Telstra boss warns against gender gap in AI, Macquarie CEO doubles down on diversity
A new gender gap is forming as men are quicker to adopt AI tools than women, Telstra boss Vicki Brady says. While Macquarie’s CEO is adamant ‘diversity is good for business’.
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Leaders at two of Australia’s biggest companies are pushing back on the Donald Trump-led anti-woke movement that threatens to spill into other Western democracies and have called for greater diversity in workplaces as Australians prepare to head to the polls.
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady has warned women could miss out on the AI revolution because they are often not as keen as men to take a risk and move into new areas, underscoring the risk of a new gender gap forming.
And Macquarie CEO Shemara Wikramanayake says diversity is “good for business” despite it now being “woke to be anti-woke”. Meanwhile, former PayPal chair and veteran company director Bonnie Boezeman has called for more women to take up golf to help smash the glass ceiling and male-dominated leadership.
Their comments follow Adrian Di Marco saying the best people are staying away from public boards because listed Australian companies have become too woke and that Mr Trump’s war on diversity and inclusion programs is a ‘wake-up call’.
Ms Wikramanayake defended Macquarie’s diversity policies, saying: “We don’t do diversity because it’s woke, we do diversity because it’s good business … We live in a world nowhere it’s woke to be anti-woke.”
She said one of the big issues in ensuring diversity at Macquarie was that only 35 per cent of applicants were female. Girls and women were opting out because they were not attracted to jobs in finance and did not have many strong female role models in the sector. The bank lost more female talent as women began having families and at the senior levels, only about 10 per cent of jobs were held by women.
The financial services sector attracted criticism this month when it was revealed its gender pay disparity was 22.3 per cent – almost double the national average and despite having almost an even split between the number of male and female workers. Ms Brady is concerned technology and AI presents another troubling frontier.
“AI is new for everyone – man or woman – it’s new,” she said.
“What worries me is I sometimes see in our business that women may not want to take a risk in new roles … We have an opportunity with AI (and we) can’t afford for that to happen. This is a point in time when we need absolutely the entire workforce to be engaged in (AI).”
She said Telstra was very focused on ensuring AI was recognised by staff as “not just for technical people; this is going to change the way everyone works”.
Ms Brady and Ms Wikramanayake were speaking at an event ran by the nation’s most powerful female lobby group, Chief Executive Women. The Telstra CEO was part of a panel which canvassed issues such as the pushback against DEI, which Donald Trump’s reascension has sparked.
The US President ordered federal employees of diversity offices to be put on paid leave earlier this year, and called Washington National Cathedral’s Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde “nasty” after she asked him to “have mercy” for migrants and LGBTQ children.
Big tech has complied with Mr Trump’s anti-DEI policies, with Google abandoning its diversity and inclusion programs in February, which sought to employ workers from under-represented communities.
Ms Brady said diversity and flexible work were fundamental to Telstra’s operations. So was part-time work: six out of 10 part-timers at the telco were women.
Ms Boezeman – a founding member of Chief Executive Women 40 years ago and who now is a director at the Australian Golf Foundation – told the 1300 guests at CEW anniversary dinner in Sydney that she wanted women to “pick up the game of golf” and challenge what had long been the domain of men in business.
Boezeman, who funds a scholarship program to help school-age girls play golf, said: “I wanted them to have this skill to be on the same footing as men.”
But artificial intelligence is threatening to derail the chances of women being on par with men, even before they step on a golf course.
Women in Digital founder and CEO Holly Hunt said women were in general more cautious about using AI than men.
“Women are quite anxious about using it correctly. In my research, women are 16 per cent less likely than men to use AI tools, and I think that speaks to that like risk aversion and wanting to make sure that it’s being correctly applied,” Ms Hunt said.
“The consistent feedback … (is that) women were really keen to know how they were using it. How are they going to implement it effectively, ethically, and influence people around them to use it ethically? How do you actually vet the quality of the output being received.
“We’re at a really pivotal point. We’re really at a fork in the road. There is a chance that, if women don’t actually adopt AI and overcome that risk aversion, that, you know, we could be left behind.”
But Ms Hunt said forming networks and seeking out mentors could help accelerate digital and AI adoption – and it didn’t have to be face-to-face or even human support.
“Women sometimes will lack networks and mentors, and so I think where we have AI tools that are able to provide career support and guidance, they can really be that career guidance in your pocket, which is a really exciting opportunity.
“I think whether you’re a man or a woman, we all feel we reach points in our career where we need external input, and so I think there’s a powerful opportunity for AI to bridge that gap for women who don’t have that strong network, or those role models.
“There’s such a fear that AI is going to replace us. What we want to do at Women in Digital is get the message out there like your roles are going to be replaced, but if you don’t adopt it. You’re going to lose the efficiencies in your role, and somebody else is going to be able to apply it and bounce away ahead.”
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