First let's look at how we are doing overall in Australia. Catalyst, the New York-based businesswomen's research organisation recently partnered with the Equal Opportunity for Women Agency (EOWA) for the first census of its kind in Australia. This provided us with data that is discouraging, to say the least. Women, who represent 43% of the total Australian workforce, currently account for 3.2% of top executives in Australia and there are only 5% in the line-officer pipeline. That's the Dark Ages, or about 10-15 years behind the US, as a comparison. In addition, an estimated 5% of the directors of Australia's 500 largest listed companies are women, a proportion that has not changed significantly over the last decade. And currently there are only two female chief executives in Australia's Fortune 50, Gail Kelly at St. George Bank and Katie Page at Harvey Norman.

Where are the women?

One of Australia's greatest strategic advantages is our well-educated, highly skilled and productive female population. But we hear you ask, 'Where are the women?' You may assume that women are leaving to have children and stay home. But it may make sense to analyse why women are really leaving your organisation. The problem may not be society, or the women themselves, but in fact your workplace. Is the glass ceiling in companies a lot lower that we think? Are you sure that your organisation is really a great place for women to work?

Many gifted women walk away from the structured employment that you offer to go into smaller organisations, set up their own businesses and work in their own way. Often this is about gaining greater flexibility and balance. These women create a parallel business universe where leaving the office to take a sick child to the doctor is not a sign of lack of commitment to their work. They have made a clear decision and sometimes a career compromise to get out of the mainstream. Why? These women are not whining. They are not even complaining. But they do tell a different story than the one you may want to believe. Rather than fight the system, this generation of women simply dismiss the system. If they cannot find the kind of companies that they want to work for, they will build them themselves. They de-select, deciding that the price for success in the current system is too high for whatever reason.

The upcoming generation is non-conforming. They don't want to act like men or think like them. But much more than men, women are painfully aware of the realities that define the contemporary workplace and can help you drive change with your support.

Diversity may be one of the most misunderstood terms of the last 20 years, yet one could argue that one of the biggest issues defining our global future is how we deal with the diversity of race/ethnicity, of gender/sexuality, of learning/lifestyles. Gender balance is only one aspect of this larger issue, which has two elements, one being percentage of representation (the numbers) and the second being what is happening to ensure that the environment (structural change) is one that accepts diversity.

Importance of diversity deserves restating

Why is this important? Diversity heightens the focus on an organisation's people as a strategic resource, as well as on the importance of these people in achieving business objectives. According to a recent Harvard Business Review study of 215 Fortune 500 companies, there is a strong connection between high profitability and the promotion of women to executive positions. So can boys really afford to be boys anymore?

It is widely acknowledged that companies that will succeed in the 21st century are the ones that will learn and adapt the fastest, that reflect the populations that they serve, that value collaboration and that embrace diversity of thought, style and culture. Research indicates that homogeneous work teams are generally less innovative than those representing diverse viewpoints and backgrounds. Organisations whose executive teams contain diversity demonstrate more creative and less predictable decision-making processes. If the cliches about women are true, then we ask directions, we collaborate, we adapt and we can juggle. Wouldn't a concerted effort to increase the quantity of women in senior management and on corporate boards make an enormous difference? This is about a business benefit, not about being nice or fair. It's about trying to attract the best workforce. Now it's almost a business imperative to build a workforce as broad and diversified as the organisation's customer base and the broader marketplace.

What can be done?

So how can your organisation improve in this area? Short of waiting for the diehard chauvinists to retire, or threatening to fire them if they 'can't get with the program', what can top management do? Research shows that successful companies are the ones who actively seek to identify the gender barriers to women to progressing up the ladder.

• Rethink management attitudes and practices - Effective diversity management necessitates a rethinking of management attitudes and practices, the rules by which we work. What must be created is a system that is based solely on merit and that allows an organisation to attract and retain the most qualified workforce. Perhaps the real problem occurs at the junior levels and taking care of things here will allow a natural order to follow. A successful diversity process requires the active support of senior executives who must understand the bottom line benefits of valuing and managing diversity.
• Deal with toxic workplace cultures - Many toxic bosses claim to like women. But they don't really like them as power players. Toxic bosses are often not overtly, outrageously sexist, and they are not even impossible to work for. But they do poison the atmosphere and environment by creating alienating and macho cultures that really aren't much fun for women. Perhaps the most pervasive problem is that a lifetime of social conditioning has trained many men to think of women as wives, daughters, secretaries, and not as equal colleagues. It's hard to completely resocialise people. Hard, but not impossible.
• Get guidance - One way to progress is to get guidance from diversity experts as to how to create an effective program for your organisation. These workshops are designed to expose and dismantle prejudices. Each organisation is unique and its expressions of gender inequity are too. People must get together to talk about the work culture and determine which everyday practices are undermining effectiveness, replacing them with practices that work better for everyone. Diversity initiatives are intended to permeate the fabric and culture of the organisation. These sessions are designed to surface gender-based assumptions about careers and aspirations that have discouraged high-performing and ambitious women from staying put.
• Embed diversity efforts in your organization - Key elements of their success are senior leadership support and the embedding of diversity efforts into a larger framework of your human resources programs and policies. The idea is not to finger-point, but to improve communication. You cannot avoid generating conflict when planning and generating diversity training, but the conflict can be healthy and diversity programs need to be highly inclusive. Who succeeds in the organisation and who doesn't? Which practices (such as being expected to be available at all time and attend delayed or emergency meetings) affect women more than men, and why? In some exercises a moderator will ask a group to write down every stereotypical notion about women that they can think of, and post them on the wall, such as the widespread perception that women make lousy candidates for promotion because they always put their personal lives, particularly their children, ahead of work. Is this really true, or is it what they think should be true, given their own values?
• Incremental change is also important - From these workshops can come ideas for incremental changes that are aimed at biases so entrenched in the system that they are not even noticed until they are gone. This may be a powerful way of chipping away at the barriers that discourage women without launching into a cultural revolution that no one has the energy for. Importantly, these incremental changes will benefit men as well as women, and the organisation as a whole.

Look after your best and brightest women

In summary, may I suggest you think of women's issues instead as workplace issues. Make sure that your brightest and best women are not discouraged. The career freeway for women has lots of off-ramps, but not too many on-ramps. Promote them while they are on maternity leave, for example. I assure you that this will build retention and loyalty. Select people on merit and give them flexibility. If you do not have flexible policies in place, the data says that most women will eventually vote with their feet.

The talent and technology are there. But company policies need to be instigated to better balance people's work and family lives. The changes are not just for women, they are for everyone.

The full story was originally published at www.ceoforum.com.au, June 2003. ©International Management Australia