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Still a boys' club: Australia's top brands don't have a single woman on their boards

Catie Low

When Big W boss Sally Macdonald unexpectedly walked away from her high-profile posting in November, Woolworths was forced into damage control.

But it wasn't just its turn-around plan for the troubled discount department store chain that was dealt a body blow that day.

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Former Matildas vice-captain Moya Dodd humbly accepts the 2016 Women of Influence award saying gender equality is the "issue of our current time."

Along with Harvey Norman boss Katie Page, Macdonald was one of a very select group of women with highly visible, leadership roles in Australia's listed retailers.

Coles, Woolworths, Target, Bunnings, Kmart, Myer, David Jones, JB Hi-Fi and now Big W are all run by men, smart, experienced blokes leading teams of mainly female staff, who are selling to a predominantly female customer base.

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The large number of female sales assistants at the major chains has created the impression of diversity in the sector and yet in many cases the proportion of women plunges once you move up to the executive level at head office.

Paul Zahra was chief executive of David Jones from 2010 to 2014 and a poster boy for diversity as the first openly gay leader of an ASX200 company.

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He's now the global retail adviser for professional services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers and works closely with retailers across a broad spectrum, from start-ups looking to disrupt the major players to major chains.

Zahra says the high proportion of women working on the shop floor goes some way to explain why there are so few women in leadership roles.

"Sometimes chief executives think they don't have a problem because they're such significant recruiters of women but what they haven't checked is the pyramid," Zahra says.

"There's a high proportion of women at the front line but as you go up the hierarchy, it's a very different story."

The Workplace Gender Equity Agency's (WGEA) most recent data shows the retail sector lags behind key measures of Australia's broader business sector.

Close to 60 per cent of retail workers are women and yet more than 88 per cent of chief executives are men, compared to 83.7 per cent across all industries.

There's a high proportion of women at the front line but as you go up the hierarchy, it's a very different story.

Paul Zahra

Almost 73 per cent of key management personnel in retail are men and not even one-third of general managers are women.

This data needs to be considered in the context of shopping and who makes the major purchasing decisions.

In discretionary retail women account for about 70 per cent of all purchases and in shopping centres women easily account for more than half of all customers if not closer to two-thirds.

This all makes it even harder to understand why women's voices are not more prominent at the boardroom table and as leaders of the major chains.

Zahra also warns that gender equity is the starting point for any company that's serious about diversity and inclusion.

"Until gender equity is achieved we have no hope of achieving inclusion of the other dimensions of diversity such as LGBTI, people with a disability or people who come from a diverse cultural background," Zahra says.

"For retailers diversity is about reflecting your diverse customer base at the senior management and board to ensure you continue to be relevant."

Fashion industry veteran and head of strategy and development at Whitehouse Institute of Design Karen Webster is optimistic "brilliant" retailers such as the Just Group's Judy Coomber and Colette Garnsey will lead major retail operations in the future.

Both Garnsey and Coomber work for the Solomon Lew-controlled Premier Investments, which is led by former David Jones chief Mark McInnes.

Webster says there's no lack of women in retail, leading powerful, profitable brands like Mimco and Sussan and she says it wasn't long ago that there were women in charge of some of Australia's biggest chains.

"If you go back 10 years there was Dawn Robertson at Myer and then we had Launa Inman chief executive of Target and Sally Macdonald at Oroton and of course Naomi Milgrom is chief executive of Sussan Group," says Webster

"I'm not sure why at this moment in time there are not more women in chief executive roles."

"But I also think the industry is on the brink of change because of new technology, because of the major retailers coming into Australia, and it's having a massive impact on the processes and systems we embed.

"And our industry has to change to be competitive."

The problem for the sector and for the thousands of women who serve customers every day is that many of these influential women in senior roles are not highly visible outside their individual brands or businesses.

 

And this is a big challenge for an industry that needs to map out how girls and women can progress from working at a checkout or sales counter to the executive level.

Dominique Lambpoints the finger at inaction on the gender equality blueprint developed by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and the recommendations in relation to key issues such as flexible work arrangements.

The chief executive of the National Retail Association says most women in retail were in unskilled roles and many of them are part-time and casual roles.

"In retail for a long time there's been the view that it isn't necessarily a career ... women typically use retail as a way to remain employed while they care for children," says Lamb.

"There's a lack of succession planning and within the industry we don't go far enough to educate the young women in our workforces about what they can do and where they can go."

Ironically the flexibility that draws women to many retail roles is not necessarily evident higher up the corporate ladder, according to Lamb.

"I don't think retailers purposely set out not to have women in senior leadership roles ... but we haven't seen the kind of support businesses need to understand a complex issue like gender equity," Lamb says.

"We are still so far behind as a nation in gender equity, we have both sides of government talking about what gender equity means but some of the policies are counter-intuitive to that.

"There's a responsibility for all businesses to educate their workforces about what gender equity is, it's not just about women it's also about giving men access to the same rights as women."

JB Hi-Fi boss Richard Murray knows his business needs to do better after recently revealing that none of his direct reports are women.

He said the diversity that was obvious when you walked into a JB Hi-Fi store wasn't necessarily reflected in management and that was something that needed to change.

"We need a clearer vision internally of what we want to achieve and it's been a busy year but that's no excuse," says Murray.

"The reality is half our customers are women and when I go into a store diversity is not an issue but I want to make sure the great DNA at a store level continues to support office and we need to make sure that as people progress through their careers, we need to understand the things we can do to make that a clearer path."

Coles and Woolworths have long recognised the power and influence of their female customers but behind the scenes the grocery sector is grappling with some serious legacy issues, according to Sue Morphet.

Morphet, who is the former chief of Pacific Brands, as well as a non-executive director and adviser for Chief Executive Women, claims grocery's "blokey" culture could discourage women from pursuing senior roles.

"Traditionally grocery has been a very male world and it used to be a very blokey environment," Morphet says, "but I can't understand why that pattern hasn't been broken.

"There are some very good women, who are very skilled retailers and it's disappointing they haven't got to the top of the big retail businesses.

"But if you look at small to medium-sized retailers, it's dominated by women."

Woolworths chairman Gordon Cairns was congratulated by a shareholder at the supermarket giant's annual meeting last month for building a board with equal representation of men and women.

However Australia's biggest supermarket chain acknowledges there's more to do to improve the representation of women in executive and management roles as well as gender pay gap issues.

Workplace Gender Equality Agency director Libby Lyonsis blunt in her assessment of the retail sector's gender equality performance, which she says is pretty much in line with every other Australian industry apart from healthcare and social assistance.

Lyons said their data showed female graduates were overwhelmingly moving into female-dominated industries and male grads into male-dominated industries.

"This industrial segregation of occupations is a problem across the board," Lyons says.

The agency's recently released list of preferred employers did not include one retail trade employer, which Lyons said spoke volumes about the sector

"So none of them are even aspiring to provide gender balanced workforces," Lyons said.

"And if you look at our non-compliant list, those people who do not meet their obligations under the act, there are a number of retailers that don't even bother to report.

"I believe that speaks to their lack of commitment to gender equity but also it would seem to me they are one of the few industries in Australia that do not understand or know about the competitive advantage you get from addressing gender equality in the workplace."

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