Paramount chief warns product will suffer if women not involved

Paramount chief argues that unless industry fixes gender bias, it will not tell the right stories for a broader audience

Beverley McGarvey, Paramount

Beverley McGarvey, the Australian boss of Paramount, told a roundtable on power that the sector must address its gender imbalance. Her comments were part of a discussion organised by the Champions of Change Coalition.

“Australia is quite challenging for women in media: there are lots of men, there are no CEOs of major broadcasters and only recently are there CEOs of very small independent production companies. This is particularly interesting, because we’re telling our cultural stories, and it’s how you see yourself reflected on screen and yet there are very few women in senior decision making roles. When I first got here (from overseas) the types of women who did succeed had what we would previously have called traditional male characteristics. They would need to be quite forceful, and have almost an aggressive style to be heard in a room. But you actually want authentic leaders who use their natural authentic characteristics and their own skills to progress. Having women in leadership positions who just behave like men used to doesn’t really make any sense. I still walk into rooms where people presume that my more junior male colleague is the decision maker and talk only to him, and I would have what I would call a relatively forceful personality. But sometimes you don’t want to have to be that person, you want people not to make assumptions.

“(Successful women are often) well educated, white, middle class, a particular age but for our business we need different women in the room, we need different people to get better outcomes for our business. We don’t need everybody to come from a sales background or a finance background. It tends to be sales directors who move into CFO positions, CFOs who move into CEO jobs, and that’s fine, but it can’t be the only thing that we do – we can’t just keep replacing the pathways that have come before.

“If we don’t get the gender piece right, you don’t get any of the rest of it right because if you’re ignoring 50 per cent of the population, you’re definitely ignoring all of those other groups of people who deserve to be represented.”