Forging a career path without gender police

Helen Conway

LAST week women and women's prospects in the corporate world were big news, as a result of a series of announcements by the Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis, about the strengthening of the powers of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

There was talk of gender police, and even quotas on boards from the opposition's "Mr Nice Guy", Joe Hockey, the architect of the Liberals' parental leave plan aimed especially at high-flying women.

However, in order to understand the totality of the situation we need to look across the spectrum of women. Having our shadow treasurer going on about women and gender pay gaps and the general unfairness of it all is not the kind of hard policy alternative that will win over the pro-family lobby, which is looking at family tax reform, let alone the disgruntled Right of the Liberal Party.

Hockey's odd insistence on quoting Theodore Roosevelt in the opinion pages only makes his ignorance of the situation for 21st century Australian women more pointed.

But it is quite true that many women would like to have better careers and, on the surface, in the corporate world Australian women are not doing so well. Most Australian women work part-time for much of their lives so can they have a real career path on a less than full-time basis? And what of all this hot air about quotas and gender police?

Though no fan of gender police, but with an open mind on the Labor government's intentions, I spoke this week to the new Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency director, the lawyer Helen Conway, who happens to be an old school friend. Our career paths have curiously mimicked the different ends of the female career spectrum. I am the classic impecunious work-from-home-in-the-trackies lady, and Helen is a corporate high flyer with remuneration to match. We had similar educations, but have different priorities.

I have a very large family, which is my first priority, and enjoy the flexibility writing gives me. Conway, who married late, had a classic rise through legal and corporate ranks, became a partner in a major law firm, has been on the NSW Equal Opportunity Tribunal and is a top executive and general counsel of the Caltex Australia Group.

She is not in favour of quotas. After all, the most brilliant girl at school didn't get to where she is with quotas. She is also critical of Hockey's ham-fisted attempt to play the male feminist.

" Talk of quotas is not helpful," Conway says. "In fact it is very unhelpful and diverts debate from the mainstream issues. Quotas lock people into adversarial positions, and my view is that we need to look at the best possible fit for each industry."

She cites the example of the mining industry as an area where "gender equality is very tough". She also makes the point that executive board quotas are relatively easy to achieve, and it is structural change throughout an organisation that is difficult.

As for the full time v part time debate, "people make valid choices". She intends to support those choices.

" Part-time workers generally have stalled careers. They are seen as not wanting to do the 'battling'. But some who work part-time cannot make their way up the corporate ranks because of structural impediments."

All senior positions are full-time and Conway gives as an example of a change that would make a difference, the possibility of senior positions being restructured so that the work can be part-time and shared. Or the job could be designed differently, thanks to more flexible work practices.

Conway wants more development plans for middle managers who are female. "Until you get that infrastructure in place, there are structural impediments to women's rise . . . " She gives the example of a "diversity council". That set off "internal gender police" alarm bells, but Conway is unfazed.

"Amendments to the existing act [governing the agency] have not yet been put in place . . . the agency's powers will be strengthened, firms will be required to report against specific gender indicators, not yet finalised, so that what is being reported is actually happening. Given the failure of the statistics it is not unreasonable to strengthen the agency's powers. However, under my directorship the agency will be acting collaboratively."

And as for the gender pay gap, Conway is aware that there is still some confusion about what that actually is. Mostly it is a result of the flexible part-time workplace that Conway wants to promote.

So if the feminists, Hockey and others listen to more average women and rely less on bare statistics on gender pay gaps, perhaps we will discover that Australian women are not so unequal and, unlike their counterparts in other advanced economies, are actually doing on the whole what they want to do in life.

This has long been a thorn in the side of feminists. For too long feminists have not taken any notice of the research, particularly the research that I wrote about in this newspaper almost 10 years ago: that is, the studies by English sociologist Catherine Hakim, whom I met during John Howard's prime ministership.

That research tells us most women are adaptive and that after marriage and children they work mostly to top up family income and pay the mortgage since women's priorities tend to shift.

Part-time work, which is rare in many countries, has been a great boon for Australian women. If they have careers they tend to mark time, but most women don't have careers, they just have jobs they do for money. And if you are say, working at Woolies or (as one woman I spoke to), doing car detailing for a living, why wouldn't you want to give it away to look after your baby?

Like Conway I do not believe at this stage -- about 15 years after I first started to write about these issues -- that an adversarial approach works. It leads to empty ideological rhetoric. But in order to promote a more consultative approach, government authorities such as Conway's agency must look at the full spectrum of women.

The problem is that until recently women on the bottom end have been left out. So far I wouldn't look to the Coalition opposition for action on that front.