Women in NSW 2012 - The Workplace Gender Equality Agency

Leadership andrepresentationThis chapter examines women’srepresentation in leadership roles inparliament, within the public service,in the corporate sector, and withincertain professions.Earlier chapters reveal that NSWwomen now make up 45 percentof the workforce and a majority ofhigher education students. Womenlive longer than men and aremore likely to undertake volunteerwork. Given their presence andachievements in many spheres ofcommunity life, women’s relativeabsence in the senior ranks of keysocial institutions is notable.The evidence presented belowsuggests that leadership genderequality has increased in recentdecades. But there are areas whereprogress has been slow, veryrecent, or has stalled altogether.The NSW economy and keyinstitutions are more likely to performoptimally if leadership is meritoriousand diverse. This chapter’s focustopic on chief executives highlightsrelationships (those between beinga senior manager, marrying andhaving children) that shed some lighton questions about the compositionof leadership and which furtherresearch could explore in more detail.There will be many views aboutthe underlying causes of women’sunder-representation in leadershiproles; the data presented in thischapter is a contribution to thedebate on this important issue.KeyfindingsIn certain areas of public life,women have been steadilyincreasing their representationas leaders and have increasinglybeen aspiring to leadership.This is most evident at the level oflocal government and the Senate(the Australian Parliament). Morewomen are standing for electionas local government councillorsthan in the past – an increase of10 percentage points in less than20 years. In the Senate, more than40 percent of NSW seats are nowfilled by women.Aside from this, women’srepresentation at other tiersof government continues tobe disproportionately lowat around 25 percent.Since 2007, there has been asignificant increase in the proportionof female directors of NSW-basedcompanies listed on the AustralianSecurities Exchange 200 Index, andthe NSW figure is higher than thenational average. But the numbersare still small: in April 2012 just17 percent of all NSW directorshipswere held by women, comparedwith 14 percent nationally.Women’s representation is slightlybetter in the not-for-profit sectorin NSW, where the estimate isthat around 29 percent of boardmembers are women (2008 data),and better again in the NSW publicsector where, in 2011, 37 percentof NSW government board andcommittee members were women.In law, the rate of change couldbe described as slow from a lowbase: the proportion of womenpartners and principals of law firmshas increased by five percentagepoints over five years (from 2005 to2010) to 23 percent. By contrast,nearly half (46 percent) of allsolicitors in NSW in 2010 werewomen. In education, the resultsare better, with women in 2011accounting for just over 50 percentof all government school principals.This figure is still significantlylower than the proportion of totalteaching staff who are women(68 percent), and the majority offemale principals are in primaryrather than secondary schools.Tracking women’s role in sportsleadership is an interesting newfocus for sporting organisations.Because of the impetus given tothis initiative at an internationalmeeting in Sydney, a tool known asthe Sydney Scoreboard is makingthis information transparent for allto see. This is an area where nextyear’s report will contain more detail.WOMEN IN NSW 2012 | LEADERSHIP AND REPRESENTATION89