Friday 10 April 2015

Women and the corporate world in Australia - all push and no give


This was in The Age this morning. http://goo.gl/kJAPoQ 
so I want to put the bleeding obvious out there 
which is constantly and consistently overlooked.

1. Australia has had a Sex Discrimination Act since 1984 - as part of Australia's ratification of United Nations Human Rights and the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
2. A decision was made - which has turned out to be less than really useful - to encourage Australian employers to do the "right thing" by a carrot and stick method which has proved, over time, to be almost completely ineffective.

3. At this stage in time we should not have targets like wouldn't it be nice to have 30% of women on boards. What would make more sense to me would be to have 50% of boards with only 30% of men on them.
I can see that Nicola Wakefield Evans and the @Australian Institute of Company Directors http://goo.gl/Uiee57 might want to do the right thing - but they are merely setting themselves up for yet another failure to effect any meaningful change. In fact, it is all too little and all too late. If someone wishes to make an argument for gradual change, so be it. But what is it worth after more than three decades of failure?

The Australian Institute of Company Directors wants ASX 200 companies to voluntarily meet a target of 30 per cent of board seats to be filled by women by 2018.
THEAGE.COM.AU


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