Monthly Archives

July 2021

July 8, 2021
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Reflections on a tumultuous period for race and gender diversity

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RACISM RE-SURFACES IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES

Working  across two continents in the US and UK over the last six weeks with a focus on  positioning a multinational to leverage the full value  diversity has to add in the workplace,  I have ironically been exposed to disturbingly public displays of intolerance  and inter-racial animosity . These incidents have brought attitudes towards diverse groups, such as racial minorities, religious groups, women and the LGBTI community, on to the front pages of newspapers and created contentious material for prime-time television debates.

BREXIT

I was fortuitously present in London on the fateful day when the Brexit result was announced. Whatever the respective claims from each side on the economic issues, it was certainly disconcerting to note the unmistakeable expressions of xenophobia and bigotry from some of the leave campaigners and members of the public. Not only was the spectre of a large-scale Muslim invasion raised but there was also overt hostility expressed against foreign workers from Eastern Europe who have actually been living and working peacefully in Britain for years. And unfortunately this seemingly casual observation on my part proved to be entirely consistent with the statistical monitoring  by websites and institutions of hate-crimes who reported a marked and unmistakeable upswing of race-based incidents post-Brexit.

RACE DIVISIONS IN THE USA

These incidents, nevertheless pale when compared to the current brutal racially-motivated killings on both sides of the colour line in the USA. Many people argue that the USA is more racially polarised than it has been for the past two or three decades. While it is clear that there are no simple or quick solutions it is equally clear that political and other leaders have a duty not to stoke fears and prejudices, as some have been doing, but to help find areas of common interest amongst different communities.

PROGRESS ON GENDER

 Paradoxically, however, while race issues appear to be escalating, there is decidedly cause for optimism on the gender front. This conclusion has been brought home forcibly by a number of remarkable and unanticipated events arising in the political arena from the Brexit exercise.

Many of the leading male protagonists on both sides of the argument  have now effectively departed the scene: David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, and Michael Gove. In their place, a number of women have suddenly risen to prominence and it will fall to them to extricate their countries from the present malaise. The next British Prime Minister will be Theresa May. The leading politicians in Scotland and Northern Ireland, Nicola Sturgeon and Arlene Foster, make up the rest of the group of UK female political leaders. And, of course, there is Angela Merkel leading Germany, the most powerful nation in Europe as well as Erna Solberg in Norway.

When one adds to this that a leading nation in Asia, South Korea, is headed by a woman, Park Geun-hye, and the very real possibility that the United States could have a female President, one can picture a world next year where women  will lead some of the most powerful nations  across the globe. This is bound to have a positive effect on gender advancement in all areas where discrimination and unconscious bias has created barriers to female advancement.

Research has consistently shown that having a single or even two female leaders elevated to boards or other decision-making entities often leaves them isolated. It is usually only when they achieve a significant proportional representation that their voices are heard and they are able to wield influence. Having so many female political leaders in number of powerful nations will surely serve to embed this as the new normal.

WHERE TO, DIVERSITY IN AUSTRALIA?

It may be too soon to form a clear understanding of how Brexit and related events will turn out for the UK, Europe and Australia  However, it is clear that we cannot afford to be complacent in believing that racial and ethnic tensions could never come to the surface in Australia as they have elsewhere. The racial confrontations that occurred in Cronulla a decade ago are a stark reminder that we cannot take inter-group harmony in Australia for granted.

Nevertheless, we are fortunate in Australia that we have been spared some of the worst excesses of violence towards minority groups. We must all redouble our efforts to create workplaces and arenas of social interaction that are seen to be places where diversity and inclusion become the norm. This is undoubtedly the best recipe for social and economic advancement in this country of ours.

July 8, 2021
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In Defence of Diversity Training

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The most recent edition of Harvard Business Review is devoted mainly to diversity issues. The main article entitled “Why Diversity Programs Fail” might lead some to mistakenly conclude that diversity programs, especially diversity training, simply do not work. But in fact, the thesis of the authors is simply that some diversity programs – and some types of training – achieve their objectives more effectively than others; hardly a notion that anyone who has worked in the diversity area would contest.

DIVERSITY ADDS VALUE

To be clear, the authors do not quarrel with the two basic propositions that underpin most diversity initiatives. These are: diverse and inclusive workplaces are better than those which lack these qualities; and having a truly diverse workplace usually does not happen fortuitously. Achieving diversity and inclusion requires a planned, concerted and sustained effort.

Against this backdrop, it is of course, desirable, if not essential, that the efficacies of various types of diversity programs are measured. We at Symmetra accept that progress and change must be monitored and measured with respect to diverse representation at various levels of the organisation as well as with respect to whether a culture of inclusion has been embedded.

Successful diversity programs usually involve a complex interface of initiatives and not merely discrete and unconnected educational efforts which are limited to particular employee levels or which have no follow-up. In fact this is true of any change initiative.

Prerequisites for the strategic success of any diversity program (training or otherwise) are that it must be supported from the top – preferably by the CEO – and diversity strategies must be embedded and fully aligned with other business strategies of the organisation. It must be comprehensive and filter through the entire organisation.

NOT COMPLIANCE

The HBR article starts from the proposition that diversity programs in the U.S.A. were a response to a number of high-profile discrimination and harassment suits – some of them going back to the 1990’s. In fact, modern diversity programs have long-since evolved from the tick-the-box, risk-minimisation forays. We at Symmetra have distinguished between negatively focused “anti-discrimination compliance” and positively focused “diversity and inclusion” training for at least a decade. We’d agree with the authors that most people hate attending compliance training (and being told what to do) and in fact most experienced L&D professionals hate delivering it.

But it is important not to confuse risk-management techniques – such as hiring tests, performance ratings and grievance procedures which are instituted as a shield against potential discrimination claims – and true inclusion programs which are conceived and implemented as wide-ranging strategies to leverage diversity in order to benefit teams and  optimise business performance. Our programs are designed to confer skills and capability benefits to participants, enabling them to confidently and effectively lead diverse teams and make better decisions – not browbeat them into compliance.

So, to identify methods such as mentoring and institution of diversity councils as being highly effective (as the HBR article does) and stating that in comparison training and anti-biasing modalities are ineffective is almost certainly overly-simplistic. The benefits of mentoring and diversity councils are likely to be much better achieved when the scope and purpose of the entire diversity initiative has been explained and absorbed through an initial educational program that delivers a consistent message across the business. Another paper from the same authors found that whole-of-organisation, culturally-focused, voluntary diversity training does improve diversity. Even the compliance focused training so negatively reviewed will still deliver modest positive results when paired with proper accountability structures.

PROOF IN THE PUDDING

Companies which have consistently made the top 50 list for diversity in the U.S.A., such as Novartis, EY, Sodexo, Johnson and Johnson, and Accenture, to name a few, have all implemented long-term diversity awareness and skills training programs on their journey to being and remaining the best diversity companies. When executed correctly as part of a broader strategy, diversity training can be shown to deliver excellent results.

At Symmetra, we are continually learning, adapting and modifying our programs to help embed an inclusive workplace culture for our clients and to achieve measurable changes in their diversity profile. We applaud research which examines what works, and the underlying message that companies who think a series of quick training sessions are some kind of silver bullet need to think again. But we hope that readers of the HBR use this research to help guide the design of effective training programs and diversity strategies, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

July 8, 2021
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Unconscious Bias : A killer when pursuing innovation

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by Deb Assheton

While working with the future leaders of one of Symmetra’s major clients in Hong Kong recently I was provided with vivid insight into the importance of counter-acting unconscious bias for those organisations wishing to adopt Lean innovation principles in their future service and product developments.

Lean thinking requires that leaders enable an environment that consistently seeks diversity of thought; one that continually generates opportunities to explore new ideas. The better leaders then consider these opportunities with an attitude of not knowing, that is ‘I don’t know…let’s test and see’ and then iterate through experimentation. This framework and approach is a vast departure from a traditional organisational leadership role where a leader is often the ‘expert’, and the decision maker.

The ability to suspend judgement and allow the experimentation and testing process to unfold requires that leaders acknowledge their biases. In the world of Symmetra’s client some examples of the strong biases which surfaced during Lean workshops were:

Interest bias – where leaders were reluctant to ‘throw away’ their own ideas, even after testing demonstrated they weren’t viable

Social bias – subjecting one idea to less than rigour than others because the idea had the support of several leaders

Diagnosis bias – during customer discovery this emerged as asking leading questions of customers. That is, leaders were subtly asking questions that ‘herded customer responses’ to a pre-determined outcome – the outcome the leader thought would be best.

Action bias – there was a very strong tendency amongst this group, as we see in many organisations, to rush into action before all the questions were answered, and all the risks were understood.

Company ‘think and speak’ was the major enemy when discussing ideas with customers during real interviews. Company speak meant executives talked about features, when customers wanted to understand benefits. Company think meant time and money were being spent on non-value add activities out of ‘institutional’ habit rather than productive ones.

Perhaps the biggest call out was learning to sit side by side with ‘failure’ everyday, and to embrace it as a necessary step in the innovation process. Just about every founder knows that 90% of start-up’s fail, yet they start-up anyway – why? Because they believe they can find a way.

They seek success, but the search frequently runs into dead ends, encounters false starts and missed opportunities, and perhaps ends in the failure of the whole venture. Sometimes the search may yield a new and initially unimagined business opportunity that is scalable and ultimately successful. Either way, re-framing the ability to fail and learning from failure as a necessary, valuable and competitively advantageous skill -set is a major challenge for most leaders and organisations. This particular group demonstrated a deep willingness to learn, using activities which provoked their thinking, created awareness and challenged their assumptions. They adapted quickly. They re-framed failure as practice, and got better at asking questions to leverage diversity of thought. They owned their biases and mentally parked them; demonstrating that they too could create a culture that finds a way.

 

July 8, 2021
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The game-changing world of Customer Inclusion and Competitor Diversity

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Traditional business is changing fast. There are 5 key consumer shifts taking place that is driving the need for organisations to become Customer Inclusive and Customer led. Being customer centric is no longer enough. The level of interdependence between customers and organisations is increasing. This interdependence is not new, companies and customers have always been dependent on each other to some degree. For many organisations though inclusion of customers is new. Customers have not traditionally been viewed as part of the business model or as part of the organisations ‘team’.

At this Symmetra Connect breakfast session https://symmetra.com.au/calendar-events/symmetra-connect-series on 26 August we will be discussing this as well as the emergence of competitor diversity. Competitor Diversity is very challenging; and will change the way organisations operate and the markets they operate in.

The prevailing organisational view tends to be that companies are being disrupted by technology, and there are certainly many examples of that. However, equal or perhaps more disruption is occurring due to consumer choice and behaviour which, whilst enabled by technology, is actually driven by consumer dissatisfaction. Consumers want an alternative and if your organisation cannot provide it then it risks being left behind. If you’re not including your customers someone else is.

The trend toward customer inclusion represents both another revolution in the evolution of Diversity and Inclusion, but also a revolution that has its greatest impacts outside of HR and OD.

Marketing, sales, product research and development are all now being transformed by customer inclusion. Customer Inclusion isn’t just a new way to market or sell, it’s a new way to operate; to meet the needs and solve problems in a way that aims to generate lifelong partnership with your customer. A partnership that research demonstrates will be largely based on experience and intangibles such as trust and authenticity as much as product and service.

At our upcoming Symmetra Connect Breakfast https://symmetra.com.au/calendar-events/symmetra-connect-series we delve into the world of Customer Inclusion, looking at why we must move toward inclusion. We examine the compelling business case for change and the benefits of customer inclusion on organisational culture, customer engagement and loyalty, and co-creation of products, offers and services all of which have been linked to stronger business performance.

D&I, HR and OD teams are very well placed to champion customer inclusion as an organisation wide challenge that can unite silo’s and offers enormous performance and engagement opportunities. We encourage you to invite key stakeholders from your marketing, sales and product teams to this Symmetra Connect.

To join us please register at:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/leading-edge-customer-inclusion-tickets-24583142842

 

July 8, 2021
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Inclusive Leadership – The Antidote to Intersectional Discrimination

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Some Diversity Programs do not succeed

Why is it that many diversity programs have fallen short of the goals or expectations of those who designed them and why are women and members of a range of diverse minority groups still so under-represented in leadership?  Traditionally, strategies to achieve equity in the workplace or to combat discrimination or exclusion of diverse persons have been premised on the idea of isolating the characteristics or attribute that is the reason for the discrimination.

This perspective has inherent and fundamental limitations. Every individual has an identity which is a composite of multiple dimensions. No one is simply a woman or gay or disabled or Asian. Two people who could be placed in the nominal category of Asian may experience exclusion or discrimination very differently, even if the fact of being Asian plays some part in the adverse treatment. By the same token, even the proverbial straight white male has multiple identities.

Exclusion on the basis of intersecting attributes

Insight as to the complex nature of personal identity led to the pioneering writings of the American discrimination lawyer, Kimberle Crenshaw, who contended that isolating a single ground of discrimination meant that those disadvantaged because of the convergence of two or more attributes would simply become invisible( intersectional discrimination ). They would not be able to claim discrimination because they could not position themselves neatly into any of the categories of persons discriminated against.

On the other hand, as Crenshaw suggests, once the complexity of personal identity is acknowledged and understood the disadvantages experienced by women and other diverse minorities in the workplace can be explained as a manifestation of the playing out of power relationships between those who have power and those who don’t because of the intersectional nature of their identity. Eliminating disadvantage requires focussing on the structural or institutional factors that reinforce those power structures and inhibit the possibility that everyone realises their full potential

Bystanders in the workplace are able to recognise either that some-one has been disadvantaged on separate occasions on completely different grounds or that a person has two attributes each independently causing negative stereotyping or exclusion (discrimination occurring consecutively or additively).

Crenshaw’s analysis by contrast, identifies that bystanders are often oblivious to the fact that  individuals can languish in a state of invisibility when they are affected simultaneously by two or more negatively-perceived attributes   Only the victim of intersectional discrimination  can, him or herself bring the adverse treatment to the spotlight and understand the complex matrix which is the cause of it.

So, for example an Asian woman may suffer exclusion in a particular context because of the combination of being both Asian and a woman. Neither being Asian nor being female is sufficient to explain the exclusion in and of itself and a male Asian or Anglo-Celtic woman would probably not have encountered the same exclusion. It is the victim who instinctively and implicitly understands that being an Asian woman in the particular context renders her unequal and disempowered.

Laws against discrimination in the workplace in Australia, as presently framed, cannot deal with multiple intersecting grounds of discrimination as they focus only on discrete grounds. Organisational policies often do not adequately address issues of intersectionality either.

Inclusive Leadership and Intersecting Discrimination

This is where inclusive leadership comes in.

Truly inclusive leaders are by definition not constrained by the need to impose unipolar identities on any person.  They understand implicitly that where employees, however they may be described, are included and engaged these employees will bring their whole-selves to work and can optimise organisational performance.

While many diversity programs proceed on the basis that a diverse workplace should be built first and then the question asked as to whether leaders are sufficiently inclusive, in fact the reverse is true. Inclusive leadership is the foundation from which many benefits including greater diversity will flow.

To this end Symmetra has been a firm advocate of the idea that the inclusivity of leadership is measurable and should be measured. As a consequence Symmetra has developed  the ‘Inclusive Leadership Index’ (ILI)  – a sophisticated diagnostic tool which measures the degree of inclusiveness displayed by a leader across 7 constructs- encompassing many observable behaviours.

Two of these constructs, in particular authenticity and self-awareness are most important in enabling a leader to  identify and overcome intersectional discrimination. When manifest in the leader, these constructs position the leader to be fully responsive to every person’s innate complex identity, including their own.

By emphasising and measuring the level of inclusivity displayed by leaders, organisations will, Symmetra believes, be better able to address discrimination, exclusion and unequal treatment in whatever guise. It is those organisations with substantive inclusion skills in their leadership cadre who are best placed to address intersectionality   and other types of exclusion. This all embracing paradigm of inclusion is more likely   to achieve the ideal of diverse representation in leadership

July 8, 2021
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Heather Price in Lawyers Weekly!

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(photo courtesy AALA NSW)

 

Heather Price, CEO of Symmetra, presented at the Women’s Lawyer Association of NSW in conjunction with the Asian Australian Lawyers Alliance (AALA) seminar titled “Where the Glass and Bamboo Ceilings meet in the Australian Legal Profession.” The session focused on the challenges presented by intersectional diversity to the legal profession. The recent edition of Lawyers Weekly reports in detail about Heather’s presentation.

http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/news/19460-intersectional-prism-shines-light-on-diversity-s-deeper-problem

 

July 8, 2021
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Symmetra appointed national provider of UB training for lawyers

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In what is an Australian first, the Law Council of Australia (LCA) supported by its constituent bodies, the Law Societies and Bar Associations in the States and Territories, have appointed Symmetra the exclusive provider of a national roll-out of unconscious bias education for all practising lawyers.

It has become apparent that there is a pressing need to institute this type of education to address the persistent structural and attitudinal barriers embedded within the culture of Australia’s legal profession. These severely limit opportunities for female lawyers as well as other diverse legal practitioners. The National Attrition and Re-engagement Survey (NARS) report, 2014 highlighted significant aspects of the legal profession that slow or arrest the advancement of women to senior positions to the point where many are so frustrated that they leave for good.

In addition to this, by adopting a more conscious approach to decision making, legal practitioners of every description can improve their legal and business acumen. Unconscious bias impacts on all areas of the legal profession: people and talent, assessment of cases and evidence, jurisprudence, client interactions, ethics and strategic business decisions.

Symmetra is offering a range of solutions to address unconscious bias for solicitors, barristers, in-house counsel and legal support. All solutions will be nationally recognised for Continuing Legal Education / Continuing Professional Development points.

July 8, 2021
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Workplace Inclusion and the art of dialogue

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I recently attended the Forum on Workplace Inclusion, held in Minneapolis, USA, where I was privileged to present a paper on Symmetra’s program to Embed Psychological Safety in the Workplace. One of the aspects I sought to emphasise in Symmetra’s proposition is that a psychologically safe environment is one where opposing views and differences can be aired without fear of comeback and that this is an important element of building innovative organisations.

Somewhat fortuitously, a keynote speaker at the conference was Van Jones, a high profile presenter on CNN and public speaker of note. Jones is an open supporter of the Democratic Party but he campaigns for a degree of civility and rationality from competing participants in all political controversies. His address explored the current very polarised nature of US political discourse and the vast and seemingly unbridgeable gap which separates the two main political parties. The point he made is that politicians on both sides and their supporters are intent on point-scoring against the opposition rather than listening to the arguments and weighing them up to see what can and what cannot be agreed upon. He spoke of “constructive disagreement’ which requires listening to the points made by others even if the views expressed are unacceptable or repugnant. In many ways, of course, the kind of dogmatism of which Van Jones speaks is now unfortunately typical of many public figures in Australia and other Western countries. It is also a function unfortunately of many leaders steeped in the belief that the way they have always done things is the only way.

This led me to thinking about the connection between my paper on psychological safety and the argument advanced by Jones. His premise is essentially that listening to someone else with a view to extracting what is positive and valuable from what they say, rather than as a prelude to a rebuttal, is a valuable way to grow and move ahead.

This notion underpins the theory of Amy Edmundsen’s work on psychological safety which is that sharing views and learning from failure rather than attributing blame is the hallmark of successful teams.

In the political sphere a reluctance to listen to the other side simply means that politicians talk past each other. In the business and organisational sphere, a sense that one will not be listened to simply limits or shuts down potentially valuable interactions and wastes the full value of the intellectual capital that organisations work so hard to recruit.

The common thread which runs through any sound initiative to promote constructive interaction is that of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is not the same as discussion. Dialogue comes from the Greek ‘dialogos’ – or ‘through the word’. It implies a stream of shared meaning flowing between participants.

As a leading thinker on organisational management, Edgar Schein has said:

“Dialogue is a basic process for building common understanding. By letting go of disagreement, a group gradually builds up a shared set of meanings that make much higher levels of mutual understanding and creative thinking possible”.

A culture which creates a platform for successful dialogue is one where psychological safety will be pervasive which, in turn, will result in greater creativity and innovation.  Those who have an interest in fostering more inclusive organisations can take a huge step forward by helping to facilitate the art of dialogue. As a consultant in the field of diversity and inclusion, I take heart from the very significant input of someone like Van Jones. It reinforces some of the basic precepts which we at Symmetra have endeavoured to embody in our various service offerings – that listening well and encouraging genuine dialogue is a major building block of high performing organisations.

July 8, 2021
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Judges Confronting Their Own Bias A Necessary Exercise?

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Biased thinking can lead not only to minor mistakes but can precipitate major disasters. This is so whether the bias is conscious- apparent to the actor upon self-reflection (explicit) or unconscious – hidden from the actor’s reflective thought processes (implicit).

A recent edition of the New Scientist magazine (Aug 15) explains that the explosion in 2010 of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig could have been prevented but for the existence of a distinct “confirmation bias” amongst rig workers. When a test on a critical seal showed a failure, this was explained away as something innocuous by the workers rather than facing the evidence indicating that something was seriously amiss.

Allegations of bias arise in all sorts of contexts and sometimes have to be resolved by a formal inquiry. Where requests are made for judges, arbitrators and judicial commissioners to disqualify themselves because of alleged bias, the aggrieved party will seek to establish demonstrable manifestations of such bias.  In other words it is conscious bias that is decisive in a recusal application. Unconscious bias rarely, if ever, features in these enquiries and short of requiring the judicial officer to take an unconscious bias test, the operation of implicit biases while often plausible, remains outside the scope of the argument.

Recently Royal Commissioner Hayden was requested by certain unions to stand down. The commission was established to enquire into possible breaches of governance standards, malfeasance and criminality on the part of elements within the trade union movements. While sitting, the Commissioner had accepted and later declined an invitation to give an address on a legal topic at an event sponsored by the Liberal party. The initial acceptance, the unions argued,could be viewed as sympathy for the Liberal side of the political spectrum.

The legal question which the Commissioner had to decide was not whether he had been shown to be biased but whether a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend that the Commissioner would not bring an impartial mind to bear to the issues at hand. So the Commissioner is required to put himself in the position of an independent third party viewing the potential for bias. Applying this test, the Commissioner refused to disqualify himself, holding that a fair-minded observer would not apprehend any bias on his part.

In truth, unless one is alive to the hazards of the application of heuristics (mental short-cuts) any enquiry as to bias in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings is itself potentially subject to unconscious bias. This is so because, as the highest UK court observed:

“The fair-minded and informed observer is him or herself in large measure a construct of the court”.

Since different judges have in the past created different constructs of the ideal fair-minded observer one can conclude that this imagined paragon of objectivity and fair-mindedness could easily be a product of the judge’s own biases. In other words, the judge is more likely than not to think that the fair-minded observer “thinks as I do”. This is a manifestation of a classic and well-documented bias known as the “false consensus bias” which involves an assumption that the thinking of most people or at least most right thinking people is consistent with one’s own.

While lawyers and judges are indeed trained to exclude irrelevant matters from their consideration this is not the same thing as being free from unconscious bias. Extensive research, for example, by Cornell Law School has shown that in the area of race, judges hold the same implicit biases as others.

And as one prominent Australian judge has written “The task of fact finding or fact selection has involved a large amount of intuitive decision without conscious deliberation. It has, no doubt, also been done with some preconceived or unconscious bias, potential distortion and error” (Hon.G.T. Pagone)

In principle, therefore it would be very beneficial and perhaps even imperative, for anyone and particularly those who perform a decision – making role to examine their own biases and take steps to counteract them.

Judges like others who are placed in a position where critical decisions are made need to understand that it is not disparaging of oneself to acknowledge one’s own biases. Recent scientific advances have shown that use of heuristics is a natural part of human cognitive functioning. All of us, judges included make errors in judgement every day because of the design of the machinery of our thinking and therefore need to bring our biases from the unconscious to the conscious level so we are better able to counteract them.

By Errol Price

July 8, 2021
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2015 – The tipping point year for women on Company boards

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Malcolm Gladwell who popularised the phrase ‘The Tipping Point’ as the title of his best-selling book defined it as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold the boiling point”. Often the tipping point in significant social movements is recognised only in retrospect. However in the march to give women their rightful role in large public companies it seems that we are able to recognise that in 2015 that very milestone has arrived.

For many years the moral arguments against the glass ceiling and the economic arguments positing that companies profit when their boards are diverse made little headway.  The percentage of women on the boards of the largest public companies in the U.S.A, and the U.K remained obstinately below the 20% mark until about 2010 and in Australia it was below 10%.

Now in developed economies the U.S.A.,U.K, Australia, Europe and Canada and even surprisingly in   India and there are discernible  changes as women start occupying more seats on company boards. Incremental steps originating from a variety of quarters have begun to create momentum for change. That change is almost certainly now unstoppable.

The impetus to implement concrete changes for women in the workplace is now coming from both sides of the gender spectrum. Men are acknowledging that the system is unfair and needs to be changed.  Women are increasingly recognising that they are not powerless and are beginning to use political leverage and economic muscle to force change.

Norway in 2006 was the first country to legislate a quota of females on its boards (40%) and it was followed by France, Spain and the Netherlands. The Bombay Stock Exchange of India in 2014 mandated a minimum of one female director in every listed company.

The dramatic move by Norway signalled that at last, one country was prepared to take serious steps to redress a glaring inequity in the workplace. The consequence of this has been a significant re-think in other countries. It has injected an element of urgency and resolve to reach the goal of adequate female representation within a plausibly acceptable time-frame.

For those countries seeking alternatives to quotas other routes have been found to advance women on boards.

Firstly there are Voluntary Targets. In the UK in 2011, the government fixed the target at 25% female directors by the end of 2015.  That goal was willingly adopted and is likely to be reached with female board representation already at 23.5% by mid-year.

A second option is internal corporate programs allied with transparent reporting mandated by external regulation. In Australia for example, the ASX guidelines incorporate a ‘comply or explain’ rule with respect to the advancements of gender diversity has had rate worthy success. The percentage of women on ASX 200 boards has risen from 8.3% in 2009 to 20% in 2015 with the Australian Institute of Company Directors pushing for a 30% target by 2019.

Naturally companies which depend on female consumers or those with high proportions of female employees are more likely to be in the forefront of those by actively seeking to appoint female directors.

And of course there are laggards in all countries -those that are simply unwilling to act or believe that they are immune to the forces for change. They are almost certainly on the wrong side of history. At the beginning of July, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors wrote to the chairpersons of 32 ASX 200 companies without any female directors asking for an explanation for this state of affairs.  Since the members of this organisation control some $1.6 trillion in investor funds, their disapproval is likely to carry some considerable weight.

The movement to achieve respectable representivity of women in Australia’s leading companies is gathering momentum at last. A corner has been turned and there will be no looking back.