It may have been a professional tragedy, but Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation this week was something of a triumph for women generally. That’s because while the fairness or otherwise of her exit from Optus is open to debate, what’s clear is that it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
An exit of such a high-profile female chief executive has often generated commentary arguing that no man would have been sacked/pushed/forced on his sword/ banished or generally targeted in similar circumstances.
That’s not the case this time: the debate in the days following Bayer Rosmarin’s departure has largely been about whether the penalty fits her mistakes, not whether conscious or unconscious gender bias forced her out.
And that has to be a good thing for women as they strive to be taken seriously as candidates in the top jobs in corporations, government departments and politics.
Which is not to say that women will not lose their jobs in future because of their sex. We’re not out of the woods yet.
But, ironically, every time a woman misses out for messing up and no one focuses on her gender, women take another step along the road to equality.
I tend to think Bayer Rosmarin has had the rough end of the stick and that someone with a little more chutzpah might have got through the past couple of weeks, but it’s hard to argue that this intelligent and skilled chief executive is out because she’s a woman.
Indeed, in this paper this week, one of the nation’s leading company directors, Tony Shepherd, defended the outgoing chief executive but focused on the pile-on from politicians that followed the Optus debacle on November 8.
He mentioned, too, the company’s rather poor media management. Some might argue that as a man, Shepherd wouldn’t be able to see sexism even if it were there, but his analysis is compelling – as is his argument that we’re all a bit unrealistic in our expectations of our communications providers.
After Shepherd’s opinion piece was published, other corporate leaders joined the conversation suggesting Bayer Rosmarin’s bosses might have been a bit OTT about it all. Other commentators, searching for reasons for her departure, suggested she did herself in, not because she caused the crisis (she clearly did not) but because she handled it badly.
She hadn’t got the memo that says before you even think about the fix, get yourself on breakfast television and tell the world you are really, truly sorry, but hey, we’ve got this, we’re good.
It’s a new world out there, Kelly, a demanding one, where the abject apology, the modern-day public stoning, matters as much as the tech workaround.
The Optus boss won some brownie points by fronting up at Senate estimates on November 17, and taking it on the chin. (Is my unconscious bias showing if I wonder whether a male chief executive would have just resigned before having to answer all those questions?) Whatever.
The problem for Bayer Rosmarin is that she couldn’t avoid looking slightly worried, slightly uncertain and not a little vulnerable at estimates.
A more confident demeanour might have got her over the line. Perhaps a forceful man (unconscious bias again?) might have done better, given our culture doesn’t mind a bloke who crashes through. Perhaps not, given that the key questions were coming from women.
That’s another big win for women: the politicians who smelt blood this time and got stuck into the chief executive were women.
It’s accidental, of course, that our Communications Minister is a woman. Well, actually, not accidental. Michelle Rowland is there on merit – and after a god-awful, decades-long struggle by women to win the top jobs in politics.
There’s nothing accidental either about the presence of a trio of powerful female senators – Sarah Henderson (Liberal), Karen Grogan (Labor) and Sarah Hanson-Young (Greens) – at estimates. Like Rowland, who led the show on November 8 when Bayer Rosmarin was missing in action media-wise, those senators were in the right place at the right time and proved up to the task.
The fact women were attacking the decisions and actions of another woman effectively took gender off the table.
It’s a side issue, but the fact this was largely a women-on-woman event was also good news for men. Just imagine the fallout if it had been men taking on a female CEO. Indeed, it would likely have been impossible given how easily men are accused of harassment and bullying in such scenarios.
Yep, we’re not there yet.
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