Women in Male-Dominated Industries

In 2010, the Australian Human Rights Commission examined the key reforms required to achieve gender equality in Australia in a report entitled Gender Equality Blueprint 2010.

Promoting Women in Leadership: Key to Success

In 2010, the Australian Human Rights Commission examined the key reforms required to achieve gender equality in Australia in a report entitled Gender Equality Blueprint 2010.

The report sets out recommendations in five priority areas which significantly affect both the public and private lives of women and men. One of the priority areas identified is promoting women in leadership.

The report actively promotes the importance of women’s representation in decision-making roles in the community, government and business sectors. In addition to the evident need for substantive gender equality, research has confirmed there are a number of advantages in promoting women in leadership:

Narrowing the gap between male and female employment rates will boost GDP in Australia by 11%.[1]

Minimising the gender productivity gap, for example, by increasing the number of women in leadership positions, will boost the level of economic activity in Australia by 20%.[2]

Economic incentives such as these will have flow-on effects for wider society including to address the problem of pension sustainability, thereby reducing the dependency ratio, lifting household savings rates and increasing tax received by the government.[3]

In virtually all sectors of Australia’s paid workforce, women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership positions. In some industries, women are underrepresented at all levels of the organisation. These are known as ‘male-dominated industries’.

With this in mind, the Commonwealth Office for Women has funded the Australian Human Rights Commission to identify mechanisms for improving women’s representation and leadership in male-dominated roles in male-dominated industries.

Some backgrounds

Despite a healthy pipeline of female talent, women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership positions in Australia. The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) reports that in 2011 over 33% of managers in reporting companies were women[4]. However, in these same organisations, less than 8% of executive managers were women[5]. The pipeline of women narrows dramatically the more senior the level in the organisation.

In male-dominated industries, including mining, construction and utilities, not only are women underrepresented in executive manager roles, they are also underrepresented in junior and mid-level positions. For example, in 2011 EOWA reported[6] that women represented only:

13% of managers in mining (and only 15.1% of total employees)

16% of managers in construction (and only 11.8% of total employees)

16% of managers in utilities (and only 22.6% of total employees)

To achieve substantive gender equality, and the economic benefits of women in leadership, Australia needs to increase the representation of women, and to strengthen the pipeline of female talent within these industries.

Source: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/women-male-dominated-industries-2012