Gender quotas – smash, push or pull the glass ceiling?

10/12/09: 'Gender quotas - smash, push or pull the glass ceiling?'- The discussion of women in business and politics, equal pay and women on boards has loomed during the festive season of goodwill to all men (excuse the pun), equality and kindness and generally burying hatchets. Is it a coincidence?

Or is it that we’ve had a lady premier elected recently, to add to our growing representative group including the likes of Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, Anna Bligh, Carmel Tebbutt, Marie Bashir and Quentin Bryce. Is it topical or more ‘visual’ (as one individual put it this week) for the issue to rise again.

I’ve always been an advocate of equal opportunity and equal pay but not sameness per se.

My mother was forced to search for a male guarantor for our mortgage after my parents divorced in the early 70’s – and aged eight I heard, in the rawest form, how my experienced career mother, head of HR for a major factory with 5000 employees, was paid less than the new male manager some 15 years her junior.

But in fairness, in running my own business, I’ve been relatively protected from the glass ceiling and other prejudice that affects many women in business.

One of the great things in running your own show, is that you can choose who you work with – you set and burst through any ceilings of competency, or opportunity, or pay. I appreciate I’ve been lucky.

However, the idea that one gender should be superior in some way in terms of promotion, pay or opportunity is pretty lousy and just not professionally sound. At least, we should both be paid the same for doing the same job.

As for being a TF or Token Female, surely nothing could be more undesirable or raise the hackles more.

Isn’t good business management and promotion about merit, personality and appropriate skillset?

Then why are these figures still the case?

• Women still make up only 27 percent of Federal Parliament's lower house.

• In business, women make up just 8.3 percent of board positions in ASX-listed companies

• This puts Australia towards the bottom end of progress internationally on about on a par with France, where women make up 10.5 percent

• Australian women are paid 83 percent of what men are paid for similar work – women are paid consistently less than men for the same work

• Over the course of her career an Australian woman will earn $1 million less than a man

• In senior business ranks, women chair only 2 percent of ASX companies

• Only 2 percent of chief executive officers are women

• More than half of ASX 200 Boards have no female directors at all

Other stats claim an average 17 percent pay gap between men and women - in some sectors, women earn as much as 34 percent less than men in the same job.

So how do we change the status quo?

Will it take a ‘few good men’ brave enough to raise the issue? Or will women speak out - the only minority group who make up 51 percent of the population!

I am fascinated by French President Sarkozy's move to make it mandatory for women to occupy 50 percent of all Board seats by 2015.

The legislation as it stands would require all companies listed on the Paris stock exchange to find enough women to occupy 20 percent of board positions within 18 months, and 40 percent in four years. Pros – women will enter Boards in greater numbers. Cons – what quality of women will we see if it’s all about the numbers?

And yet, if management are forced to choose more women, won’t the kickback be, that more women will be invested in to ensure they are ready?

In Australia, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, wants women to hold 40 percent of board positions within five years.

But she suggests companies should be given the opportunity to set and meet their own targets before the heavy hand of government intervenes.

That seems sensible. But progress is needed. It is time for women and men to take equal seats at the tables of power.

I’m disappointed that the stats speak for themselves - and the loser is...business! If we are going to lament the skills shortage and cry about the war for talent, then let’s embrace the talent and opportunities on our doorstep.

So, what’s your opinion on gender quotas? Having been initially rejected as crude, are they beginning to be seen as a necessary evil – embarrassing for the women involved, but necessary to overcome generations of self-reinforcing stereotypes about men’s and women’s roles.

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