Episode 8: Resistance and scepticism still surround gender equity: Here’s how to fix it

In this episode of Retail Untangled, Amie sits down with Lisa Sweeney, CEO of Business in Heels.

In her most recent venture, Business in Heels, she supports organisations in achieving diversity and inclusion goals through outcomes-based mentoring. Lisa is here today to discuss gender equity, specifically within the retail industry.

Transcript

Intro:

Coming up on this episode of Retail Untangled…When you look at all the business cases everywhere, it shows that more diversity, better decision making, and it's actually a more profitable company, and so quite often by empowering more women, we actually create a bigger pie for everybody. 

Amie:

Welcome to Retail Untangled, my name is Amie Larter and this is the podcast where we speak to retail industry experts and find out business hacks that have helped them succeed. You won’t find these gems anywhere else and we have some superb stories from the coalface as well as helicopter insights from retail industry leaders.

Today’s guest is Lisa Sweeney, CEO of the Melbourne based Business in Heels. Lisa, you’ve got a background in retail as well as working with SMEs both service and product side to be both profitable and sustainable. Your most recent venture, Business in Heels, sees you supporting organisations in achieving diversity and inclusion goals through outcomes based mentoring. You’ve joined me today to discuss gender equity, particularly through the lens of the retail industry. 

I’ll start by painting a picture, women currently control an estimated 75 percent of consumer spending and represent about 57 percent of the retail workforce. Of that, female directors represent 27 percent of board positions, female CEOs lead 17 percent of Australia’s retail businesses and there is still a persistent gender pay gap between men and women working in similar roles. I don’t know if it's just me, but it does feel as though there is some level of disparity between the focus that we’ve had on gender equity and the actual implementation of meaningful change in organisations.

If you can kick start by telling me, is this what you’re seeing, and why?

Lisa:

I'm definitely seeing it in many organisations. Some are doing some real meaningful change. But a lot of it is just about lip service. And I think it comes down to time and money. I think a lot of organisations just... feel that lip service is easier to do and we see that often with International Women's Day where, there's great events and they put an event on and it's all women that go to the event supporting other women saying we should get more equality and the decision makers aren't even in the room.

It just continues to perpetuate which is why we actually set up the Gender Equity Awards because we got sick of the talk fest and wanted to actually do something a little bit more meaningful.

Amie: 

Do you find as well that it is focused around that one day a year as well? So it's one day a year. It's a lot of talking, but, you know, it's really about how do we stretch this across the course of 365 days a year, and also move from big talkers to that big change.

Lisa: 

I think you're absolutely right, Amie.

In some respects, what's happened now is that many of the other movements like the Pride Month are actually dominating International Women's Day. And so, people often say to me, you know, it's a minority issue. It's like, we're actually 50 percent of the population or 51 percent of the population, so it's definitely not a minority issue.

I suppose resistance to change can be a significant hurdle. How can organisations effectively overcome resistance and scepticism, surrounding gender equity? Especially when, there's a really big history of all talk and no action. 

Lisa:

A lot of it comes back to everybody starting at different levels.

It’s your upbringing, it's your biases, it's your culture, it's your religion. So everyone's coming from different perspectives and I guess it becomes the responsibility of the organisation to create a culture which then has normalised stories and common history and a baseline that gives people a sense of belonging to it or not. 

Many organisations really struggle with creating this sort of culture, and dealing with biases. Many people feel that by empowering women, you're actually giving up something. And until we can address some of that. problem, then people are going to feel like they're being adversely affected because women are being empowered.

And yet, when you look at all the business cases everywhere, it shows that more diversity, better decision making as actually a more profitable company. And so quite often by empowering more women, we actually create a bigger pie for everybody and as you said earlier, you know, with the retail stats with 75 percent of money being spent by women, then you really need to get your female consumer, don't you?

Amie:

It’s where the money's at. You have a background in retail, and obviously now you've got Business in Heels, which is so exciting. 

There are many of the larger organisations making strong ground in terms of the implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and programs. How do you see retail faring compared to other industries? 

Lisa:

I think it's really interesting depending on which part of retail they're in. Retail's a very diverse industry with, fashion segment that has always been very heavily weighted towards women and often run by women. You get into the toy segment and it's heavily weighted towards men and run by men, as is a lot of FMCG.

So, there are pockets within retail that are very different and very diverse. Because there is still a war for talent, some of the biggest organisations are at the forefront. But we're also seeing some of the smaller, more, exciting retailers like Mecca are really leapfrogging out with incredible cultures and creating these really exciting environments, the place for people to work in.

So, there's almost a little bit of the history, the more old fashioned retailers that haven't moved along are actually being left behind, some of them. And quite often, it's interesting because when I joined the toy industry, there had never been a female buying controller in the industry before me.

And it was... it was really funny because a lot of the suppliers didn't know what to do with women involved in the field. when you've made it in the toy industry, they still go away for a men's fishing weekend, which we were never invited to. 

Amie:

When you break down who's doing well and who's doing some really cool initiatives that seem to be driving change within this space it is your larger organisations because they've obviously got the funding to put behind it. How do you see it more holistically and what's happening with people not in the larger, but the smaller to medium size businesses as well?

Lisa:

So with the Gender Equity Awards, we actually have categories for all different sizes of company and last year, actually, the company that ranked the highest was one of the SMEs. So the assumption that budget relates to best gender equity is not correct and what we see is quite often the smaller companies can be much more nimble and much more quick in their ability to adapt and they often are far more personal to share a couple of really cool initiatives from a couple of the smaller companies.

One of them's a legal firm, won this year, and in legal practices, making somebody a partner is really difficult. And so to make someone a partner whilst they're on parental leave is unheard of. And to allow that person to come back part time is even more unheard of. And yet this is what some of the more innovative companies are doing. One of the other companies had a very cool way of integrating inclusion and they actually sit down as a group and form a social contract. And so I think they've got like 60 or 70 employees, but it's something that could be done similarly in large teams in maybe the different functions in larger organisations.

But part of it is, how are we happy to be talked to? What are the goes and no goes? And it might- that might be cultural, it might be religious, there might be all sorts of things. But it then gives the whole team permission to pull anybody up who breaks the agreement. And then they revise it every couple of months so that all the new people are brought in and it's...It continues to evolve with the team, but such a cool initiative. So, it doesn't have to be the large organisations that are making the strides.

Amie:

And it makes sense. It's probably they're the ones that are just being used as the case studies and examples. The strategy is obviously well thought out because they might have teams, but it doesn't mean that as someone that's in a smaller business that you can't have that same level of impact with the people that are in your organisation.

Now, in terms of collaboration between different departments and levels of people within a business, where do you see the struggle? Because obviously you need buy in and you need to be able to roll this out holistically throughout the entire organisation. How important is collaboration between different levels of the business?

Lisa:

It's a really interesting dichotomy because on one hand, you've got a fight for resources. So wages, resources, tools, money, whatever and the further up you go, the bigger the fight for it, and that's warring against the vision.

So I guess it comes down to a really good vision that enables the different silos to actually collaborate to achieve an outcome. And so you're seeing different ways of leadership happening and a lot more flattening of structures, which I think is what actually facilitates better inclusive behaviour across a lot of organisations and sometimes you'll get a mix up of the exec and responsibilities. Some of the companies that are really being smart at this level to foster that are creating sponsorships. So an exec might be sponsoring, high performing talent across different parts of the organisation and that actually, enables a lot more of the collaboration to go on, as well as mentoring programs do as well, because it just fosters a better understanding from the senior leadership team to the rest of the organisation, so they get better more across where there are bottlenecks and the problems are as well.

Amie: 

It makes a lot of sense. Leadership obviously plays a crucial role in shaping organisational culture. What specific actions can leaders take to move beyond rhetoric and actively foster an environment that supports gender equality?

Lisa: 

I think this comes back to storytelling. Setting the vision is one thing, and walking the walk is another thing, but telling stories and creating common backgrounds for people is really important. So in my history of, you know, being in leadership, it was always this thing of if you had to pull somebody up, you do it in private, right?

You would never call them out in public. One of the things that I've learned over the last decade of going through a lot of this gender equity piece and diversity and inclusion, is that actually by not pulling it up in public, you're condoning the actions. And so, Paul Zahra actually shared a great story with us, which is just a classic example.

He and a number of the partners had taken a lady out for a cup of coffee, a client, and they asked her what sort of coffee she had and she said, cappuccino with a couple of sugars, and one of the partners said, you don't need any sugar, you're sweet enough as it is and everybody else there was going, “ick” that's not the right thing to say. Having the inward debate of do I say something, do I not say something. And so Paul just said, “Look, that's really not appropriate conversation. Let us just go and we'll get the coffee.” Right, so she knew that he didn't think that was okay, and then he took the other person off, and they had a separate discussion as they got coffees.

And so I just thought there's some really great roadmaps in that, and that's where good leadership provides those roadmaps, examples, and how to deal with it, and what's okay and what's not okay. 

Amie: 

Off the back of leadership, accountability is crucial. Ideas are one thing, but effecting change is another. How can organisations implement measurable accountability measures to ensure that gender equity goals are not just discussed, but actively pursued and achieved?

I noticed that when judging the gender equity awards for you guys that being able to measure and being accountable is really key and, you can't create change unless we're holding ourselves accountable. Tell me about this. 

Lisa:

Being measurable ultimately is the only way it's going to create change. And what's now happening where everybody, every employer from next March is going to have to publish their gender pay gap is going to create some very rapid change. And do you remember the Twitter bot that went off in the UK a few years ago when they had this published? And so, on International Women's Day when companies were saying, "Oh, we're celebrating International Women's Day,” it would pop up and say, “by the way, your gender pay gap is such and such and such and such.”

So really, how much are you supporting your women? And so, that went viral in the UK at the time. If you go back to having measures, and so quite often some of the key measures are about how many, women and men do you get to the table for interviews. Like it might not be about hiring, but it might be about making sure you get even choice to start off with.

So you're not selecting against, and then it becomes the best person for the job. In other cases, there's a big discussion about the fact that quotas are what's needed to jog people out of their apathy. And I guess it sort of depends what, background you're coming from. So in some cases, quotas have worked really effectively.

But quite often then, the people, the women that have been promoted, become disillusioned and feel like they're the token women. And quite often, the male colleagues discount them because... you're just a token female, right? So you're here just to make up the numbers rather than having anything to add value.

If that is well managed, then that's not a problem. But if it's not, then that actually does become a problem. And so goals are sometimes in those cases, better. A lot of companies at the moment are working to the 40, 40, 20 as a goal, so sometimes it means you have to totally change the way you recruit in order to get that rolling. One of the problems is that a lot of women are not stepping into P&L responsibility roles, which specifically in retail is what will get them to the CEO role. There's a lot of women in marketing and HR that don't have P&L responsibility, but if they don't have it, it's very unlikely that they'll get promoted.

It's not impossible, but it's unlikely. And so we need more women to be willing to step into those roles specifically to kind of start making that shift. 

Amie:

Just knowing things like that, as a business leader, in terms of where you need to increase, specifically in different types of roles is really important, but probably not something that there's a lot of clarity on.

Lisa:

And I think this comes back to good mentoring and sponsoring for women, to specifically get ideas from other people who've gone before, what are some of the ways to get ahead?

Amie:

I'm very keen to discuss the gender equity awards. You've only just announced them. So it's sort of very fresh information.

Lisa:

So last year was the first year. This has been the second year. So fairly new. 

Amie:

In terms of the stories that you're seeing come through in terms of, you know, the applications that are being put forward in terms of the winners, what are some of the best practices that have been coming out that have sort of caught your eye?

Lisa:

Well I think one of the big things has been this change from talking about maternity leave to parental leave just generally. So, you know, reducing the sexual connotation of, and primary care versus secondary care, it's just parental leave.

There's X amount of days off... I mean, some of the tech companies are really amazing. They've got up to 42 weeks of paid parental leave. and things like, paying super throughout that period has just become par for the course. But a lot of the better companies have, are now starting to address menopause, menstrual leave, as well as domestic violence leave.

So that's been, you know, some of the new ones. As well as... Some of them recognising, IVF and stillbirths and other, significant times in people's lives, I guess, one company even considers, you know, loss of a pet as, you know, a good reason for having like bereavement leave.

So, I guess it's about, ultimately, it's about treating people as people and having policies that are adaptable enough to say that you, Amie, should be treated differently to me, and provide a whole raft of different solutions that will help me. So I think that's a key part of it. And, a lot more flexibility has been allowed because it's still, most women have 30 hours of unpaid work that they get to do a week. Whether it's caring for kids, caring for the house, caring for aged parents, but they seem to still be holding the primary responsibility about that. And so most employers are trying to create some policies and ability for people to take that time.

The other side is the peer support. And I think what you're saying is a lot of, uh, and this is where the inclusion piece is really cool. So we're seeing a lot of intersectionality about gender and race, and gender and disability, gender and religion, and how can we actually help. those people that are doubly disadvantaged to feel included?

And so a lot of companies have peer support groups that are running which actually help people to normalise behaviour and make people feel involved. So they're just some of the key things we picked up. 

Amie:

Yeah, I read a couple of those actually in regards to the peer to peer and I think that's a really important part of getting a groundswell of movement in an organisation, because you can obviously have leadership setting strategy or setting goals, but it's so important that everyone's active and thinking about it in a much more current everyday way. And from what you are seeing, how can organisations make this a 365 a year discussion as opposed to something that we're only hearing about every so often?

Lisa:

I think a lot of it comes down to having goals and having it on the agenda and sharing those good news stories.

So rather than having them come out at International Women's Day, it should just be part of the regular conversation, and at least board up every, you know, how we are going. It should be, one of the key companies from last year, Star Entertainment, did a huge shift in every single manager, part of their KPIs was, making sure that they were levelling up their balance of gender within each team.

And so everybody had that responsibility. And I know in a lot of large tech companies, that's the same. So it just becomes, you know, either we're talking about, how the teams are performing, or we're talking about how we're recruiting new people, or whatever. So at every touch point, it just becomes a normal conversation. And it doesn't become anything unusual.

Amie:

I recall you talking about storytelling. We see this in Inside Retail, right? There are when it comes to recognition or when it comes to the people that we're interviewing, a large portion of the people that we're interviewing are senior executives, are people that are sort of speaking on behalf of the company, and it does leave a huge void in terms of the recognition and thought process from people that are, at the, from operational to middle management, et cetera, there is a big gap there, right?

In terms of recognition and the storytelling around the work that people are doing at other levels rather than that very C-suite senior leader. 

Lisa:

So as well as looking at the company sizes, we also looked at the different roles people had. So we have an award for the best employee as well as the manager, senior manager and board member and so on.

And we wanted to separate that to highlight that everybody's got a part to play. So we had, four, five, maybe six amazing, finalists in the employee category and then the manager category. So, Jodi Kirschel from Cloud Engineering had just done so many amazing things about supporting people on parental leave and making people feel welcome.

And you just understand that from an- every employee can make that contribution, but most of them aren't. And the lady that won, Keturah Halliday, who won the manager level, actually runs a, she's 18, and she's already raised, 270, 000 for girls in Mozambique. And you just think, what was I doing when I was 18, right?

This girl's been out fundraising, all sorts of fascinating things. She was, unfortunately, in London for the awards, but she, she's 18, she's been to the UN, she's been presented at the UN and policies that should be changed and this sort of stuff. And I'm thinking, I think I was still doing parties at that stage, but I guess what it highlights is that if you're passionate, anyone can make a difference.

Amie:

Now, the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recently provided the Australian Government with its final report, the Women's Economic Equality... It's a 10 year plan to unleash the full capacity and contribution of women to the Australian economy.

Now, I am sure that this is something that you are, across in a much deeper way than I am. So, it would be great if you could sort of unpack for me, what are the major economic policy changes required to drive, meaningful change that have come out of this, 

Lisa:

One of the interesting ones, I think, is the impact assessment statements. This is going to make a huge difference. And when I first heard about this, I thought, Oh, wow, how the hell is this going to work? but I heard this amazing example. So over in Sweden, they actually did a gender impact statement on the snow ploughing of this particular small town.

And you think snow plough drivers. What is, you know, what's going to come out of this? When they looked into it, what had happened was that the snowplough largely did the major roads, which is where most of the traffic was. But when they put the gender lens on it, they found out that most of the major roads are used by the men going to work, and most of the minor roads were used by the women taking the children to school, and that there were a lot of accidents on the minor roads.

It's either people walking and slipping over in the ice so as a result, the hospital expenses that were covered by the government's healthcare were really high for the women and children because there was no snow ploughing happening on the minor roads. So when they put the gender lens over it, they then said, okay, we need to go back and have a bit of a more equitable snow ploughing practice.

And that took about 30 percent out of the healthcare costs by actually having a different look. So you have no idea of what the gender lens is going to throw up, but I think it's going to be very interesting when we actually start applying it to all sorts of different government projects and things that are going on.

So that will be one very interesting piece. The first initiative, it's about reports and impact statements and various other things that need to happen. And I think that will actually drive some significant change once people come to grips with how to apply it and how to think about it. One of the second ones is about child care and at the moment I think there's a massive number of women that would work if they could, but at the moment the cost of child care is prohibitive versus going to work. And so until that is addressed, there's also not enough childcare facilities. So there's a twofold issue there. We would get a whole lot more part time people back. And I think that's been something that many employers are looking at even trying to facilitate because there is a war for talent at the moment.

So I think the Victorian government's actually putting a plan in place, which will be really interesting, which is ahead of many of the other states. So we'll get a big, pretty good idea of that. Another one of the really big ones, which is about changing up how the government procure their goods at the moment in the global supply chain, women owned and women led businesses get 2 percent of most of government spends. There's room for improvement. By comparison, the U.S. changed it up and it's now almost up to 10 percent. So if the government mandate that, which was one of the points and change it up to 5 percent, there's a significant impact back to the economy, back to women owned and women led businesses. 

Then, there's a lot that's been talked about, supporting women into non-traditional employment, I guess. There's a lot of work that needs to happen back even into the school levels. We recently just did the leadership summit for women in cyber and technology and the biggest area that they're recruiting there is for comms and PR people, right?

Because when you've got a breach. What are you doing? You're doing the comms and PR, but most people think cyber and tech and they're seeing the geek in the basement, right? Not the person. And so I just think there's a whole lot of misinformation about what are these, you know, non-traditional industries and what's a real day in the life look like.

 So, they're probably some of the biggest ones. Then there's a bit around, you know, there's, well, there's a lot around having a safe workplace with anti bullying and, the new employment laws that have just gone through are going to be a key part of that, so that'll be very interesting to see how that actually plays out, that employers are now going to be responsible for making sure that their employees are psychologically safe at work, and we'll see whether WorkSafe walks in and closes down an office if there's a, boss that's a bully.

And financial literacy is the other big one for women. There's still a lot of women that don't want to invest in themselves, don't know how to handle their money and need some help and support. But a lot of that comes back also to just tradition and how they were brought up and, what they know, and so hopefully the school system and some of the others will go some way to changing that.

They're some of the big ones, but it's pretty exciting, times. But the interesting stat, did you see? 30 percent of people believe that gender equity is not a problem.

Amie:

Yeah, not a problem. How did you feel about that? 

Lisa:

Well, it's just, yep, I think there's still a lot of people burying their heads in the sand.

Amie:

It's kind of wild, because it's been something that we've spoken about for so long, and for so many people, it's quite a significant proportion, um, I don't understand. 

Lisa:

I think it's been going on for so long that surely we must have got there by now, and yet nothing's changed. You know, I think the stats are, 

Amie:

Yeah, problem solved. It seems that there's some really great moves that can come out of that particular report. As you've highlighted, I think some of those things, whilst the 2 percent stat is just really scary. There are some really good initiatives and moves that will come from there.

When it comes to organisations that know, they're not there. You've been hearing the talk for quite some time, but you're not seeing any movement within your organisation. What are some practical steps you would suggest for pushing, you know, it's got to come from somewhere. And if it's not the leader and you're part of an organisation, what are some practical steps someone can take to make voices heard about this to kind of create action, move from talk to the space where they believe that change can be made.

Lisa:

Look, if you're an employee in a company that's really not doing much, perhaps to start an employee group of like minded people. So starting to create that internal peer support, which, you know, we'll still need to have some senior leadership sign off, I guess. But, a lot can happen without, too much being involved and it could just be, about creating that safe environment for people that are currently feeling disadvantaged or recognising that, the interesting thing today, and you've probably seen this right across the board, but one of the biggest leadership attributes that's being valued now is kindness.

Kindness and empathy. And so, it's not hard just going up to people and welcoming them and making sure that they feel like they've got a place to be. I think with the hybrid working, we've actually, that's got a little bit trickier, you know people, for a number of reasons are choosing to be hybrid at home more than hybrid at work, and so are often out of sight, out of mind. So I guess there's a responsibility for women to try and be more visible. I think this is something that, you know, women have a tendency to want to tick off all the boxes, clean out the in tray, and then network second.

And so I think, you know, women need to make an effort to be visible, and I think they need to also make an effort to be inclusive too, right? It goes both ways here it's about creating safe, inclusive environments. So, anybody can do it. And, one of the things that we've been working on is actually helping a lot of male allies with that roadmap.

What does it look like? What's real? What's a real discussion? How can you help make people feel safe? One of the really interesting things that came out of it, Amie, was that a lot of men don't think about their physical safety at all. It's not a problem. I don't worry about it. And it was brought home to a senior man, where he was creating situations where they had to go out and take out clients, right?

So the team that was mixed obviously and then he'd go home and leave some of the women at the place with the clients and one night one girl got her arm grabbed by one of the clients to the point where she had marks on her arm. And then that was when he realised that, totally not maliciously just didn't even think about it.

And so it's, having a better understanding of all of those sorts of things. And I guess for men that are keen to support, but feeling a little uncomfortable, particularly with gender fluidity, and what do I say, and what's the right words to say, and am I going to offend people? We've actually got a whole load of really cool webinars that people can watch and get ideas from other senior male leaders.

So both in the retail space and without. So, I think, one of the challenges retail has specifically, is because it's very store centric, and quite often people get into a store and that can be isolating. And so again, looking for those opportunities to network across stores, get exposure into the head office and get some sense of the broader community rather than just their store is a good thing.

Amie:

I'd never thought about that in terms of the isolation from. Head office, but it is true. It's different if it's a different base altogether, isn't it? 

Lisa:

One of the challenges is that you can have a toxic manager in our store and that can bias how everybody feels about the company.

That's up to different leaders to pull that into line, but it is a challenge when Australia's as vast as it is, and you think about how many locations stores are located in, and all the microcosms that go down with that and the different communities. So, quite a lot of the stores in form, like Bunnings and sausage sizzle becomes a community experience for the week.

So, there's lots of different ways to network and become inclusive there too.

Amie:

Lisa, I'm keen to understand, when did you move from retail, dud you move straight from retail and start Business in Heels?

Lisa:

Uh, look, it started for me, gosh, years and years ago when I was first exposed to the one child policy, actually, in China. So back in the 90s, I was in China, buying product, and it was the first time I'd ever, so, you know, my mid twenties thinking that, you know, women were all equal and everyone had equal opportunities.

And I discovered in China that with no retirement policy, that parents would choose to abandon girl children because they just didn't feel they had the earning potential of a boy. And It never occurred to me, I just found it the most confronting thing I've ever come across. And so when I came back, I started looking around and I soon realised that women weren't that equal, and that a lot of the senior women above me were having a really tough time, within the boys clubs that were there.

And so I guess throughout my career, which, obviously, I really loved in retail, and I, as I said earlier, I went into toys and that was a very different environment to fashion, and, retail's got lots of different microcosms within it, know, I realised that women were really struggling with a number of these things, and so, when I left, I thought, you know, what a great opportunity it would be to do something for women. 

Amie:

Good on you. Congratulations, because it seems like you guys are in a really good place. I'm keen to understand in terms of the work that you're doing with organisations, is it largely education based? Is that where you see the main driver of change being?

Lisa:

We do a lot around mentoring because I think ultimately, you can change policies, but you can't change hearts and minds unless you actually work with people individually. We do quite a lot around, mentoring one on one. And then, as well as that, we are doing quite a lot of workshops for organisations around, encouraging people to have a voice, how to get confidence to ask, maybe how to value their worth.

How to negotiate, win win deals. we're doing quite a bit now around role modelling. And, as well around how to have difficult conversations. And so we've got an interesting concept which we're taking to, big organisations, actor based opportunities for people to have those. real conversations to overcome the challenges.

So as I said before, a lot of people would support if they could, but they struggle, you know, what do I do? She cries. You know, how do I tell somebody this or if I have to let people go, how do I say that? And so with actor based role plays, they actually get the chance and you can dial them up and down the actors, create the situation that the person most hates and give them the practice so they can work through that emotion of doing it and get comfortable with it. It's two half days of, how to really communicate well, but we do scenario based, which is whatever the organisation needs and allows people to really practise.

Amie:

Education and that sort of one-on-one training and then building confidence for people to have conversations. Is there anything else that you've sort of identified as something that people can be working on straight away?

Lisa:

Straight away. And having the confidence to ask. And just understanding what is inclusive, I guess, is probably some really just good natural tips.

So if you're, if you're wanting to get more involved and do more around diversity inclusion, as I said, just getting used to asking and seeing where your company's up to and what are they doing. And you know, a lot of companies have things that people don't always know about. So maybe HR’s good start of what, what do you have and what are you doing?

Then if maybe the company's not changing, you know, you might choose to go and get involved in some of this external to the company so that you're still getting some idea of what good practices are. We run mentor mornings around lots of different locations so people can come along and get exposure to other organisations. 

Amie:

And potentially bring the ideas to the table then in their organisation, because it doesn't necessarily have to be from the top down. 

Lisa:

I think a lot of people expect the top is going to give them like this magic formula and that they've got your career mapped out for you.

But at the end of it, you know, the ball's in your court to do what you want to, to have the career you want. So, quite often just getting the ideas and getting out there and seeing what else is around.

Amie:

It's so true. It's sort of taking that responsibility to drive, change yourself as opposed to having it road mapped for you. 

I'm keen to understand is, you obviously come in with such a significant level of passion and that's a credit to you because I can see the amazing impact that you guys are having through education and recognition and doing this advocacy. I'm keen to understand in that 10 years time, because, you know, it's easy for me to come in and say it's all talk and no action, but I'm keen to understand, do you feel like we've moved, pushed the needle very far? And what are your hopes for, say, the next 5 years?

Lisa:

We've been doing leadership summits for some time to showcase role models of amazing women to try and help people be what they could see. And then it was a couple of years ago when we were frustrated about the next International Women's Day and the talk fest that we launched the Gender Equity Awards. Cause we thought, well, if there was best practice out there, why keep reinventing the wheel? And it was fascinating that the first one we had people were taking notes on napkins, they were doing deals, they were sharing good ideas and actually like Cotton On ended up doing a deal with Monash IVF so that they could bring that into the organisation too. So these things all happened on the night and again, at the last one, we could see again, people making those connections. We took the time to go through all the finalists and what did they do well? We didn't just read out names so that people could get ideas.

Amie:

That's the amplification that's needed. It's not just at the event, but it's the amplification post the event that really broadens the conversation.

Lisa:

On the Gender Equity Awards website, we've got case studies from last year and we're just starting to do live interviews and case studies of all this year's winners as well as a lot of the finalists.

Because even though many of them, some of them didn't win, The ideas are so clever and unique and easily copyable. Why bother reinventing the wheel? So people want to get some good ideas of what you can do. Have a look at that site.

Amie:

Having judged, you know, it's going through and just reading, it's just. Even if it's just the little bits that you can take that spark an idea or spark a thought process and you go, okay, well, that I can do. Like that I can do. And that starts just such... It could be just a small amount of change, but change is change.

And if we can get that into the hands of more people, it just empowers a little bit more of a movement. So I think that's fantastic, because there's some gold nuggets of information and practical wisdom there. 

Lisa:

So Penelope Cottrell from the Workplace Gender Equity Agency was there, and she just loved it because, you know, she generally is working with people, you know, to get them up, but these people are all up doing the next thing.

It's that level of enthusiasm. So I guess overall, maybe we've still got a way to go, but the best companies are so much further progressed. I mean, parental leave and paid parental leave and superannuation and domestic violence leave are all just par of the course. Women working part time in senior roles or working from home, again, it's par of the course.

These things went around 10 years ago. So there's been some significant shifts. Is there more to go? Absolutely. But, there certainly has been some major moves.

Amie:

Major moves, significant policy change as well, which is quite evident, as you said. Where do you think then the gap exists? Because there's obviously this amazing policy change and I do think when you look at business in heels and when you started to now that is probably the most significant.

Where's the gap? 

Lisa:

There's the non-traditional industries. So it's interesting because kids' perceptions of where they wanna go haven't changed that much. So girls are still thinking about teaching and nursing, as some of their key job roles, right?

So there's a gap in what women want to do, there's also a gap in what they believe that is, a future role for them. So there's, through school and university, there's a gap there, right? We're just not going to get enough engineers or technologists or anything to sustain where we need to go. So that's one potential problem.

Then, you know, once they hit the workforce, we've got to teach girls to ask, because that's the difference. Girls don't ask, and boys do every two seconds. I've done a good job. I need another pay rise. Here I am. I've done my next good job. So we've got to encourage girls to ask along the way and make sure that people are equitably assessing what's done to keep that balance.

But in the... very hierarchical companies in the, a lot of them in the partner structure. There's a lot of hiding of the differences in the gender pay gap. I heard a statistic the other day, and I don't know whether it's entirely factual, but the gender pay gap in the law industry sits around somewhere between 22 and 25 percent.

At the partner level, it's meant to be well in excess of 40 percent. And again, because you can't compare, right? So, supposedly a gap to balance of similar jobs. If you've got a, you know, so the pay will get around the situation by saying, I've got a lot more experience. And so therefore, I deserve to be paid a whole lot more and that's how they get around it. 

Amie:

In terms of gender pay gap, is that closing?

Lisa:

It actually went backwards last year for the first time and it's come back again, but sitting on average, I think around about mid 12s, something like that, depending on which way you look at the, but if you're in the tech industry, or in the cyber industry, or in law, insurance, finance, it's still in the 20s.

And then you've got, you've got industries where, like nursing, where, no, there's not a gap, but it's the only place with university educated people who have to keep CPD and all sorts of stuff are paid less than $60, 000 a year. It's disgraceful by comparison to every other, you know, degreed industry. there's a whole lot of inequities in the marketplace yet to be solved.

Amie:

Is there anything else you think that's important to discuss in terms of retail, gender equity that I've missed or that you think would be cool to add? 

Lisa:

One of the challenges is that most kids see retail as a hobby job rather than a career. And it's one of the major issues for retailers is to attract more people to see it as a career. And women are good in retail because they get it and they are often the purchasers. So trying to get women to understand what an opportunity it is to have a real career, in retail, not just the hobby career, because at the coalface, it's probably about 60, 65 percent of women, but when you flip it around CEOs and senior leaders, it drops back down to the, you know, 25-30 percent again.

And so what you're seeing is still not a lot of women stepping into that as the opportunity now, some of them don't want the store roles because they say that is not flexible enough and I understand that, that a lot of them say that, that, you can't work from home if you're working in a store.

So there is a lot of potential in the head office roles. That's something potentially retailers can sell up and sell into the stores is a bit more. And again, there's more opportunity to get that back to kids as they're growing up rather than saying, you know, the excitement of retail.

I never knew buying was a career opportunity and yet it was one of the most amazing ones. Fancy getting somebody else's credit card and being put on a plane and sent around the world to go shopping. What a great job.

Amie:

A big thank you to Lisa Sweeney from Business in Heels. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you subscribe using your favourite podcast app and don’t forget to rate and review the podcast.

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