At a glance
In this episode, Prue Gilbert, founder and CEO of Grace Papers, shares insights into the progress on and challenges of gender equality in the workplace.
Data-driven change
“Over the past 10 years we’ve seen that gender pay gap reduce. I think that goes to the heart of ‘what gets measured, gets managed’.
Where organisations are proactively managing and reporting against a gender pay gap, where they’re proactively managing and measuring against their representation of women compared with men in leadership roles, looking at promotion ratios, looking at turnover, looking at recruitment and attraction numbers by gender.
Looking at part-time promotions, for example — that’s where we actually see change. So how much measurable change you’ll be seeing depends on how data-driven the organisation’s strategy is.”
Benefits of gender equality
“Organisations that have more equitable, gender-balanced workforces are safer, they’re more productive and they perform better.”
“Workplace Gender Equality Agency research shows that when boards and executives are more gender balanced, they perform better. And it has a direct correlation with their share price — we also know that they’re safer.”
Investing in leadership
“What we tend to find is, when organisations invest in that level of leadership — those who have responsibility for the majority of hiring and promotion decisions, who are also still ‘on the tools’ and have control over a whole lot of different systems — they are also really hungry to be good leaders.”
“Investing in their leadership capability to better understand how they can drive gender equality and ensuring that they understand the risks from an organisational reputation perspective … is actually the best way organisations can respond and drive measurable change.”
Parental leave progress needed
“Targeted interventions around making it easier for employees to care for their families, take parental leave and continue to grow their careers is absolutely critical.
I’m yet to see an organisation that doesn’t need to invest in that part of it. Many organisations have the policies, but they need to evaluate how well and effectively those policies are being used in order to achieve their longer-term goals around gender equality.”
