International Women’s Day: The Australian panel discuss education, child care and following dreams

Discussion centred on education when The Australian and girls’ school PLC Croydon combined for International Women’s Day.

Year 12 PLC students (from left) Ling Ling Lin (school captain), Mackenzie Dodd, Abbey Lindsey, Anastasia Graham, Claudia Taylor-Blair, Jasmin Wiesner, Jenna Turner and Vanessa Lin. Front left: panel members Edwina McCann, Christine Manfield, Caroline Overington (moderator) and Carolyn Simpson

Discussion centred on education when The Australian and Sydney girls’ school PLC Sydney at Croydon combined for International Women’s Day.

Caroline Overington: I love International Women’s Day. And I love International Women’s Day events in particular, because we can talk about the kind of things we’re going to talk about today — education for girls, not something to be taken for granted, not something that’s offered to girls in every corner of the world; and leadership, what it means to get to the very top of your profession. We have three outstanding women who have reached the top through tenacity and perseverance, and intelligence and commitment. So my first question, here in front of Year 10, 11 and 12 girls at PLC, is what did education mean to you, how much did you value it?

Carolyn Simpson: Well, my father insisted we all finish school and he hoped that we would all end up with university degrees, which we did. It wasn’t so common in those days for girls. Even at this school (which Simpson attended), there wasn’t a huge emphasis on academic achievement.

Christine Manfield: I was a teenager in the 60s and I ran away at 15 from home and I was living in Brisbane and I just went to the other side of town, got a job and then moved to Adelaide when I was 20 and then realised the value of education. So I went back to school and did my HSC when I was 22 and then did teaching and taught for many years before I walked away and started cooking.

Edwina McCann: I was very lucky — I went to a school much like this one and it was a time when it was very much about getting your education and getting a university degree. And interestingly, I’m still really good friends with my girlfriends from school. And none of us have ended up relying on a man as a financial plan!

Overington: Is success about perseverance? Is it about determination? Or is it just by chance that you’ve found the right groove early on?

Simpson: I spent five years as a schoolteacher and wasn’t very good at that. So I gave that away. I had a burning desire to be a journalist, but that didn’t happen because I couldn’t get a job and that’s when I, almost by accident, decided to study law — I stayed with it. I finished law. I went to the bar. There were some tough times: it was not easy for women in those days. If you got a brief at all, it was in family law. Some of us didn’t want to do family law. It was hard, so you had to stay with it. I did and so did others but I think it still can be difficult for women at the bar.

KEY QUESTIONS: What was discussed

Manfield: For me, it’s always about the challenge, wanting to be challenged, wanting to be intellectually stimulated whatever you decide to do. And to be curious. I just never believed in job security, which was a big, big thing when I was a young adult. When I made the decision to leave teaching after seven years, everyone was just going “what about your future?” I just went with my gut instinct of what I really liked doing. I always think that you’ve got to be the strongest role model that you possibly can be, particularly in hospitality. There’s not been a lot of women voices in the past. It’s starting to improve and we have a big fight on our hands now for gender equity in our industry.

McCann: I always worked and I loved to work so I don’t think I ever questioned keeping going but probably the most challenging time was when I had my twins when some days I pretty much had to pay to work. I’ve got so many young girls who work for me (and) I often find after baby number two is when I have really got to sit them down and say “please keep going, please come back. I promise you, this too will pass, it will get easier.”

Overington: Have you experienced sexual harassment in the workplace?

McCann: I was talking to (broadcaster) Lisa Wilkinson about this recently because we spent a lot of time in women’s magazines. Some of my first experiences were working for women editors. I started at Vogue in my early 20s, and did about seven years there. So that was quite unique. And I wonder if that’s one of the reasons I have never felt like I have been disadvantaged in any way because I worked in mostly female environments in my formative years.

Manfield: There has been in the past quite a big culture of bullying in hospitality, that was part of its historical platform. But I think that’s really changed over the last 10, 15, 20 years. It’s about the culture that you create and what your expectations are and just being very transparent with everyone.

Simpson: When I started (women) were an absolute minority. At the bar in those days particularly, you relied on solicitors to give you work to do, so that could be difficult. When you’re at the bar, you’ve got an opponent. It was quite difficult sometimes for men to cope with the idea of dealing with a female. They were either patronising, bullying, dismissive or sometimes just plain rude and sometimes just sexist.

Overington: How have you combined children and work? What are the issues for women?

McCann: There have been two or even three Productivity Commission reports now that have found that we need more flexible childcare (but) it seems to be one of those issues that just keeps getting swept under the carpet. I can’t tell you how many talented women I’ve lost when they’ve had that second baby because it just doesn’t make financial sense for them to work, because they are often earning less than their husbands. A large percentage of those marriages end in divorce and if those women don’t have superannuation because they haven’t been working they can find themselves in q pretty precarious situations. As a society we need to put more flexibility in place to encourage women at that point. You feel like everybody’s always (talking about) a baby bonus for when the baby’s first born, but some of the flexibility issues are around when you’ve got kids in high school because you’ve got all the pick-ups and drop-offs. It’s still got to do with equal pay because if it makes more financial sense for women to give up work, because childcare is costing $200 a day or something, then that’s what happens.

Manfield: It’s a very different world now … the expectation of relationships is not necessarily girl/boy. There are a lot of parents who are in same-sex relationships and they face the same issues in terms of how they’re going to manage their family, the relationship and what the roles are going to be.

Overington: What do you do as a boss, if a woman comes to you, she’s fantastically talented, she’s got all the skills that you want, but she’s just not coping because she has to work nights?

Manfield: What I have done with people who have worked with me is to make it as flexible as possible for them, particularly for women who are the carers — and often they are the sole carers. So you’ve really got to try to think creatively in your business how you can still tap into their talents and use that person as a valuable resource in your business but not have them doing the graveyard shifts at night.

Simpson: Life as a solicitor or barrister can sometimes demand a sudden burst of really hard work. If you’ve got a case on the next day, you might be in your chambers working until midnight. That is hard for women who’ve got children. Some of them have supportive husbands, some don’t. It’s a choice that has had to be made by a lot of people, and some very good people who would have made good lawyers have found it overwhelming and have given it up or have made lifestyle choices and said “I don’t want to spend as long working”.

Recently there has been some leadership from women at the bar. There have been a couple of women presidents and they’ve initiated some really good (childcare) programs.

Overington: Have you found that other women have been of ­assistance to you in getting to the top and also, now that you are all at the top, do you feel an obligation to to assist other women? Or is it every man for themselves ?

Manfield: I think mentoring is absolutely essential. A large part of my time is giving back and mentoring younger people. I like nothing better than jumping in and working with Gen Next. It just keeps you alive. I do a lot of mentoring of young girl chefs within our industry and in other countries.

I’ve got a group in Cambodia and also a group in Delhi — for them to see women at the top of their profession is a very strong message that you can give out … because girls don’t necessarily have the same opportunities in those countries as boys.

McCann: Career development is incredibly important today because the workforce does tend to be quite transient. Young people think “I’ve been here a few years I really should move on”. But it’s moving for the sake of moving. So I do think it is up to bosses to adapt to that way of thinking and to offer career development and opportunities which encourage people to stay and work with this longer. Mentoring is a huge part of that.