Australians: Old boys' club chooses comfort over skill

[sunnysmiles]

Old boys' club chooses comfort over skill
Fiona Buffini
1314 words
1 September 2006
Australian Financial Review
First
53
English
© 2006 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited. http://www.afr.com Not available for re-distribution.

SEXISM AND THE CITY
Women¿s fight to rise above the glass
How many women are: 2002 2003 2004 2006
S&P/ASX 200 chief executives 2 5 4 6
S&P/ASX 200 board directors 8% 8.40% 8.60% 8.70%
S&P/ASX 200 executive managers 8.40% 8.80% 10.20% 12.00%
Professionals and managers 42.10% 43.00% 44.40% 44.20%
In the labour force 44.00% 44.60% 44.50% 44.80%

Shame file are:
S&P/ASX 200 companies with no 46.70% 47.30% 47.10% 50.00%
women directors (1)
S&P/ASX 200 companies with no 52.60% 49.10% 42.00% 40.00%
senior executive women (2)

1. Includes BHP Billiton, Brambles, Lend Lease, Rinker, Stockland, Axa, Bank of Qld
2. Includes AMP, Brambles, Westfield, Seven, Promina, PBL, Newcrest, Wesfarmers

Frequency of women directors
2003 2004 2006
Companies with at 50.00% 50.30% 51.50%
least one woman
board director
2003 2004 2006
Companies with 9.20% 10.20% 13.50%
two or more women
board directors
2003 2004 2006
Companies with 5.60% 7.10% 12.00%
25% or more women
board directors

Frequency of women executive managers

2003 2004 2006
Companies with at 51.50% 59.40% 60.50%
least one woman
executive manager

2003 2004 2006
Companies with 25.50% 26.40% 30.00%
two or more women
executive managers

2003 2004 2006
Companies with 12.80% 13.70% 18.00%
25% or more women
executive managers

Source: EOWA Australian Census of Women in Leadership
A new census shows Australian boardrooms remain male domains, but change is possible, writes Fiona Buffini.

Half of the largest 200 sharemarket-listed companies do not have a single woman on their board, nearly a decade after women began leaving executive roles in earnest to take up board careers.

The number of top companies with at least one woman director has dropped 7 per cent since the federal equal opportunity agency started collecting the numbers four years ago.

Despite reforms encouraging boards to look outside "the club" for independent directors, the number of women in Australian boardrooms lags behind Britain, Canada, South Africa; and is where the United States was 12 years ago.

"I suspect that 50 per cent are probably still working on the old boys' network," says Jillian Broadbent, a director of Woodside Petroleum, Coca-Cola Amatil and the Reserve Bank.

"They're working on selection by the comfort factor rather than the required skill. And that's a big challenge for women because men will always feel more comfortable with other men."

A census released yesterday by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency shows women hold 8.7 per cent of board seats and 12 per cent of "executive manager" roles (those reporting to the chief executive).

"Incremental advancement is slow - glacial even - and despite some hope, overall, disappointing," EOWA director Anna McPhee says.

"We have seen no increase in the percentage of organisations which have at least one female board director and we have seen very little increase in the number of women on boards."

Chairman of Suncorp and a director of CSR and Tabcorp, John Story, is surprised 100 of the largest companies can't find one woman director, a statistic that "isn't all that flash".

"There is a real need for any board to have at least one woman . . . that's a reality, it's a better board," he told a forum on the issue hosted by the Australian Institute of Company Directors yesterday.

However, Story says the number of highly-qualified women appearing on headhunter's lists for boards is increasing, and he predicts significant change in the next few years.

On the upside, the census recorded encouraging rises in the number of companies with two or more women directors and those with a quarter of women in their senior executive ranks.

Since 2002, the number of companies with at least one woman executive manager has increased 23 per cent and the "pipeline" of women line managers is at 7.4 per cent, up from 5 per cent.

Still, fewer than half the women recorded in the 2004 census registered this year, a churn McPhee says indicates "women are being pushed down the corporate off-ramps by inhospitable corporate culture and fewer opportunities.

"Many more are pushed before they reach senior executive ranks."

ANZ Banking Group chief executive John McFarlane agrees the numbers are "pretty awful".

"It's obvious men are failing here because men run the companies . . . The tribalism among men means men feel much more comfortable with men and so they appoint more men."

McFarlane says that while an even split at the most senior levels is "probably impossible", ANZ is on track to meet a target of 25 per cent women in senior executive ranks by 2008, up from 17 per cent now.

"If we don't appoint more women, we won't have any more," McFarlane says, adding ANZ set targets for every other area of its business and this was no different.

Reasons given for the stalled progress of directors included risk-averse boards due to regulation, while executives were stymied by rigid work practices, expensive child care and differences in "style", or women's confidence and ability to influence and manage upwards.

ANZ's head of consumer finance, Jenny Fagg, says an analysis of the bank's senior managers found women are "at least three times more likely to have [work] style listed as their development area" in performance reviews.

Broadbent, one of numerous high-profile women to leave a top executive role for a board career in the 1990s, encourages younger women to stay on the corporate ladder.

"A lot of women are leaving their executive roles too early and joining boards, or wanting to join boards, because we really need them in executive roles; it's a role model, it helps bring people through the pipeline," she says.

Women are also more likely to chair a company from a senior executive position, she says, rather than be a board member. There are just four women chairmen and six CEOs in the top 200 companies.

The most senior woman at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Barbara Chapman, says successful women have an obligation to "help others along their way".

Chapman, who ran a retail bank and life insurance company before leaving New Zealand to head marketing for CBA two months ago, insists time and the "war for talent" will improve the numbers.

"My mum was a secretary, and in her lifetime she never would have thought her daughter was going to end up running New Zealand's largest life insurance firm. So that's one generation."

CBA, like 10 of the top 20 companies, has two women on its board - although those higher averages don't translate to executive ranks. If anything, smaller companies have more women executives.

At Southern Star International, which sells Australian TV to the world, women dominate; chief executive Catherine Payne's team of 10 executives includes two men, a statistic that's not deliberate.

"We employ the best people for the job but our job is selling television programming and we deal with the same people for years and years."

Women are better at managing those relationships: "They're good at balancing it, they're good at reading it" and in an industry where "you can never have an ego" they have another advantage.

"Even if you get a fabulous big deal with a network you can never allow the network to think they lost, because you want to do a deal with them next week and the week after that. Everything always comes around," Payne says.

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UI 22.11.0 - Thursday, July 20, 2006 8:28:37 AM

[hexyhex]

A large company I was with for a three month period flew us down to Melbourne for the big induction welcome-to-the-company thingy. Part of it involved presentations about who exactly was involved in all levels of said company.

They introduced us by face and name to the top four or five ranks of each department, then by statistics to the rest of the workers. They made a big deal about their family-friendly policies, and how it meant that over 85% of the company's employees were women.

Of course, I piped up with "Strange that that's not represented at the managerial level... I see only one woman managing a department of the company."

Aside from a couple of awkward giggles from the audience, there coulda been crickets.

As I said, I was only with them for three months. Funny, that.

[Pony]

It looks like we've all had had it up to here this past week. Thank the gods.

I went into my bank the other day, and as usual, noted it's all women. There were pix of some guy all over the walls with ribbons etc. Who's that? Oh that's our manager he's retiring. How long's he been here? 12 years. Funny I've never seen him and I've banked here 25 years. Who's replacing him? Points to middle aged woman. Great I said at last a reflection of the staff. All eyes toward me...

Because, I continue, it's time there was a woman in management instead of the usual; women doing the shit work while men get the promotions (gasps all around, titters) men with grade 12 being taught the ropes so they can become managers and sit in that office over there, by women tellers with BComms working part-time and casual.

Turned and left.

[deedle]

Pony - can I just say, I love you?