Aspiring Political Leaders, Test Case for Equal Pay

Political Leadership – what does an aspiring Labour Party leader look like?

In the UK, the ‘race’ for leader of the Labour party has begun. One woman Diane Abbott is standing for the leadership. She is the first black person to contest the leadership of the party. Abbott is contesting the leadership with four other candidates, all of them male and all of them white. It was one of the contenders David Miliband who ‘helped’ Abbott get the required level of support to run for leader. Barbara Ellen in an article in The Observer (13 June) stated that his actions, whilst helping Abbott secure the votes she needed, were "patronising in the extreme". If actions speak louder than words, then what this is saying is loud and clear: “No skin off my nose: she won’t win.” Ellen goes on to make the point that Abbott is being positioned (by some at least) as the candidate who can make others feel better about the leadership contest – with Abbott they can tick the gender and ethnic diversity boxes – but as Ellen states "since when were black or female or in Abbott's case black and female, politicians there to make the white guys look good?" A great question!

Harriet Harman, the stand-in Labour party leader, has stated that Diane Abbott will give her rivals ‘a good run for their money.’ Harman nominated Abbott to prevent the leadership race being an all male affair. Let’s hope she is right and that the contest for leader focuses on who will be the most effective leader, including serious consideration of leaders who are female and black.

Pay Equity Test Case
The Australian Services Union (ASU) launched an equal pay test case with Fair Work Australia under the new Federal Fair Work Act in March this year. The ASU's case is focused on 250,000 mainly female community sector workers, in particular those who work in the care and community industries. They state that ‘the case sets out to prove that Community Workers wages have been set and kept so low because the work of the sector has been traditionally considered as Women’s Work. The test case is supported by the Equal Pay Alliance – a group of over 150 representatives from business, unions and government.

In a press release coinciding with the lodging of the claim the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick stated that “A positive outcome in this test case will be a triumph for workers in this area, and will have important future implications. Australia is not alone in its challenge to close the gender gap in pay. We need to use all the tools available to us to ensure that this occurs. I warmly welcome the filing of the ASU case today.”

Hearings and/or inspections are expected to occur in October this year. I’d like to feel optimistic about this case as I believe that so many jobs in the caring sectors are undervalued and under rewarded. There is a real chance to do something about closing the gender pay gap. I wonder if they will be ‘brave’ enough to do it? We’ll keep an eye on the progress of this case!

On the Horizon
We have added a new section to our blog... "On the Horizon" which will provide links to upcoming events, seminars and conferences in the women in leadership space. Take a look on the right hand column of the blog and you will find it.

There are a number of events coming up in the next few months that might be of interest to you:
- “Getting Women off the Bench – A Gender Equality Blueprint for 2010” - National Press Club Address (Australia) by Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner on Wednesday 23 June 11.45am-1.30pm (EST). At the address Commissioner Broderick will launch her 2010 Gender Equality Blue Print for Australia. The event will be fully televised. Click this link for more details.

- The Maureen Bickley Centre for Women in Leadership in association with the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA), are hosting a Breakfast Seminar on 2 July 2010 at 7:15am for 7:30am start on Gender Pay Equity with Mairi Steele, Acting Director, EOWA.
Mairi will discuss the research which suggests that HR specialists need a better understanding of pay equity issues and how to address them. She will talk about how to raise awareness of the problem and drive change in this critical area. For further information contact Lucy Cowcher-Guthrie at the MBC.

- The International Conference for Women Engineers and Scientists (ICWES) will be held in Adelaide, Australia from July 19-22, 2011. This global conference is run every three years and is a forum for the exchange of information and ideas for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

The 2011 conference theme is Leadership, Innovation, Sustainability an will explore the following:
* Attracting, developing and retaining women engineers and scientists.
* Outstanding practice models of industry commitment to diversity and equality in the workplace.
* Achievements, innovations and research in the various fields of engineering, science and technology
* New ideas and solutions to contemporary problems including climate change, water, energy and sustainability.

Abstract submissions have opened, closing 1st December 2010. Submissions from both academics and industry practitioners are strongly encouraged. For more information visit www.icwes15.org

Part-time Managers: A Rare Breed

At the recent EURAM conference, a paper by Jennifer Tomlinson and Susan Durbin from the UK really resonated with us. The paper "Female Part Time Managers: work life balance and careers" presented research exploring the transition to part-time work of a group of female managers in the UK and the impact of this career decision on mobility, future career aspirations and work-life balance. The paper commented that part-time work is commonly requested - with 49% of working women seeking a permanent or temporary reduction in hours at some point in their career. However, women working in part-time managerial roles is very uncommon. In the UK, it sits at ~ 4% of women working part-time.

Part-time work at a managerial level enables women to continue to occupy challenging, high-status and well paid roles. However, the study highlighted a number of challenges for the women working in part-time managerial roles:

- a reduction in hours is accompanied by the perception and acceptance that career prospects are put on hold;

- women working in part-time managerial roles feel that they are overlooked for role and promotions despite having the experience and qualifications for the job;

- persistant negative perceptions of part-time workers exist, despite the women in the study being productive and highly focused at work and frequently working on excess of their contracted hours for no extra pay.

Image: www.delawareemploymentlawblog.com

Some connected issues are emerging in some research currently in progress by our group at the Maureen Bickley Centre on women engineers and their journey to management. Feelings of frustration, of invisibility and of being discounted are experienced by highly talented and practiced women managers who shift to part-time work, often following the arrival of children. These feeling are exacerbated by company policy that, for example, does not offer management roles on less than four days per week, a culture of long hours and presenteeism that creates a sense of needing to be in the office for 50 hours a week to do the job and a lack of creativity in job design of management roles that discounts job share or formation of alternative look management teams. This results in part-time managerial roles being difficult to obtain and to sustain.

It is disappointing that organizations retain the inflexible mind-set of manager = fulltime / long hours. The number of women in part-time management roles and the feelings experiences by women seeking and occupying these positions indicate that organisations are severely limiting their choice of managerial candidates by not offering sustainable, well designed part-time management roles. What are your thoughts? Is your organization innovative in the design of roles at management level? Do you have examples of part-time or flexible contract managers that are successfully operating in companies?

An International Take on Women in Leadership

EURAM

We recently attended the European Academy of Management (EURAM) Conference in Rome. Perhaps not surprisingly but always disappointing the issues relating to women’s lack of access to leadership roles are remarkably consistent across geographic and cultural boundaries. The problems resulting from masculinist cultures was a fairly common theme as were the popular misconceptions about women’s choices regarding their careers (e.g. opting out of senior roles as a ‘free’ rather than a constrained choice). However, the solutions, or possible solutions, to the issues varied widely depending on ideology and political will. Some papers, amongst the many that were thought provoking, really resonated with us:

Faiza Ali from Macquarie University speaking about working to achieve equality in Pakistan – incredible challenges and courage in the face of political and religious systems that place little value on gender equity. Research undertaken by Anne Bardoel, Helen De Cieri and Tracey Shea from Monash University, Australia on the impact on work-life initiatives of the GFC. On one level there is the pleasing finding that there had been relatively little impact (little or no change to policy or established practices – fine tuning of current practices was reported) – but then it was also revealed that most of the companies participating in the research didn’t provide direct funding to the initiatives, therefore maintaining something that’s not directly costing the organisation suggests that such initiatives may not be as embedded as we had hoped!! We also heard from Pia Hook, Anna Wahl and Charlotte Holgersson from the KTH Institute of Technology, Sweden about their research regarding women as a power resource in organisations and women’s initial reluctance to see themselves as powerful - despite Sweden’s well entrenched gender equity culture and legislative framework.

Women in Science

Our thanks to Anna who alerted us to this editorial on science and gender in Nature Immunology (2009) vol 11 no 2, February. The editorial highlights that gender stereotypes prevent women from reaching their full potential and from gaining appropriate recognition for the research they undertake. Women are lost to the system at the completion of their postdoctoral fellowships – this transition point to academic faculty is seen as a critical first step for women wanting to build a research career. For those who do make this transition, challenges remain. The editorial notes that women scientists have slower rates of promotion, less recognition through research awards, hold fewer academic administrative roles such as departmental chair (relative to the eligible pool), are paid less than their male counterparts (as much as 30% in some cases!!!) and receive less research funding.

Another interesting point made is that women publish fewer papers, something that has shown across a number of studies since the early 80s. This might be seen by some as explaining the different career outcomes for women. However, it has also been shown that there is no difference in the number of citations for women or men scientists. The article notes that women are seemingly more consistent in producing good quality work, whereas men produce a greater quantity of more variable quality.

What remains disappointing is that it still a case of quantity over quality and shows that we need to keep questioning so-called merit based systems to ensure that systemic practices are examined for implicit gender bias and when bias is uncovered it is exposed as a first step to changing practices that disadvantage women.