Breaking through the ADF glass ceiling: Natasha Fox
Lieutenant General Natasha Fox has been promoted to become the first female three star officer in the Australian Defence Force. But it hasn’t always been an easy road.
It was how she reacted to being told “no” when she was passed over for a job she wanted that Lieutenant General Natasha Fox credits for her 35-year career in the Australian Defence Force.
Fox, who has consistently broken through glass ceilings in the male-dominated ADF since joining as a 17-year-old cadet – a career that has just seen her promoted to become the first female three-star officer in the ADF – recalls her frustration when she was passed over for a command position she so dearly wanted earlier in her career.
“I thought why not me?” she says in an interview with The Weekend Australian. “I am as a good as XYZ (the person who got the job). But then I started to reflect on why I turned up for work every day.”
Fox decided that she did want to stay in the ADF and vowed to make sure that even if she didn’t get that job she wanted, she would be working in roles she enjoyed.
Soon after, she was offered a new job as head of the Australian Defence Forces Academy – the academy she attended as a young recruit.
“One door closed, but another one opened,” she says. “It was a bit of luck and timing. But it’s how you approach things when you are told ‘no’ which is important. I’ve taken that lesson substantially through everything else I have done.”
The first female deputy chief of the Australian Army, Fox has just been promoted from Major General to Lieutenant General as the ADF’s chief of personnel in June.
It is a new role, in charge of some 5000 to 6000 people who manage the personnel side of the military – a force of 60,000 permanent staff and another 40,000 reservists – that was recommended by the Defence Strategic Review which was released to the public in April.
Fox is now the most senior woman in the ADF – a force which is still only around 20 per cent women. One of 11 three-star officers in the ADF (the other 10 are men), she reports directly to the four-star Chief of Defence Force, General Angus Campbell.
Fox’s career has included deployments in Lebanon, Syria and Israel as chief of staff for the joint task force in the United Arab Emirates. Her overseas appointments involved some tense times in Lebanon, dealing with both the Israeli army and Hezbollah.
Her new role is aimed at developing a system that will take a whole-of-career approach to the recruitment, retention, management, education, and support of people in the ADF and their transition from Defence. It’s a remit that includes the three services – army, navy and air force – with the warfighting domains of space and cyber.
It’s also a role that will play a key part in the federal government’s goal of increasing the size of the ADF by another 18,500 people by 2040 – a goal set before the pandemic but now made much harder with the unemployment rate at near record lows.
“It’s great for Australia that we have these circumstances of low unemployment, but it means that defence, as an organisation, needs to be more competitive. We need to be able to better tell our story of the fantastic employment offering of a career in the ADF.”
The mother of two children whose husband is in the navy, Fox wants to get the message out that the ADF can provide a career where you can “lead a normal life”.
“You have other obligations. You have a profession and there are expectations of us. You can have a family, you can study, you can play sport. It does get interrupted when we go on different tasks but the purpose of those tasks and why we are training is really powerful. For a lot of people, that’s why they stay.
“There’s a sense of purpose which is really powerful. And there are also the opportunities of being offshore in another country which gives you an opportunity to know why the democracy we have in Australia is worth fighting for.”
But it is a career which also has its tragedies, such as the four men who died in an Australian army helicopter accident in during the recent Talisman Sabre joint exercises.
“The loss of our people is felt deeply by all Australian Defence Force personnel and our families,” she says. “Our focus is now on their families, friends, and unit members, to support them through this time.
“For anyone who serves or has served in the ADF, I encourage them to reach out for support.”
Fox says that working on having the culture and support services for the ADF personnel is an ongoing issue. “It is not set and forget. You have to continually work at it. You have to be transparent about working at it to make sure you have the right culture which makes people want to work for you.
“If you leave it, it can go astray, and we’ve seen it go astray in the ADF. I’ve got friends who have been impacted by their service, so I want to make a difference. It’s personal. It’s more than a job being in the military.”
Fox says a combination of resilience, learning that “positivity begets positivity” and the support of others who have provided a helping hand along the way have played a role in her career.
She says the ADF has changed considerably from the organisation she joined, including the increase in the number of women and people from different backgrounds, and it is more determined to help its people manage family and careers.
There are women moving up the ranks of the military, she says, but they are not always visible to the public as they are all going about their jobs.
“I’ve got colleagues who are fierce, compassionate, incredible women,” she says.
“There are many talented women coming through. Women are or have been Army’s Forces Command Commander, Force Commander for the United Nations Force in Cyprus, Space Commander, Heads of Cyber Warfare, Navy Engineering and Air Force Capability, warrant officers in the navy, army and air force, fighter pilots, and commanding officers of warships and task groups.
The percentage of women is highest in the air force, where it is 26 per cent, followed by 25 per cent in the navy and 15 per cent in the army. Fox says the use of ADF personnel in moments of crisis within Australia, such as the floods in northern NSW, has been good for its image with ordinary Australians.
“They feel a sense of trust and hope when the military comes to assist. For me that represents service. It has been a really powerful way for Australians to see the great people we have in the defence forces.”
Fox has seen a lot of change in the ADF from the time she first joined when military equipment, including helmets and sleeping bags, were designed for men.
–
‘I don’t think the community is aware of the collective amount of transparency which is available (in the ADF)’
Lieutenant General Natasha Fox
–
These days there is a lot more focus on “diversity” – hiring more women and people from different cultures and with language skills, she says. All roles in the ADF are now open to women.
One of the big changes, she argues, is that the ADF is a lot more transparent – a process that has been painful at times. “Defence has a collaboration with the Human Rights Commission which independently reviews areas of Defence and provides recommendations on improving culture,” she says. “We have an Ombudsman and Inspector General who are completely independent, and make recommendations about where we need to make changes associated with military justice and complaints.
“We have provided to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide 175,000 documents of three million pages to assist the commission make recommendations. We also have an annual report about Women in the Australian Defence Force that indicates performance on improving representation of women.
“Sometimes what we get told is not always good performance, but we work to address this. I don’t think the community is aware of the collective amount of transparency which is available.”
Fox argues that there are lessons for the private sector in her experiences in the military, including the increasing interlinking of work and personal lives and the importance of people having a sense of purpose in their work. Her sister is a senior executive with NAB and they often compare notes about life in the military and the private sector.
“More and more, work and personal lives are combining,” she says. “You have to have a values alignment (with your work) and, as an organisation, you have to take into account the whole life of a person.”
She says leadership in the modern workforce is about being transparent and accountable. “That’s how you influence change. Sometimes what we get told is not always good news, but it is being accountable and then making those hard decisions to influence change. I’m watching a leadership across the Australian Defence Force do that.”
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout