Sam Mostyn calls for legislation, sanctions on gender equality

One of Australia’s top corporate women has called for ‘dramatic change’ in gender equity and has flagged regulation as a way of ensuring companies are serious about promoting women.

Sam Mostyn: ‘Something quite dramatic has to change.’ Picture: David Geraghty

One of Australia’s top corporate women has called for “dramatic change” in gender equity and flagged that the federal government could regulate to ensure companies are serious about promoting women.

Sam Mostyn, who last week was announced as chair of the government’s new Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, is also president of Chief Executive Women whose 2022 Census released on Tuesday argues it will take 100 years to get gender balance in the ASX 300.

Ms Mostyn, who played a key role at last week’s Jobs and Skills Summit, said that, given the general tone from the government about moving the cultural dial on leadership and women’s workforce participation, it “may well be” that Canberra would strengthen reporting requirements under the Workplace Gender Equality Act.

The Act is being reviewed and CEW has submitted the government should consider legislating for financial sanctions against companies that do not comply. CEW also wants the Act to require employers to have policies or strategies in place on specific gender indices.

Ms Mostyn said governments could also follow the lead of NSW and look at linking government procurement to gender balance. NSW has set aside $3.7m to monitor the proportion of women-led businesses in government procurement.

“The data we’re looking at certainly tells us that the setting targets and meeting them has a huge consequence for lifting women into leadership positions,” Ms Mostyn said.

She said governments could ask companies for data on their women employees before making procurement decisions.

As chair of the new task force, Ms Mostyn will have a key role in advising the Albanese government on issues facing women ahead of the October budget as well as developing the government's National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality.

Talking to the CEW senior executive census, she said it revealed a “disturbing” reversal in corporations with an increase in the number of companies with no women in their leadership teams – from 44 last year to 46 in 2022.

“Incremental is just not cutting it and something quite dramatic has to change,” she said. “It’s not only that things have gone backwards or stalled – we’ve got some disturbing trends in areas where you’d expect to have better outcomes. Not only are things stalling, there are some areas where we’ve actually seen a reversal.

“There’s something about the impact of Covid and taking our attention off this … and those in charge are still not understanding the great uplift that’s available to them by having gender balanced leadership teams and promoting women into leadership roles.”

The census showed:

● One in four executive leadership roles in ASX 300 companies are held by women, while one in 10 management roles with profit and loss responsibilities are held by women. It will take till 2058 before there are equal numbers of men and women in line management leadership roles.

● Of 28 CEO appointments at ASX 300 companies in the past year, only four were women.

● There are 18 women CEOs on the ASX 300 – no improvement on 2021.

● Women are more likely to feature in the executive leadership teams of ASX 100 companies, but only half of the ASX 100 have at least one woman in roles with profit and loss responsibilities.

Ms Mostyn said companies must set targets: “We know targets work. We know that when they’ve been implemented by (big) companies … that they’re achievable. But the further down the ASX you get where targets aren’t being set, you start to see this falling back.”

She said the task force, whose other members will likely be announced this week, would look at why Australia performed so poorly on the gender pay gap and why it had “highly gendered, segmented workforces that have prevented women getting into good stable work with career opportunities”.

The task force would have an ongoing role looking at the “economics of these issues, and then at policies and outcomes that the government can look at, in conjunction with business and civil society, that might go to non-budgetary matters”.

Mr Albanese will on Tuesday give the opening address at the CEW’s annual leadership summit, which will include a session on the role of the AFLW in promoting female role models.

Ms Mostyn, the first female commissioner at the AFL when appointed in 2005, said she had been a “quota” appointment which had set in train a commitment to change the role of women in sport. “What it (the AFLW) is doing, it’s demonstrating through the lens of sport … that once you open the pathways for women, once you allow women to be their full selves, and to fight and to have the same advantages and opportunities as men, quite remarkable things happen,” she said.

Ms Mostyn said the cultural change around women in sport was a “proxy” for what could happen more broadly if women were given access to the highest levels of business and other institutions.