28 Directors Need to Put in the Spadework - Building Gender Balanced Business

According to one director, “the focus in the media has been about directors, directors, directors, [so now] there’s a lot of women mid-career who think: oh I should go now from where I am to be a director because I don’t want to miss the opportunity.”

• The artificial push, another director suggested, thus leads some younger women to believe that they can prematurely step into a role that is designed to reward the sort of career success that is built over years—if not decades—of diligent work. The focus on the top underrates the important equality work that needs to be done in the middle levels of management, where the real issues in female advancement exist.

• Addressing those issues requires a team effort, both from aspirant women and their supervisory counterparts. Female executives who have risen to higher levels in their careers are, according to the panel, falling short when it comes to fostering the next generation of female businesswomen.

• Unlike their male counterparts, who tend to more actively support the career development of their protégés, female executives tend to be more competitive, and can be less generous in sharing the largesse of their success and experience. While the trend has moved away from this tendency in recent decades, women are still fighting each other for progress, instead of working together for advancement, according to some panelists.

• Yet the onus is not only on those capable of nurturing a colleague’s career, panelists said. Younger career women also need to cultivate their own experience, assert their priorities and actively seek out—and request—paths of advancement. Such behaviors, which more closely mirror the tendencies of male employees, are examples of how women may need to re-envision their approach to better cope with the structural iniquities that often retard their promotion.

• Ultimately, the panel seemed to agree, corporate culture is fraught with obstacles for women who aspire to top spots. Whether females can overcome by their own impetus, or whether their way needs to be cleared by extra-corporate pressure and law remains unclear, and opinions are divided.

A former corporate executive, who is unsupportive of the quota mandates, suggested that the best route, for now, is internal, saying “I’m not so comfortable about a quota … I think it’s much better to start with the … softer (approach) and particularly take it down to management levels”.

The Australian’s full coverage of the executive roundtable be found on their website.