea can work in two very different contexts – first the military and then the government and corporate world.

When I was first asked whether I would undertake the Review, I reflected on the fact that the ADF was one of, if not the most, reviewed organisation in Australia. I had heard of the hostility that accompanied any external Review – the criticism that comes to those who are not part of the military club – who have never served and therefore are perceived to have no real understanding of its place and purpose.

I was put in my place early on when I was told on the very first day that gender equity was, and I quote, “dog’s balls” or what might be more politely described as “a complete waste of time”!  I was told this not by a senior member of the service, I hasten to add, but by a mid ranking person, an NCO, who on reflection would no doubt be a strong keeper of the culture and an influential role model for others.  In his view, women had no place in the military.  

I was not naïve enough to think that the delivery of a comprehensive report would change his view or anyone else’s – no matter how well researched and comprehensive - even when tabled in the Parliament!  I knew I needed to use all the levers of influence I had to create change in a more personal way – to work with those leaders who had integrity, those committed to cultural evolution.  I had to focus on the men to advance the status of women.  The question was how?

As I travelled across Australia and beyond, a great many people told me stories – stories about how the ADF had served them well.  But others told me deeply distressing stories. Often these stories had never been told before. 

And that is when it occurred to me that, while it was important for me to document these stories – it was even more important that those who had the power to change the system - powerful men - heard first hand these personal narratives - that they would both hear and feel the case for change.

So armed with this intent, and aided by courageous women with compelling stories, I arranged for each of the Chiefs of the Services (Army, Navy and Airforce) to spend time “standing in the shoes” of the most vulnerable – to listen deeply to people recounting their stories of life in the ADF - those for whom service had come at an unacceptable personal cost.

I flew in women from all across Australia, many with their mothers, so that the Chiefs could hear and feel what extreme exclusion means; to know what it’s like to be on exercise for 2 months when no-one speaks to you; to feel what it is like to be sexually assaulted by your instructor, the very person you go to for advice; to understand what it’s like to face your perpetrator every day at work even though you reported his assault to your superiors; to learn what it means to have your career ruined and your peers ostracise you because you had the courage to make a complaint. 

I needed the Chiefs, the very men with the power to create systemic change, to listen deeply, to understand and feel a personal commitment.

But would this work?  Military and emotion are not words that many would argue sit easily side by side.

I remember that first face to face session – the Service Chief sitting uncomfortably in his chair – the mother nervously escorting her daughter to the chair beside, a box of tissues in the middle.  Where to begin? And then that courageous young woman saying “Sir, I’m so nervous” and the Chief replying, “Believe me, I’m scared too.” 

In that moment I knew we had a chance at change.  It takes an authentic and compassionate military leader to admit that he fears what he’s about to be told. 

The Chiefs heard the pain of mothers – mothers who had encouraged their daughters into the Service – mothers who had believed fervently that the enemy lay outside the military not within.  As one mother said “I gave you the person I love most in the world and this is how you’ve treated her?”

And at the end to hear the Chief say “If I could stand in your shoes and take away your pain every day, I would choose to do that.  What happened to you should never have happened.  I am so deeply sorry.  I will do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”

These sessions were the defining moments of the Review.

When I look back – this is some of the work I am most proud of; the work that reinforced for me that when you work with men to engage both their head and heart even in the most traditional and conservative organisations, transformational change happens. 
But the same idea - to deliver equality for women we must focus on men - can have widespread ramifications in a very different environment – namely the government and corporate world. 
That is why, about two years ago, I established the Male Champions of Change leadership group.

I picked up the phone and rang 23 of Australia’s most powerful and influential men – men who lead Australia’s iconic companies like Telstra, Qantas, Commonwealth Bank and Woolworths – men who lead global organisations like Citibank and IBM – men who hold the most senior roles in Government – Martin Parkinson and Ian Watt, Secretary of the PM & C – and I made a personal plea.  Would these men use their power and influence, their collective voice and wisdom to create change for women? 

I remember the first conversation I had.  This particular CEO had twins – a boy and a girl.  I remember his deep concern that his daughter might not have the same opportunities as his son – all because she was a girl. 

The MCCs are male CEOs, Government Leaders and Chairpersons from some of Australia’s most influential organisations – including Dr Ian Watt, Ian Narev, Alan Joyce, Mike Smith and Grant O’Brien just to mention a few.  The Male Champions see gender equality as both a human rights issue and a business imperative. They use their collective influence to progress equality at both an organisational and national level.

Since its inception the group has met quarterly.  The group has worked to create change in their own organisations but also been national advocates – charter - presented at conferences and events to advocate for greater gender equality - more than 80 events – travel to Washington, to Rio, to New Zealand.  There are now related groups in Western Australian, Southern Australia, in New Zealand and sector based groups such as one focused on companies involved in the Built Environment.  There is also talk of setting on up targeted at Engineering and Law.

I was delighted to be at a World Bank with more than 500 others and to hear the Male Champions of Change mentioned as Global Best Practice.  One thing that has surprised me is that there is strong interest from developing nations – Yemen and India are just two of the most recent examples.

In 2011, the group published an open letter reflecting on their experience in increasing the representation of women in leadership in their own organisations. More than 150,000 copies of the letter have been distributed since it was launched.
One of the lessons from the work was the need to ingrain Gender Balance into a company’s DNA, and that even the Champion companies didn’t view their work as finished or their cultures always fully supporting of women.
Clearly, cultural change is achievable, as it has been in so many other areas. For example, the evolution of ‘safety cultures’, in which the CEO functions as a role model; every person, from rookie to most experienced, is held openly accountable; and every injury is considered preventable.

An organisational culture of gender balance is equally imaginable, in which achievements and failures are openly measured and incompatible behaviours are no longer overlooked as inexperience or carelessness.
In 2012, we shifted into small groups to progress our work together and to allow us to efficiently move forward.

The MCCs agreed to speak to their people to build a deep understanding of the conditions, cultures and context that allow women to thrive.  Overall, the MCCs spoke to more than 300 people, across at least 26 focus groups, often in pairs.

Drawing on the insight from the focus groups and on 2 workshops with MCC people leaders, the group created a set of priority initiatives for the broader MCC group to consider.

We call this the 10-point plan.  Now, the MCCs would hate to give the impression that they have the answers, and having a 10 point plan will solve everything or guarantee progress.  However, what they are declaring is that they will work in small groups (between 5-7) to try new things, to measure impact, to capture learnings and to share with others. This is an incredibly important leadership position to take.

I wish I could walk you through the whole 10 point plan, but perhaps I might pick just 3 to talk about.

Lead on Gender Reporting:  this is a very simple idea – “what gets measured gets done” as we all know.  One of the barriers to progress is that we don’t always have informative gender balance metrics to drive comparability and transparency on progress.  We are looking for credible and consistent benchmarks to track progression on gender balance and the impact that a range of initiatives and interventions are having.  This is a great example of public and private sector organisations working together to increase gender equality.  For the first stage of this project, all MCC organisations provided information on how they current report internally and externally on gender.  For stage two, the group is working together to develop recommendations – for example, if we are really serious about this, you would think that every leader in Australia would have some sort of gender balance target in their scorecard, ideally tied to a Remuneration outcome where possible.  The group found that less than half of the MCCs had a quantitative metric in place!  Imagine the rest of Australia.

In 50/50 If Not, Why Not:  leaders will confront old norms and ask ‘why not’ instead of ‘why’, and apply this lens to all areas of the organisation, in an effort to collect the reasons which can either be “de-bunked” as myths or addressed as significant barriers to women’s progression.  This is an idea that was developed as part of a small group of women.  Some great things have already come out of this, and I’d like to tell you just one story.  One of our MCCs, a leader of one of our large banks, has fallen in love with this idea, and is asking the question all the time.  At a talent discussion, he was presented with the recommended nominations for a Global Leadership Program that has historically predicted advancement.  He asked the question – what is the share of women in the program?  The owner of the program didn’t know.  They looked up the information and came back answering that the recommendation was that the program be 22% women.  The leader said – “why isn’t it 50/50? – we need to be consistent with our goal of increasing the representation of women in leadership. “The owner of the program went back and did further study and came back and said “good news, we missed a couple of women, we are now at 24%.”  The leader said - “can you explain to me what the barriers are to getting to 50/50?”  The owner of the program, rather tired of this by now, went away and came back and said “we have criteria that says the people on this program must have worked with the bank internationally and we have done our best.”  The leader was then able to say “do you think that’s right?” Let me pause the story and explain this a bit more.  The challenge with this is that women in this bank, I’m told and perhaps across the economy, are less likely to have a mobility experience.  This is for a few reasons – one is that women’s careers tend to be a bit more “choppy”, women are more likely to be part of dual career family, and another is that women in general are less likely to be offered mobility opportunities just due to assumptions that leaders make.  So back to our story, the leader went on “do we think that criteria, which will exclude so many of our women, is right? Is there another way to measure what we are looking for – which I think is international or global mindset.”  The program leader, exhausted by the conversation already, went away and came back and said “we have looked at this and we have an idea.  We could expand the criteria to measure a “global mindset” by considering international experience working with other companies, proven experience in managing overseas staff, offshore teams and clear evidence of inclusive leadership.”  The leader said “does that feel right?” to which the program leader said “yes, in fact, we think it’s better and... we if you accept our recommendation we are now up to 35% women.”

So, what does that tell us?  The “meritocratic” process that we were relying on to deliver the best and brightest to a talent program that predicts advancement, was consistently developing outcomes that left out women, and we weren’t noticing.  By a senior leader questioning mix, the program moved from 22 to 35% (not to 50/50) and the program leaders believed they had a better answer.  Now that’s impact.  I can also tell you a similar story about grad recruitment, where one process change, namely getting more senior people to do the initial CV screening, made a huge difference.  This happened when another leader asked the 50/50, If not, why not? The finding that junior people, who were in charge of screening, were more likely to choose people who had held leadership positions they were familiar with or had, they themselves held.  You guessed it – many of these positions (captain a sports team) were not even open to women.  When this happened, they moved from being stuck at 30% to 50% women grads incredibly quickly.

For example, wouldn’t it be great if rather than asking ‘why’ work part-time, we asked ‘why not’.  It’s about changing the way we think and no longer tolerating weak excuses for not embracing change.   And at the same time, working on the stronger excuses!

Mainstreaming Flexibility:  In Mainstreaming Flexibility, organisations will work together to mainstream flexibility as a way of working that is role modelled, encouraged and expected - not just accommodated.  In this group, organisations have signed up to share practice and to work together on and report back on an initiative that will help move towards that aspiration.

Those are just 3 examples of what the group is working on.  To stay on track, the MCC group meetings quarterly and will sharing the plan and their results in a public launch in November.

The strategy is controversial. Some thought I was suggesting that we women were waiting to be saved by corporate knights in shining armour galloping paternalistically into territory we’ve occupied for years?
This couldn’t be further from the truth. As one of the members explained “the rules of work have been invented by men for men”.  I believe that if we want to reshape those rules we need to work with men to do so.
I remember our first meeting – 24 A type personalities and me – these men having cleared their diaries, some having travelled thousands of miles to attend.  I saw then and heard in the words they spoke that there was a deep commitment to take action.  As one man said “This issue is not beyond our intellectual capacity to solve. Excuses are just that!”

Time does not allow me to tell you all that has occurred since.  Suffice to say that the first thing the men did was to write to every business leader in Australia urging them to take action and over 150,000 copies of their letter have been distributed and they are doing so much more!

These male leaders have made a personal commitment to use their individual and collective influence to advance the status of women.  In the last 6 months, despite being the busiest men in our country, they have spoken at over 30 major events in Australia, Washington and Brazil to name but a few – persuading others that they must get on board.  They are developing ten game changing ideas – ideas such as positioning maternity leave as a career accelerant rather than a career killer, 50/50 if not why not, Plus 1 pledge, taking the lead on gender reporting and many more. 
It is clear to me, that men taking the message of gender equality to other men is what will change the picture for women in Australia.

This room is full of talented and visionary women and men. We owe it to ourselves, to our sisters (women and men) around Australia, to women all around the world, and all people committed to gender equality to join together to shape our future.

a future where women and men do share power,

a future where women are paid on an equal basis with men

a future where women and men do feel free to choose the way they share their lives together

a future where girls and boys do think that any thing is possible

We can own and shape an equal and just future for all women and men everywhere.

Join with me.  Let’s make it happen.