While gender equality amongst Australia’s top business ranks has always moved slowly, new data has revealed progress has stagnated when it comes to gender diversity in CEO pipeline roles.
New data from Chief Executive Women’s annual survey of gender representation in ASX leadership teams reveals 9 out of 10 CEOs are still men, and nearly half of the nation’s top 300 organisations (46 per cent) have no women in their leadership pipeline at all in 2024.
“On the surface, it appears that fairly good progress has been made because there is less overt bias, harassment and discrimination. In reality, however, much of this is more subtle and harder to identify,” says Dr Lois Frankel, executive coach, author and upcoming speaker for an AHRI webinar about women at work.
Dr Frankel, who has coached many women over her career, has recently conducted research into the state of women in the workplace.
Based on a sample size of 42 Australian women, Dr Frankel found that 38 per cent felt a “pretty good to a significant” amount of progress has been made in the past 10 years, but the majority felt not enough progress had been made (55 per cent), and two per cent felt no progress had been made at all.
While a portion of women (35 per cent) felt they had the same opportunities as their male counterparts in the workplace – or that men had only a slight advantage over women – nearly one in three felt men were “definitely” afforded more opportunities than women, leadership positions being one of them.
“At the rate we’re going, global gender parity may not be achieved for another 90 years,” says Dr Frankel.
Register for Dr Lois Frankel’s webinar Women at Work 2024 on 17th October to garner a deeper picture on these findings. AHRI members can register for free.
Progression barriers for women in leadership
When reflecting on Australia’s gender equality efforts, there have been significant gains on the policy and organisational front, says Dr Nora Koslowski, co-founder and co-ceo at EVEN, a professional development platform for women, and executive in residence, innovation, at Melbourne Business School.
Dr Koslowski, who will be speaking at a separate AHRI webinar on closing the women in leadership divide on 31 October, points to recent government changes to paid parental leave – which increases from 20 to 26 weeks’ paid leave by 2026 – and progressive leave policies supporting women around fertility and miscarriage.
She also highlights other proposals to enable workplace flexibility and employee diversity, such as menopause-related leave and grandparents’ leave.
“These positive steps benefit both genders, but specifically women. They will help to keep [women] in the workforce and create a more inclusive environment.”
However, progress across other key gender equity initiatives is moving at a glacial pace, with backward movement in some instances, she says. This is particularly true of women’s progression in the workplace.
“Unfortunately, what’s disheartening is that [while there’s been] a lot of progress over the past 10 years or so, we are now seeing a decline in 2024. The number of women hired into leadership [globally] has declined for the first time in several years.”
Dr Frankel echoes this: “Only five out of the 68 CEOs appointed globally in the first quarter of 2024 were women.”
On the Australian front, while women’s progression has been steadily increasing in recent years, CEW’s data does show a slight dip this year from 26 female CEOs heading ASX300 organisations in 2023 to 25 this year, while the percentage of female CEOs in the ASX200 has stagnated.
Women also remain far less likely to enter the managerial level, encountering the ‘broken rung’ on the pathway to leadership, says Dr Koslowski. This is even more concerning when we view the data from an intersectional lens.
Women of colour, those living with a disability, those who identify as LGBTQI+ and/or are from other intersecting diverse backgrounds encounter further barriers.
Dr Koslowski cites McKinsey’s new Women in the Workplace 2024 report, an annual survey of American organisations, which found that rates of promotion into managerial positions for women have dropped – for every 100 men promoted, just 81 women were promoted in 2024, compared to 87 women in 2023.
This disparity was even more evident for culturally diverse women, with only 54 Black women and 65 Latina women promoted for every 100 men in 2024.
“There’s also a degree of fatigue around gender. A lot of people are saying, ‘Haven’t we done that? Haven’t we fixed it?’ But we haven’t fixed it because we still see women promoted at lower rates than men. We still see a persistent gender pay gap, and issues around sexual harassment and sexual violence.”
Local data tells us a similar story. Research from Diversity Council Australia, based on a 2023 survey with over 370 Australia-based culturally and racially marginalised (CARM) women, found that over half of those surveyed (65 per cent) agreed that CARM women received fewer opportunities for career advancement than other women, and that 85 per cent felt they were subject to a higher bar to get the same evaluation.
This had significant impacts at the leadership level with over 70 per cent of participants agreeing that hiring and promotions were made through informal networks, which they struggled to access.
Diversifying the leadership pipeline
According to CEW, even while women held positions in ASX executive teams, they were far less likely to be in ‘CEO pipeline’ roles, which the CEW defines as those involving profit and loss responsibility (P&L). These include Managing Director, Chief Operating Officer, Group Executive and Chief Financial Officer roles.
The dearth of women in the C-Suite is a “symptom” of structural inequity and deeply embedded gender norms, says Dr Koslowski. This is underpinned by the inequitable opportunities and choices available to women – from tertiary educational preferences to expectations about caring responsibilities.
For HR leaders and practitioners, addressing progression opportunities and successfully translating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies into targeted, meaningful action needs to begin at all levels of the organisation.
“[The top organisations] provide concrete development for women, recognising the fact that women often do have different burdens, and rather than retreating from that, they recognise and address [unique differences],” says Dr Koslowski.
At the recruitment stage, she says, this includes tackling organisational bias by implementing practices such as blind recruitment, hiring based on fair skills-based criteria and ensuring balance within hiring panels.
At the leadership level, organisations need to carefully evaluate their internal mechanisms of executive sponsorship, Dr Koslowski adds.
“It’s not necessarily about who applies for a job, but about who is sponsored into a job or who is nudged to apply for a job. If you’re a leader in an organisation, who are you inviting into that pipeline?”
Meaningful action requires investing in women
As businesses continue to navigate highly disrupted and ambiguous landscapes, many organisations are increasingly valuing non-traditional leadership qualities, such as more human-centric skill sets. This means there is potential space for candidates from other backgrounds in the succession pool and, hopefully, encourages organisations to rethink how excellence in leadership is defined.
“What does good leadership look like? Can we overcome the norms around what great looks like in a corporate leadership context?” says Dr Koslowski.
Part of this involves dismantling the expectations of what an ‘ideal worker’ looks like – from someone who is constantly on-demand to normalising work patterns that are more reflective of our current realities.
“We are now starting to see leaders who are open about their responsibilities outside of work, who might be job sharing or who may have to cancel a meeting to attend to a sick child. All of these examples, when [demonstrated] by leaders, help to change our gendered perceptions of ‘good leadership’ and ‘ideal work’,” says Dr Koslowski.
“Organisations need to start shifting who they put forward for leadership positions and [consider] whether they make it possible for people to work part-time and also be a leader.”
It’s critical for leaders and boards to continue adopting a strong commitment to gender equity as part of their overall strategies, investing in women’s career development, network building and being highly cognisant of who is promoted into the talent pipeline.
“[Gender equality strategies] have got to be holistic. They have to be policy- and behaviorally-focused. It’s about understanding the different factors that create an inclusive culture,” says Dr Koslowski.
“If you’re trying to solve some of these problems, you need to invest in your women.”
Want to hear more from DEI thought leaders on important topics such as this? Sign up for AHRI’s DEI Week webinar series, starting from 18 November. Learn more here.
Wouldn’t want them to be hired on merit when they can be hired on gender
I would caution any readers from drawing hard conclusions from this particular article; it’s biased at best and conclusions have seemingly been drawn on dubious statistical grounds, for example, from selected sample sizes of less than 100 and likely non-representative, non-randomised groups. These findings seem also to be working in opposition to the trends we’ve found particularly over the past 6-8years where bias has unfortunately been reversed when it comes to gender (and other) related selection, particularly in higher level management across the board. In fact, when it comes to areas of health care and middle management (represented by significantly… Read more »