‘Gender equality - improving economic development outcomes’

‘Gender equality - improving economic development outcomes’

Elizabeth Broderick
Sex Discrimination Commissioner

Australian Human Rights Commission,

G20 DWG Post-2015 discussion forum agenda

Wednesday 7th May 2014

* CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY *

Thank you for the invitation to address this forum today and I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands upon which we gather, the Muwinina people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I have been fortunate to be Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission for the last six years. It is a job that has taken me 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 in Western Australia, to the White House, the Pentagon and the World Bank. 

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.

Through my work I have been concerned by the extent of gender inequalities, particularly in the terms of women’s economic empowerment, that remain unaddressed in Australia and across many other G20 countries. These include:
• the gender pay gap, which in Australia is currently at 17.1%, and globally, women on average earn between 10 and 30 per cent less than working men.
• the gender gap in workforce participation rates.  Globally, women are only half as likely as men to have full-time wage jobs for an employer.  Trends suggest women’s labour force participation worldwide has stagnated over the past 30 years, dropping from 57 to 55 per cent globally.
• Negative gender stereotypes and discrimination restrict women’s access to work
• the majority of unpaid caring work, whether that’s caring for children, or a family member or friend with disability, chronic illness or frailty due to older age  - is undertaken by women; Women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work such as caring and housework. 
• the gender gap in retirement incomes and savings as a result of women moving in and out of the paid workforce due to their caring responsibilities and the inequalities – in Australia women have approximately half the retirement income and savings of men;
• the under-representation of women in leadership positions, in the community in business, in the board rooms and in parliaments.
• More than one in three women has experienced either physical or sexual violence by a partner or non-partner sexual violence.
What has become clear to me is that promoting gender equality not only promotes and protects the rights of affected women; but it also contributes to better functioning organisations and businesses – as a result of diversity of thinking, better financial results, improved decision making, reduced turnover, and utilising the best talent.

But most importantly, women’s increased participation in the workforce can make a significant difference to economic growth.
o The Grattan Institute has identified that a six per cent increase in women’s workforce participation could generate an increase in Australia’s gross domestic product by $25 billion. 
I attended the 58th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March this year. The CSW is the primary forum within the UN for member states to discuss, negotiate and agree on measures for advancing gender equality within the UN and in nations all around the world.
The priority theme this year was the ‘Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls’. This provided the opportunity for member states to consider - in depth – the issues of gender equality in the context of the post-2015 development framework.
What was very pleasing to see through the discussions and in the Agreed Conclusions, was the widespread recognition of the how gender inequality is hampering economic and social development across nations and the importance of the role women and girls play in poverty alleviation, the post-2015 development agenda, in the global economic and finance infrastructure and in the future development framework.
The governments of the world recognised and publicly affirmed that gender equality, empowerment of women and women’s human rights are essential to economic and social development.  The Agreed Conclusions further recognised that investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth.

To ensure greater integration of women and girls within future development frameworks, the Governments called for the inclusion of women’s rights in global trade, financial and investment agreements;  in international cooperation agreements  in the implementation of macro-economic policies ; and in national development policies and strategies to eradicate poverty.
Critically, the Governments called for what has been termed a twin track approach to integrating women and girls in the post-2015 framework, which includes:
1) gender equality, the empowerment of women and human rights of women and girls reflected as a stand-alone goal and
2) integrated through targets and indicators into all goals of any new development framework.
The World Bank and the IMF have also highlighted the importance of increasing women’s participation in workforces and in economic structures. The recent World Bank report, Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs recognises that closing gender gaps in workforce participation is a prerequisite for ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Drawing on a large body of evidence that demonstrates both the business and development benefits of increasing women’s workforce participation, the World Bank notes that raising female employment to male levels could have a direct impact on GDP, increasing it by 34 per cent in Egypt to and 9 per cent in Japan and in places where women’s paid work has increased, as in Latin America and the Caribbean, gains have made significant contributions to overall poverty reduction.

The World Bank has called for bold, innovative measures to level the playing field and unleash women’s economic potential including:
• eliminating legal and formal barriers to women’s work
• removing restrictions to women’s work in labour and employment; and
• allowing and encouraging women’s ownership and joint-titling of land; enforcing equitable inheritance laws. 
The IMF has equally recognised that the lower contribution of women to measured economic activity growth has serious macroeconomic consequences. It notes that the employment of women on an equal basis would allow companies to make better use of the available talent pool, with potential growth implications.  Citing the ILO, they note that women’s work, both paid and unpaid, may be the single most important poverty-reducing factor in developing economies.
What has particularly struck me is how governments and business from around the world – whether it be when I meet with the Government of Japan, or the members of the World Bank Advisory group on gender and development, military personnel in NATO or member state representatives at UN forums – is that they are all placing gender equality issues, and particularly women’s equal workforce participation and representation at leadership levels, at the centre of their economic development strategies.  No longer is gender equality and women’s participation just an aspirational aside – gender equality and women’s participation is not only good for business and good for the economy, it is becoming an essential component if businesses and governments want to remain competitive.
As our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Julie Bishop, noted in a speech she delivered last month,
Expanding women’s participation in the economy is a strong driver of growth. It is estimated that the Asia-Pacific alone loses around US$50 billion a year because of limited female access to jobs and an estimated $30 billion a year is lost because of poor female education. Investing in women is not just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do. That is why a focus of our program will be to empower women entrepreneurs in our region.
Minister Bishop went to give the example of market places, which are the centre of economic activity in many countries, particularly in the Pacific. However, as local markets are often unsafe places for women, in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji Australia is supporting efforts to make markets safer places for women traders. In Lae Australian Federal Police officers are embedded with the PNG police patrolling the fresh fruit and vegetable markets and it has made a world of difference to the women, enabling them to carry on their economic activity in safety.
One thing that governments and businesses often ask me, is having recognised the importance of addressing gender equality and increasing the participation of women, they say what can we do to change this?

And there are three main areas where I have seen that concrete action can make a real difference.

Firstly, we need to address the role of unpaid caring work in our societies. Caregiving is a critical societal function which involves shared responsibility  and we need to recognise value and redistribute unpaid care work.

The unpaid care work, predominantly undertaken by women, remains largely un-recognised and under-valued in our communities, our workplaces and our economies. Owing to gender stereotypes related to family and work, such as ‘male breadwinners’, ‘women as carers/nurturers’, this generally means that women assume the bulk of the work.
In 2013 I launched the results of some research which examined how best to recognise and value unpaid caring work.

An important finding from the report is that unpaid carers have significantly lower rates of workforce participation and are more likely to work in part-time and casual jobs.
• Sixty-six per cent of employed women with children aged under six years worked part-time compared to just seven per cent of employed men with children of the same age. 
• Less than 23 per cent of female primary carers of people with disability, illness or frailty participate in full-time employment at any point across all age groups, compared with 52 per cent of men.
The research identified several options for reform drawn from mechanisms and models used to value unpaid caring work in Australia and 24 other countries around the world. These options for reform included:
• strengthening and further developing legislation,
• flexible work arrangements,
• income support,
• leave arrangements,
• resourcing of services,
• workplace initiatives to evolve workplace cultures; and
• reforming the retirement incomes and savings system.

Cultural change in our society and our workplaces is also a crucial element of valuing unpaid care. Such change needs to start with identifying and challenging gender stereotypes and social norms related to unpaid care responsibilities and participation in paid work by men and women across the life course. It is important that a public debate about unpaid care asks what stops men from taking on more responsibility for unpaid care, and challenges the model of the ‘ideal worker’ who is unencumbered by any caring responsibilities.

There is no one policy solution but rather a range of reforms that are needed to properly recognise and value unpaid caring work.

Secondly, we need to look to work with those in the seats of power, those that have control of the resources and the decisions to prioritise gender equality.

About two years ago, I established the Male Champions of Change - a leadership group in Australia – a group of 24 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 – Secretary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Treasury and the Army – and I made a personal plea.  Would these men use their power and influence, their collective voice and wisdom to create change for women in Australia? 

I remember the first conversation I had.  This particular CEO had twins – a boy and a girl. I explained to him that in Australia today women hold only 3% of CEO positions of the top 200 companies and only 17% of board directorships. That in every sector in Australia the basic rule is that the higher up you go the less women you see.  That these results exist despite in 2012 women representing more than 60% of university graduates  and are 50.8% of Australia's population.  And finally I told him that while women were excluded from power - economic, political and social - they would be marginalised all across Australia.

Whilst we've been talking about the numbers for decades, what shifted for this CEO was the understanding that without intervention by decent powerful men, this story would become his daughter's story.  His daughter would not have the same opportunities as his son – all because she was a girl.  Not only did he understand the case for change with his head he started to understand it with his heart.  What father wouldn't want his daughter to have an equal chance at a life free from man-made barriers.

As one of the Male Champions explains “Let’s not pretend that there aren't already established norms that advantage men. Men invented the system. Men largely run the system. Men need to change the system." And that's what the Male Champions of Change strategy is all about - men changing the system.
In late 2013 the Male Champions came together at a public launch to report on actions they have taken over the last year.  Their main message was that gender equality is about leadership. They have developed a model to examine whether they are living up to their own aspirations in championing women. So they are exploring models of leadership that promote gender equality. As leaders they are analysing four elements of their leadership approach:
• what I say
• how I act,
• what I prioritise and
• what I measure.
Following an analysis of their own leadership shadows, they are each devising a transition plan to migrate their own leadership practices to a new model and they are cascading this model through their organisations. 

Another area they are working on is making visible the bias and harmful gender stereotypes that prevent the status quo from changing by asking: ‘50/50, If Not? Why Not?’ That is, ‘If women make up over 50 per cent of Australia's population why am I not seeing 50 per cent of women in…?’

By posing this question these leaders confront old norms and ask ‘why not?’ instead of ‘why?’. When you apply this lens to all areas of the organisation you elevate the discussion and challenge long held assumptions - assumptions which can either be ‘de-bunked’ as myths or addressed as significant barriers to women’s progression.

To give you an example of this in practice, one of the Champions when presented with the list of people selected for the global leadership program asked, ‘why am I not seeing 50 per cent women on this list?”  “ There’s been a mistake” he was told.  The next day the list came back to him and they had found 3 more women.  “No” he said “You’re not hearing me – why am I not seeing equal numbers of women and men?” This led the organisation to re-examine the eligibility criteria for the program, which was excluding women, as the criteria required people to have lived and worked in an international office.  By resetting this one criterion to reflect other types of experience related to international mindset such as experience in managing overseas staff and offshore teams, the organisation was able to increase the number of women in the program from 22 per cent to 35 per cent.

We need to explicitly address the unconscious bias, the negative gender stereotypes and the discrimination against women.

Thirdly we need to ensure that women and girls can work, and live their lives in safety, without the fear of violence. 

It has been estimated that violence against women and children will cost the Australian economy $15.6 billion by 2021-2022 unless effective action is taken to prevent this violence.  The cost of productivity losses from absenteeism, staff turnover, illness, disability as well as decreased performance and production, is expected to rise to $609 million by 2021-2022. 

Preventing violence against women by increasing gender equality will serve our national economic interest. Research shows that the most effective way to prevent violence against women from occurring in the first is by increasing gender equality in our homes, our schools, our workplaces and our communities.

So as we proceed to consider the G20 agenda, and the post-2015 development agenda, the key question that arises is how can we integrate women and girls in an economic development framework that is inclusive and resilient.

What will be critical is to adopt the twin track approach recommended in CSW 58 to both the post-2015 development framework as well as to the work of the G20 in advancing national and global economic infrastructures. That is identifying specific gender equality goals and implementing specific measures to achieve those goals; and secondly we need to integrate through targets and indicators on gender equality into every aspect of the psot-2015 development framework, as well as into every aspect of economic development.

For if we don’t intentionally include women and girls, they will unintentionally be excluded, to the detriment of all our economies and nations.

To conclude the achievement of gender equality cannot sit on the shoulders of women alone. When we take shared ownership, that’s when we stride forward together. 

While the Male Champions of Change will transform corporate environments, while governments will reform legislative and policy environments, and the military cultural reform is progressing, none of this will matter if we don't change the informal social structures that sit around us and exist within our families. 

Are we prepared to push to one side the talent, creativity and capability of over 50% of the world's population? Because that's what's at stake!

We have the beginnings of change, a path to a more equal future, but it starts with us.

When people ask me what will be my greatest achievement as Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, it won’t be the military or the male champions of change it will be raising my son to believe that equality is the only path.

Thank you.