Stop Fixing Women: Why Building Fairer Workplaces Is Everybody's Business

By Catherine Fox

Millions of words have been spent in our quest to explain men's seemingly never-ending dominance in boardrooms, in parliaments, in the bureaucracy and in almost every workplace. So why is gender inequality still such a pressing issue? Wage inequality between men and women seems one of the intractables of our age. Women are told they need to back themselves more, stop marginalising themselves, negotiate better, speak up, support each other, strike a balance between work and home. This searing book argues that insisting that women fix themselves won't fix the system, the system built by men. Catherine Fox does more than identify and analyze the nature of the problem. Her book is an important tool for male leaders who say they want to make a difference. She throws down the gauntlet, showing how business, defence, public service and community leaders might do it, rather than just talk about it. She shows that not only will this be better for women but for productivity as well, not to mention men and women's health and happiness at home and at work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: May 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781742242798

Catherine Fox

Catherine Fox is Academic Director of the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. An established and popular author, her debut novel, Angels and Men (reissued in 2014) was a Sunday Times Pick of the Year. The first in her Lindchester series, Acts and Omissions, was chosen as a Guardian Book of 2014 and two subsequent volumes, Unseen Things Above (2015) and Realms of Glory (2017), were rapturously received. Catherine is married to the Bishop of Sheffield and has a judo black belt.

Book preview

Introduction

‘I am the generic person. I am a middle-class white man. I have no race, no class, no gender. I am universally generalisable.’

MICHAEL KIMMEL¹

IN 2015, A GROUP OF the corporate elite gathered in the heartland of Sydney’s business district to launch another initiative designed to open boardroom doors to more women. It could just as well have been London, New York or Toronto. And in fact this particular program for women was originally launched in the UK.

A panel of distinguished businessmen took to to the stage to discuss why more women were needed on boards, and their support for this program to speed up the process. The conversation went along fairly predictably until a few comments began to make it clear that many of these ‘supporters’ have deep-seated concerns about the capacity and appetite of women for these sought-after seats at the table. It’s a fact that women don’t put their hand up for promotions as often as men, said one. Appointing a woman with no listed board experience is a risk, said another, and then quickly rephrased to include ‘anyone’ without that experience. The woman sitting next to me, a senior executive and director, leant over and whispered, ‘They are blaming us’.

She was right, they were. I’ve heard so much of this scapegoating and observed the wilful blindness about the other side of the equation – the behaviour and attitudes of those who still hold most of the power – that even I had become a little desensitised. A few months later I was on stage discussing these issues in front of an audience of mid-career female managers alongside a senior male bureaucrat and a female executive. The man talked convincingly about the need for more women in his workforce but soon began telling the group, who had given up time and money to be there, they needed to think about ‘backing themselves’. I could see the ‘Here we go again’ expressions on many faces. Why would they even be there if they didn’t back themselves? I did point out the unhelpful nature of this type of advice, but I’m not sure my fellow speaker appreciated it.

Telling women it’s mostly their own fault for being marginalised in workplaces designed by and for male breadwinners – and failing to crack through the glass ceiling and scale the ranks of business – reinforces ridiculously outdated gender stereotypes. We used to call this the ‘deficit model’, because it rests on the belief that women are naturally deficient in risk taking, assertiveness and courage, while being over-endowed with emotions and caring skills. Many of us, me included, thought this idea had started to disappear, but I think we were wrong. The workplace rhetoric might be more about how men and women have ‘different’ skills these days, but that hasn’t changed the thinking. For ‘different’ read ‘mostly faulty’ – the ‘Women need fixing’ message is as strong as ever.

It’s illogical too. How can women be both the problem and the solution when they make up just under half the workforce but still a tiny minority of decision makers? As I looked more deeply into this I realised how horribly effective this approach can be in corroding women’s status and distracting organisations from taking on the real culprits. And in case a reminder is needed, dismantling inequity is far from some ‘politically correct’, feel-good exercise. More equal societies score more highly on just about every economic and social indicator there is, and they are more productive and happier too. There is a clear correlation between gender equality and GDP per capita, the level of economic competitiveness and human development, according to the World Economic Forum.² To put it another way, a 6 per cent increase in participation in the workforce by Australian women could add $25 billion to GDP, according to the Grattan Institute.³

Compelling stuff, but apparently not a pressing concern for many who have been holding the reins. But it has become much clearer to me through my analysis that the focus on fixing women has also been very handy in allowing men, and particularly powerful men, to stay out of the debate. After all, if women’s lack of skills is to blame for them failing to thrive, then it’s obviously up to them to remedy this deficiency. And it’s their fault when the latest ‘diversity’ program doesn’t make much difference. But if the bias and unfairness is not only about the personal but the political – the way workplaces are run and by whom – then the people with power, who are overwhelmingly privileged white middle-aged men, are not just nice to have on side. They are essential to success. They not only have to stand up as advocates but they must change the rules and norms that helped give them a big advantage in getting the keys to the top office.

That uncomfortable realisation is dawning but it’s a tough grind to challenge the establishment – and particularly when you’re facing a tsunami of advice that all it takes is fixing women. There’s an industry churning out advice books and consulting services, sometimes produced by women, who also lap up this stuff. It’s appealing because it promises a quick fix. And plenty of women get quite tetchy about dismantling the deficit model, and tell me they see evidence of low confidence and poor negotiating skills from women all the time, so isn’t it better to arm them with tips to help them?

Well, if women really needed fixing because of their gender, and these tips helped to change the real causes of discrimination, then yes it would be. But I don’t think they do, or that packaged ‘remedies’ have delivered results – but I often see them reinforcing the stereotypes that are the problem in the first place. Fans of remedial ‘solutions’ spend plenty of time promoting research that says women aren’t feisty enough, but turn a blind eye to the studies (many cited in this book) showing the role of context and socialisation – not biology – in shaping these responses, and showing that putting the onus on individuals (and only half the workforce at that) to fix major structural problems doesn’t work. Many of the commonly quoted pitfalls for women (such as putting a hand up for a job or speaking up at meetings) are exaggerated, but such responses would decline if there were, say, less biased rules and self-fulfilling assumptions about gender. And telling women to essentially behave ‘like men’ backfires spectacularly and not just for women. Remember the follies of over-confident ‘Masters of the Universe’ bankers in the lead-up to the global financial crisis? Dismantling the remedial model for women leads us to examine the other side: the pervasive belief that stereotypical masculine behaviour should be the standard for all. Such scrutiny is long overdue.

So here’s what I’ve set out to do: to analyse why we have continued down the slippery and counterproductive slope of blaming women for structural sexism and what that means, and to advocate for an urgent shift that dumps the deficit and includes men – yes, all men – in tackling new norms if we are to finally make some progress. My guiding themes are that women are not wired for inadequacy but are coping with routine bias and sexism, while the men who still hold the power to set the norms, behaviours and attitudes prevailing in workplaces therefore need to help change them.

There are many wise and wonderful women who have helped me shape my thoughts. But who better to also include in this endeavour than the small but growing cohort of male leaders stepping into a space they usually fear to tread? After years of token gender rhetoric and passive platitudes about the problem-solving itself, some are now making the transfer from being bystanders to supporters in addressing gender equality. I was already familiar with some of the work being done in organisations such as Telstra, the Treasury and Aurizon. But my research shows that successful interventions in a range of companies, government departments and the small business sector have a common theme: they focus on how workplaces, not women, are operating. I have used examples I found compelling and that could pass the credibility test. Not every sector is covered – and there will be organisations doing terrific work that I have not included. But my choices are practical and I hope insightful, rather than an attempt to be comprehensive.

Not all CEOs practise what they preach, as I know only too well. But there are others who are gradually learning to ‘check their privilege’, as the Americans might put it, and increasingly stepping into the gender space. Some, though by no means all, are members of a group set up in Australia, the Male Champions of Change (MCC), which has been growing. The ‘men for women’ trend has not been without controversy and many object to the patriarchal symbolism. Yes, it’s a lot of talk and not enough action yet. Then of course there are the examples – there will be more to come, I suspect – of organisations saying one thing on diversity but apparently doing another. As I was writing this book ANZ, which I have included as an example of progress particularly for its work on superannuation for female employees, faced allegations of blatant sexism by former traders in the dealing room (the unfair dismissal action taken by these two men was later dropped). These contradictions can’t be denied but they can be used as incentives, and several MCC members told me nobody wants to be ridiculed for hypocrisy. That’s a strong motivation to get your house in order and many are very aware they are a long way from that yet.

My aim is not to congratulate these men nor other male advocates but to encourage them to work harder and get the message to their male peers and employees. Women walk a tightrope as supporters of gender equity, pilloried both for ‘playing the victim’ and for not speaking up enough. Acting on their own, women were never going to shift the status quo without getting those men at the top to recognise there is a serious business and workforce problem to confront, as even a cursory look at the data from the past two decades makes clear.

I’ve been following the statistics and the debate for decades. I wrote the Australian Financial Review’s ‘Corporate Woman’ column on and off from 1992 to 2012. In the early days of my stint, women’s sections in the media were still mainly full of recipes and style tips. And it was long before the Huffington Post or Mamamia or other women’s sites started – well before use of the internet was widespread, in fact. In those days my beat was a fairly lonely one and tended to cover reporting on overt discrimination. These were the routine cases of women being sacked if they announced they were pregnant, or wanted a change to their work schedule to help with childcare obligations. Or there were the job interviews at an airline where women were asked to sing and dance, in the days when flight attendants were still called air hostesses. I never heard of male flight attendants being asked to jump through that particular hoop.

It was also commonplace to hear that women lacked the ‘get up and go’ to make it up the ladder or stick it out. They didn’t want the senior jobs, I was frequently told by the men who were tenaciously holding onto these plum roles: that was the main reason women were rare in those corner offices. It was a rationale that felt comfortable and let the men in charge off the hook. Nevertheless, I watched and hoped as more and more hardy women slowly fought their way onto building sites; became firefighters, doctors and dentists; climbed the ranks and busted a stack of myths that women can’t build careers or work as hard as men because they lack ambition and have children. Surely this would change the ground rules and prove once and for all that women are fully human and just as able and competent as men? I was wrong about that. Yes, the world has changed, but some fundamental stories we tell to explain key areas of gender inequality have not, and nor have the outcomes.

From fundamental rights to fair pay and conditions to shattering that glass ceiling – better described as a thick layer of men, according to US feminist Laura Liswood – there is much to be done. We know nearly 50 per cent of the paid workforce is female in many parts of the world (in Australia it’s 47 per cent). Australian women’s labour force participation, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, has increased slightly over the past decade, from 58 per cent to 59 per cent, while men’s participation has remained largely stable at around 71 per cent. But the pay gap between men and women sits at close to 18 per cent in many countries. Almost 35 per cent of Australian women have no superannuation.⁴ Most women who will retire in the next 20 years don’t even have enough for a modest retirement – 55 per cent of women aged 45 to 54 had less than $25 000 in superannuation in 2009–2010. From the age of 35 until retirement, a woman’s superannuation balance will typically be half that of a man the same age.

These are big problems for economies globally. But the composition of groups making fundamental decisions that affect every one of these areas remains stubbornly male. Move up the ranks of just about any company and the proportion of women rapidly shrinks to much less than half. There are just 23 per cent women on the top 200 listed Australian company boards (and that is a major improvement from 2009, when there were 8 per cent), and women make up only 26 per cent of key management personnel, and 17 per cent of CEOs across the business sector (according to Workplace Gender Equality Agency data). Women run around a third of small businesses in Australia, and it is estimated that just 4.3 per cent of Australian tech start-up companies were founded by women, although that figure rises to 25 per cent of total start-ups.⁵ In the Australian Defence Force (ADF), a strong focus on attracting and retaining women has seen a modest increase of just 1 per cent, to 15.1 per cent, in the past few years. And worldwide, the cohort of new CEOs appointed in 2015 were more male than in previous years.⁶ Just 3 per cent of new CEO hires were women in 2015, compared to 5 per cent in 2014. And the ratio was worst in North America and Canada, where just one new incoming CEO out of 87 was a woman. In its 2016 report on women and work, consulting firm McKinsey found women remain under-represented at every level in the corporate pipeline. Corporate America promotes men at 30 per cent higher rates than women during the early stages of their careers; women negotiate for promotions and raises as often as men but face more pushback when they do. And the challenges are even more pronounced for women of colour.⁷

No wonder there’s been a tendency for ‘gender fatigue’ – a lack of energy to tackle a seemingly intractable problem – to set in, or for window dressing by pointing to actions rather than outcomes, sometimes described as gender washing. That sham is particularly frustrating when there’s still such a lot that can be done. You don’t start challenging established narratives and power structures without paying a price, however. There’s a ferocious level of backlash seething below the formal rhetoric about gender equality in workplaces. It’s vicious and ugly, and can be personally damaging for those who speak up, but it has to be acknowledged and tackled too – by both men and women. The savage attacks on women in the social media sphere have become topical, but it’s not just happening in cyberspace.

The young students who set up a cupcake stall at University of Queensland in early 2016 and charged women less for the cakes to reflect the gender pay gap attracted an astonishing level of vitriol. There were calls to physically attack the students, vehement denials of any pay gap, and talk about the need for ‘feminazis’ to be eradicated. And these were attacks on mostly young women of privilege – the impact of such vitriolic sexism is even more pronounced for women from non-Anglo Saxon backgrounds or those who struggle to access education and employment. It’s still the case that many discussions around gender equity at work focus on white professionals, which hardly reflects the community we live in and risks ignoring the crucial and toxic interplay of racism and sexism. The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by American civil rights advocate and scholar, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, to describe the ways in which different forms of oppression are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another.⁸

Given these issues, it is important to clarify that my analysis and criticism of the deficit model has ramifications for all women, from those in low-skilled jobs to professionals, and the examples here range from the big end of town to the military. The progress being made – such as topping up low-level superannuation accounts for female employees at ANZ (see chapter 4) – comes from both grass roots activism and concerted action at the top.

And refocusing this debate is not about giving women a ‘get out of jail free card’ or painting them as victims. Many women now have more personal agency over how they live and work than a generation ago and are well aware they are responsible for their own progress. But the deficit model means women