5 strategies to help close the gender leadership gap

It remains an ongoing moral and social issue, but gender inequality also presents a huge economic challenge.

The World Economic Forum estimates that advancing gender parity could add US$12 trillion to global GDP and boost some countries’ economic output by as much as 35 per cent.

While this complex issue extends well beyond the workforce, closing the leadership gap at work may have a ripple effect across the broader economy. Here are five strategies that are proving to be effective or show the greatest potential for progress.

1. Rethink recruitment practices

From gender-coded wording in job advertisements to job requirements that may exclude many women, gender bias can be pervasive in the recruitment process.

Annika Freyer is director and CEO of Champions of Change Coalition, a global movement for achieving gender equality. She says changing the definition of role requirements can open more opportunities to women, but this requires a consideration of future needs “rather than what has been done in the past”.

“Often, if you look at potential rather than performance, you can open the aperture of how you define merit for a role and identify new candidates,” she says.

A report from Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) states that increasing women’s participation in the workforce has positive impacts on organisational culture and operations, which helps to normalise women in leadership roles.

In 2019, Kimberly-Clark, global manufacturer of products such as toilet paper and tissues, changed its recruitment processes to attract more women to operational roles at its Millicent Mill in South Australia.

That year, just 15 women were employed in these roles out of a workforce of 350. The previous year, no women were hired into operational roles, nor were there any female applicants.

 

"We need to understand that men and women’s career trajectories are different, and if we can get rid of ageism in the workplace that will be a huge help."

 

Mill manager Adam Carpenter launched a review to explore why this was happening, and how it could be addressed.

“We made simple but really effective changes to our job advertisements,” Carpenter explains. “We removed the requirement to have a forklift licence to apply and placed more focus on behaviours rather than just technical skills.”

Kimberly-Clark also ran a local media campaign and adjusted the messaging around its internal referral program.

“We immediately got an uplift in women applying” says Carpenter. “It went from nothing to 10–20 per cent of applicants being women.”

Since 2019, the number of female employees at the mill has increased nearly fivefold, from 15 to 70.

“Though at 20 per cent of the workforce, this is still below gender parity – and I’ll readily note that. As an organisation, we are on a journey of continuous improvement and there’s more to be done,” says Carpenter. “But the commitment is there, and efforts are ongoing. The business benefits are there as well".

A global report from McKinsey, drawn from 1265 companies over 23 countries, shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in executive teams are 39 per cent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

With an inclusive and diverse workforce widely viewed as a competitive advantage, more organisations are beginning to view a lack of gender diversity as a business problem to be solved. Like any business problem, results are increasingly being linked to accountability, targets and incentives.

For example, more than 60 per cent of direct reports to Champions of Change Coalition members have KPIs related to gender equality in their scorecards or performance plans.

Engineering firm Worley has targets in place for leaders, linked to remuneration, for hiring and promoting women into senior positions, and has recorded incremental improvements in gender diversity in FY2024.

At New Zealand building and construction company Fletcher Building, achieving gender targets forms part of the executive and senior leaders’ short-term incentives, where appropriate, and it has also seen a lift in the number of women in senior leadership roles.

Meanwhile, the Australian public sector is also sharpening its focus on gender targets. In September 2024, the Australian Government introduced the National Gender Equity in Sports Governance Policy, which requires that national and state-level sporting organisations across Australia must have an equal split of men and women on their boards from 2027 or risk having their funding withheld.

Freyer says that she would be hard-pressed to find any gender equality-related business priorities that don’t have metrics associated with them, and consequences for leaders who don’t deliver on them.

“If you’ve got a target with teeth – which means there are consequences if you don’t deliver – you will be able to drive change.”

3. Eliminate ageist attitudes

The intersection of ageism and sexism can negatively affect women’s work opportunities. According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, older women are more likely than older men to be perceived by their peers as having outdated skills, being slow to learn new things or doing an unsatisfactory job.

Data from WGEA also shows men over the age of 55 are twice as likely to be in management than women.

Claire Braund OAM, co-founder and executive director of Women on Boards, suggests that women in the 45-60 age bracket shine in the workplace, as they have often finished with complex caring roles.

“After the age of 40, many women are ready to put their foot on the accelerator in terms of their career, but that’s often when ageism is experienced in the workforce, and I think it’s one of the greatest inhibitors to women achieving leadership roles.

“We need to understand that men's and women’s career trajectories are different, and if we can get rid of ageism in the workplace that will be a huge help.”

4. Get serious about sponsorship

Research from Bain & Company shows high-potential women who are sponsored – specifically by senior male leaders – are more likely to receive growth opportunities as well as the feedback they require to advance their careers and prepare for executive roles.

Sponsorship in this context involves senior leaders using their influence to help a talented team member access high-value, high-visibility assignments, promotions or opportunities that could lead to a leadership role.

However, research from McKinsey shows entry-level women are less likely than men to have managers who act as their advocates and help them identify opportunities to pursue.

“Research shows that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored,” says Freyer. “Mentorship is about talking to you and advising you, whereas sponsorship is about talking about you when you’re not in the room to seek and find opportunities, then put you forward for them.”

 

"If you’ve got a target with teeth - which means there are consequences if you don’t deliver - you will be able to drive change."

 

A sponsorship program between senior leaders and potential future female leaders is part of the Women in Leadership Action Plan at ANZ Bank, which has committed to a target of 40 per cent of women in leadership roles. 

Meanwhile, the Property Council of Australia’s 500 Women in Property sponsorship program aims to accelerate more women into leadership positions in the property industry through sponsorship of high-potential talent. 

It requires a personal commitment from sponsors to identify and champion women in their organisation or business sphere.

When the program started in 2016, it had a goal to sponsor 100 women annually. In 2023, the cohort had grown to 650 participants and their sponsors. Its cumulative participation since launch has exceeded 3,600 women.

5. Extend flexibility to all employees

Normalising flexibility can open opportunities for all workers, particularly women. Viva Energy provides a good example of how it can work.

In 2017, its refinery workforce consisted of 84 per cent men and 16 per cent women, with most of the women in corporate roles. A significant barrier was the assumption that operator roles needed to be performed on a full-time, 24/7 shift roster.

To incorporate more flexibility, roles were redesigned as job shares. A new part-time shift was also created within the framework of the current enterprise agreement. Operator training modules were adapted to align to shorter shifts, and the company purchased personal protective equipment appropriate for women and invested in amenities.

Viva Energy saw women’s overall representation in the refinery increase to 24 per cent in four years.

“In terms of our motivation, it really is the gender pay gap,” says Dr Jessie Lyons, head of people strategy at Viva Energy.

“We’ve realised that the best way we can impact that is to get more women into operational roles. First of all, they’re very well paid and they attract overtime, but there are very few women in them.”

Lyons says there are many ways to make these roles flexible.

“For example, we’ve brought in or advertised roles as part-time, but in other instances, we’ve worked with individuals to understand what they need and how they can be successful in our organisation.

“Our expectation is that we need 50-50 in our workforce to get diversity of thinking,” adds Lyons. “We get better safety results, because there are people looking at things with fresh eyes and questioning how we do things.”

Lyons adds that Viva Energy’s senior leadership group is currently 50-50 men and women.

“We’ve made progress on getting women into non-traditional roles, but we still have a long way to go.”

Data from WGEA shows that while 21 per cent of employees in Australia worked part-time in 2022-23, only 7 per cent of managers were employed part-time. The agency’s data also shows that at every age group, fewer than 50 per cent of women work full-time and that gender differences in pay and senior leadership generally widen throughout life.

Women are twice as likely as men to be working part-time and casually from age 35.

“The number of part-time roles at leadership level are small, but growing,” says Mary Wooldridge, CEO of WGEA.

“As we get examples and case studies of this happening and better insight into how it can work seamlessly and effectively, it reinforces that [part-time leadership roles are] possible and doable. What’s critical is for employers to be open to different ways of working, and different ways of designing jobs that enable a broader range of people to participate in the workforce.

The gender pay gap is a powerful aggregate measure of progress in advancing gender equality. In Australia, the gap is 21.8 per cent. For every A$1 on average a man makes, a woman earns 78 cents. Over the course of a year, that difference adds up to A$28,425.

In New Zealand, the gender pay gap is 8.2 per cent, while in Hong Kong, it is 16 per cent. In Singapore, full-time female employees aged 25-54 earn 14.3 per cent less than their male counterparts.

In Australia, equal pay has been required by law for more than 50 years. Mary Wooldridge, CEO of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), explains that it requires paying people who are doing the same or similar jobs the same amount for the work they do. The gender pay gap, however, represents the difference between the earnings of women and men.

“It reflects many more things than just pay, and workplace composition is a big driver of the differentials,” she says. “If you have an industry where many men are in highly paid roles and women are in lower-paid roles, you’ll have a large gender pay gap, because it compares all the different roles and looks at the average or median remuneration, overall, as a proxy for gender equality.”

It follows then that if the roles in which men dominate were more available to women, including leadership positions, this gap could close.

In the accounting industry in Australia, WGEA data shows women comprise 53 per cent of the total workforce but 41 per cent of the top pay quartile. For total remuneration, which includes base salary and bonuses, superannuation, overtime pay and other earnings, the gender pay gap for accounting is 11.1 per cent.

Only 15 per cent of CEO or equivalent and 29 per cent of key management roles are held by women, which goes some way to explain the gap.

All private Australian companies with 100 or more employees are now required to make public their gender pay performance data. For the latest reporting period, all big four consulting firms in Australia had pay gaps lower than the national average.