Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Mave Higgins, and this is solvable Interviews with
Speaker 1: the world's most innovative thinkers working to solve the world's
Speaker 1: biggest problems. My solvable is that by twenty thirty we
Speaker 1: can make sure every girl gets a great education and
Speaker 1: she gets a chance to be a leader. What makes
Speaker 1: me want to solve this problem is my life experience.
Speaker 1: I know how transformative education is, and having had the
Speaker 1: privilege of being a leader, I want to see more
Speaker 1: women get access to leadership positions. That is Julia Gillard,
Speaker 1: the first and so far the only woman to be
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Australia. She left Offers in two thirteen.
Speaker 1: As you'll hear, leaving Offers was tough for her. Getting
Speaker 1: there in the first place was even tougher, though, and
Speaker 1: this isn't surprising. Around the world and throughout different industries
Speaker 1: and rules, women leaders are actually on the decline. Forbes
Speaker 1: reported that women held under a quarter of senior roles
Speaker 1: across the world in twenty eighteen, and women represent just
Speaker 1: five percent of Fourtune five hundred CEOs. But we're jumping ahead. Globally,
Speaker 1: girls are more likely than boys to be excluded from
Speaker 1: primary school and women make up more than two thirds
Speaker 1: of the world's nearly eight hundred million illiterate people. But
Speaker 1: say you're one of the lucky ones, you go to school,
Speaker 1: you go to college, you excel in your field, it's
Speaker 1: still unlikely that you'll actually become a leader. Just in
Speaker 1: the United States alone, that figures are pretty bad. Take medicine,
Speaker 1: where women represent forty percent of all physicians and surgeons,
Speaker 1: but fewer than one in five are permanent medical school deans.
Speaker 1: Or look at academia, women have actually earned the majority
Speaker 1: of doctorates for eight consecutive years, but they are only
Speaker 1: thirty two percent of full time professors. And looking again
Speaker 1: at the world of business. Here in the US, the
Speaker 1: Government Accountability Office recently published a report on improving gender
Speaker 1: diversity on boards. It says the importance of diversity must
Speaker 1: be emphasized and a diverse set of underrepresented candidates required.
Speaker 1: It also says boards should have age or term limits,
Speaker 1: and other countries have done that and more and they've
Speaker 1: seen results, and that includes Australia. Today we have this
Speaker 1: really great exchange between Malcolm Gladwell and Julia Gillard. Gillard
Speaker 1: started her career as a lawyer in Melbourne coming to
Speaker 1: politics in nineteen ninety eight when she was elected to
Speaker 1: the Australian House of Representatives, before becoming their first woman
Speaker 1: Prime minister in two and ten. She was the first
Speaker 1: woman Deputy Prime Minister and the first woman leader of
Speaker 1: a major party. Following her term as Prime Minister, she's
Speaker 1: accepted fellowships and visiting professorships at universities around the world,
Speaker 1: and she currently chairs the Global Institute for Women's Leadership
Speaker 1: over at King's College in London. They have omitsion to
Speaker 1: better understands why women continue to be underrepresented in positions
Speaker 1: of leadership. So let's hear what you've got to say.
Speaker 1: You served as Prime Minister of Australia and you had
Speaker 1: the question that faces anyone coming out of high office,
Speaker 1: which is what do I do next? And tell me
Speaker 1: how you came to decide what you wanted to do
Speaker 1: next and what was sort of the what led you
Speaker 1: on the particular course that you're on now. It's a
Speaker 1: fair old punch when you come out of a big
Speaker 1: position like that. You don't realize how tired you are
Speaker 1: until you stop. So I did give myself a little
Speaker 1: bit of time to do some grieving about what was
Speaker 1: lost in some physical recovery. But in that period I
Speaker 1: tried to think through what is it about this that
Speaker 1: I want to take with me and what is it
Speaker 1: I want to discard? And when I worked my way
Speaker 1: through that, it was clear that the ongoing passion I'd
Speaker 1: had was around education, so I wanted to take that
Speaker 1: with me. And then, having had a really transformative set
Speaker 1: of experiences around being a female leader, I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something to make a difference for other women and
Speaker 1: their prospects for coming through for leadership. It's what do
Speaker 1: you use the word grieving? But so you didn't think
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, as I would have said, you
Speaker 1: would have come out of it with a sense of triumph.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you don't. There aren't too many elegant ways
Speaker 1: out of politics. Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating rang
Speaker 1: me the day after I lost office and by way
Speaker 1: of consolation, said to me, we all get taken out
Speaker 1: in a box. Love. Thanks for that, Paul. But the
Speaker 1: truth of politics is either your party knocks you over
Speaker 1: or the electors knock you over. Not many people actually
Speaker 1: pick the moment that they're going to gracefully exit politics,
Speaker 1: And so you know it's in such a public high
Speaker 1: wire act and then such a public defeat that I
Speaker 1: think grieving is the right word. Yeah, but you didn't
Speaker 1: take how much consolation did you take in the fact
Speaker 1: that you had broken through for women? You were the
Speaker 1: first female prime minister of Australia. Oh, I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of that, and I don't want to overdramatize this some
Speaker 1: grieving period. I don't feel like that now, But I
Speaker 1: did let myself have a number of weeks where I
Speaker 1: didn't do very much. I just recuperated, and I did
Speaker 1: allow the emotions of the loss to be with me.
Speaker 1: And then you can put it aside. But if you've
Speaker 1: never let it course through you, then I think it
Speaker 1: probably manifests several years down the track, probably in a
Speaker 1: mutated and unpleasant kind of way. But since that period,
Speaker 1: I've been very focused on the new challenges, and when
Speaker 1: I look back on the past, it's with a sense
Speaker 1: of pride, with less learned, with things to share. I'm
Speaker 1: very glad I did it, and I'm a great advocate
Speaker 1: for people doing it. I don't think there's any better
Speaker 1: opportunity than politics to put your values into action and
Speaker 1: to make the most change when you said that you
Speaker 1: came out of this experience with a desire to further
Speaker 1: opportunities for women in positions of leadership. When you think
Speaker 1: back in your time in office, how many female peers
Speaker 1: did you have in your political circle? Fortunately, quite a few.
Speaker 1: We were on a journey of change as a political party.
Speaker 1: We'd had a lot of women come in around the
Speaker 1: time I came into parliament in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and so some of my most senior ministerial colleagues were women,
Speaker 1: Jenny Macklin and Nicola Roxon and Tanya pleber Sek, and
Speaker 1: the list goes on, Penny Wong. So I did feel
Speaker 1: well supported and surrounded by women. Are still a minority
Speaker 1: in our political party, in the ministry and certainly in
Speaker 1: the Parliament, but a sense of sisterhood there. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: percentage when you were primaries to what percentage of parliament was?
Speaker 1: Were women round? About twenty five percent in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives and about a third in the Senate. And
Speaker 1: that number had already increased dramatically over the course of
Speaker 1: going back at ten or fifteen years previously, what would
Speaker 1: it have been? Oh, yes, that had increased dramatically. If
Speaker 1: you went back to the early nineteen nineties, the figure
Speaker 1: would have been around fourteen percent for the Parliament. So yes,
Speaker 1: there'd been a big change, and particularly a big change
Speaker 1: in the Labor Party because we'd adopted an affirmative action rules,
Speaker 1: so a certain percentage of seats had to go to women,
Speaker 1: and that percentage had grown over time to forty percent.
Speaker 1: So a very dramatic change in Labor. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to come back to the role of these those
Speaker 1: kinds of rules in terms of bringing about changes opposed
Speaker 1: to attitudes. I think it's really important one, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to before I get there. I'm curious about a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One is that this question of numbers.
Speaker 1: So if you said it was twenty five percent when
Speaker 1: you were there, how high does it have to be
Speaker 1: before the issue starts to go away. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that you can put a mathematical number on that, but
Speaker 1: there's plenty of research that says, you know, one woman
Speaker 1: can't make the difference, but once you get up to
Speaker 1: figures like a third, then you do start to see changes,
Speaker 1: And intuitively that seems to me to be around about
Speaker 1: right that to have an impact on cultural mores and
Speaker 1: the way that institutions work, you need at least a third. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think that had there been a third or see,
Speaker 1: let's see, forty percent of the Parliament have been female
Speaker 1: at the time you were Prime Minister, that would have
Speaker 1: tempered some of the misogyny virtue feast, not necessarily, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I'd love to be able to say yes to that question.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just within the Parliament that there was
Speaker 1: an issue about gender and gendered insults. That was you know,
Speaker 1: profoundly in the media, in social media, and so I
Speaker 1: think it would have flowed anyway. And then because the
Speaker 1: political contest is a fierce one, and I think it
Speaker 1: should be. I mean, you're contending about values and big
Speaker 1: picture issues, so people should be strongly engaged in that
Speaker 1: clash of ideas. But because that clash is so strong,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it would really be naive to say, well,
Speaker 1: women never participate in using that gendered imagery. That's not
Speaker 1: my experience. Yeah, but it doesn't change the claimate for
Speaker 1: someone in gigaging in that kind of rhetoric. Is it
Speaker 1: different when they look around it and they see lots
Speaker 1: of female faces and when they look around, do they
Speaker 1: have last permission to speak that way when they're in
Speaker 1: a more female environment. I think ultimately, the more women
Speaker 1: there are, the less permission there is to speak that way.
Speaker 1: And second, the more or public pressure and advocacy about
Speaker 1: being better about women and leadership, the more things will change.
Speaker 1: I mean, I lived with the phenomenon of social media,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was relatively recent. I mean, social
Speaker 1: media is being turbo charged in the time since, and
Speaker 1: now social media is often used to call out someone
Speaker 1: who's engaged in sexist conduct. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: legacy of the Me Too movement, but it goes beyond
Speaker 1: the issue of sexual harassment. There wasn't much of that
Speaker 1: when I was there, so in some ways we were
Speaker 1: getting the negative side of social media without that more
Speaker 1: positive side of trying to advocate for better ways of
Speaker 1: including people in dialogue without name calling or using gendered insults.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting distinction between the participation of women as
Speaker 1: a whole and participation of women in the highest levels
Speaker 1: of leadership. And I'm wondering, are there one problem or
Speaker 1: are there two problems? Can you if you solve the
Speaker 1: first question of general participation, do you inevitably solve the second,
Speaker 1: or is there a whole different battle that has to
Speaker 1: be fired about getting women from the backbenches to the
Speaker 1: cabinet or to the prime minister's office. I think they're related,
Speaker 1: but not the same problem. So you're never going to
Speaker 1: see equal ministries or women be prime ministers an equal
Speaker 1: amount of time unless you've got a backbench that's round
Speaker 1: about half half, because you don't even have people in
Speaker 1: the qualifying ring. But you then still need to change
Speaker 1: a set of other things to make sure women are
Speaker 1: coming through for leadership, including this public media reception and
Speaker 1: how gendered that is very practical set of questions for
Speaker 1: women with kids around work and family life. Even the
Speaker 1: attraction or lack of it for women to these combative
Speaker 1: sort of occupations. I think all of that needs some attention,
Speaker 1: but it starts with getting half half on the back bench. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of because I was thinking this in terms
Speaker 1: of if you think about from the perspective of a voter,
Speaker 1: I've always wondered whether the act of voting for a
Speaker 1: female candidate prepares you adequately for the act of supporting
Speaker 1: a female leader, or whether one might actually be an
Speaker 1: excuse night to do the other. That because I've voted
Speaker 1: for a female candidate and no longer feel I need
Speaker 1: to support a female female leader. So the get I've
Speaker 1: given it the office kind of. I think in this
Speaker 1: area of gender and leadership there is a bit of
Speaker 1: giving it the office. I think that's true in the
Speaker 1: corporate world as well as in politics. There is actually
Speaker 1: research that shows that many chairs of boards of directors
Speaker 1: and CEOs, when they get the one woman, you know,
Speaker 1: the one woman on the board, the one and in
Speaker 1: the c suite, then go take that box, that gender thing.
Speaker 1: We've done that, let's move on. So a bit of
Speaker 1: giving it the office. I think in politics, voting for
Speaker 1: a female candidate is a great start, but we shouldn't
Speaker 1: assume just because people are prepared to vote for female
Speaker 1: candidates that they'll look at a female leader and receive
Speaker 1: her and evaluate her equally. There's plenty of psychological research
Speaker 1: about all unconscious biases, the little whispers in the back
Speaker 1: of our head that tell us that when women come
Speaker 1: through for leadership, they're probably not very likable, probably very
Speaker 1: hard bitten, difficult to get along with, and that then
Speaker 1: refracts into how much sense of connection do you feel
Speaker 1: to the leader, how much are you prepared to follow her,
Speaker 1: how critical or harsh your evaluation is if she gets
Speaker 1: into some political trouble, And inevitably, if you're in politics,
Speaker 1: you'll get into trouble one day. So I think that
Speaker 1: there's a set of other things that have to happen.
Speaker 1: But I don't think people sit there and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I've voted for a woman, so job done. I do
Speaker 1: think that there's an appetite in the community to see
Speaker 1: more women come through. If your task is to increase
Speaker 1: your goal is to increase the number of female leaders,
Speaker 1: particularly in areas where there have been very few, I'm
Speaker 1: curious about how strategic one should be. So I'm remembering
Speaker 1: during the Civil rights movement in America. You know, there
Speaker 1: was a Rosa Parks was the woman who was chosen
Speaker 1: to desegregate the buses of Montgomery, and she was chosen
Speaker 1: very deliberately. They wanted a woman of a certain age,
Speaker 1: of a certain background, of impeccable character, of and on,
Speaker 1: because they knew they had one shot to sort of
Speaker 1: make their And I had the same feeling when I met.
Speaker 1: She's now left, but she was the Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Air Force in the current administration in America. I happen
Speaker 1: to meet her and I thought, Oh, there's a woman.
Speaker 1: If she ran, could become president. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I felt that, but I felt that, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about why I felt that. But I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is that a worthwhile activity, that kind of strategizing at
Speaker 1: the beginning about who and do you have it? Do
Speaker 1: you have a picture in your mind about who the
Speaker 1: pioneer should be. I'm really cautious about that. And I'm
Speaker 1: cautious about it because I sort of learned my feminism
Speaker 1: doing things like reading and summers. A great Australian feminist
Speaker 1: wrote an incredibly important book called Damn Who's and God's Police,
Speaker 1: and it was an analysis of women's roles in the
Speaker 1: early days of when the United Kingdom started sending convicts
Speaker 1: to Australia, and she was making the point that there
Speaker 1: were really only two ways to be a woman. You
Speaker 1: were either the virtuous one or you were a damned whore,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing in between. And I would worry
Speaker 1: that we're going to uplift that template and say, you know,
Speaker 1: here's Pearl pure Heart, who is this incredible person who's
Speaker 1: never put anybody's needs in front of her own and
Speaker 1: she's the perfect candidate. You know, why do we lift
Speaker 1: that burden up and put it on the shoulders of
Speaker 1: women when we don't lift it up and put it
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of men. They can be self interested, petty,
Speaker 1: angry and still end up president and prime minister and
Speaker 1: all of the other things around the world, CEO, chair
Speaker 1: of the board. So I'm anxious about that, but I'm
Speaker 1: not naive either. You know, when the US, and obviously
Speaker 1: we're in primary season now, when the US next looks
Speaker 1: towards a female candidate, I think there will be a
Speaker 1: lot of reflection on what is it that will make
Speaker 1: her the most electable, particularly having been through the scarring
Speaker 1: experience with Hillary. But just something in it me just
Speaker 1: feels quite itchy and irritated by the stereotyping. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting though that the rules are different for the dominant
Speaker 1: group and the group that's trying to get in right.
Speaker 1: The dominant group has extraordinary latitude and who they as you.
Speaker 1: I don't need to nickname names, but you can be boorish, narcissistic, unqualified,
Speaker 1: ill equipped for you know, unknowledgeable. I could go on
Speaker 1: and be elected as a man like bar is quite low,
Speaker 1: but the bar very high for the first woman or
Speaker 1: the second reading the second woman, that's the only reason
Speaker 1: I But now I'm thinking of this woman who was
Speaker 1: the secretary of the Air Force. But I'm wondering, is
Speaker 1: my perception of what electability is am I simply reinforcing
Speaker 1: my own stereotypes about women when I when I go
Speaker 1: through the analysis of what electability means, I think it
Speaker 1: is a little problematic in the sense that there's a
Speaker 1: set of assumptions about potential stereotyping of women candidates. So
Speaker 1: I think you're attracted to a candidate with a military
Speaker 1: background because you're working off the assumption that a female
Speaker 1: candidate is going to be looked at and people are
Speaker 1: going to think, is she too soft? Press the button
Speaker 1: one day if that's ever needed in the defense of
Speaker 1: the United States, And so you're all ready going for
Speaker 1: the stereotype and trying to then counteract the stereotype in
Speaker 1: the candidate. And that's practical and smart, and if you
Speaker 1: were getting a job as a political advisor, you'd probably
Speaker 1: need to be doing all of those things. But I
Speaker 1: still worry about the stereotyping underneath. Is the problem different?
Speaker 1: For business and politics. Is it harder to get women
Speaker 1: into the c suite in corporation and it is to
Speaker 1: get a woman into a relationship position in politics or
Speaker 1: the opposite. I think they're different kinds of hard, And
Speaker 1: if we look at the global statistics, it's telling us
Speaker 1: that they're different kinds of hard, because the number of
Speaker 1: women who are either political leaders or senior managers is
Speaker 1: around about the same in the twenty five percent zone globally.
Speaker 1: When we actually look at women on corporate boards globally,
Speaker 1: it's down at the fifteen percent range, And by the
Speaker 1: time you're talking about senior leaders in it, you're down
Speaker 1: at the nine percent range. So it's a different kind
Speaker 1: of hard. I think the heart in politics is a
Speaker 1: lot about how women are received in the public square
Speaker 1: and treated in the public square. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the hard in business is about the tracks the
Speaker 1: pipeline where the women are in the areas that take
Speaker 1: you to leadership already from the start of their careers
Speaker 1: in those areas that might take you to being head
Speaker 1: of HR, but no further. And then there's a set
Speaker 1: of unconscious biases and male networks which come into play
Speaker 1: that make it harder for women to come through. When
Speaker 1: it comes to business, there's been a lot of focus
Speaker 1: on the role of the number of women on boards.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, do do we think that solving the board
Speaker 1: problem is the most important thing in in increasing a
Speaker 1: number of women in the c suite? Or is that? Well?
Speaker 1: I was, well, why is that such a priority? I
Speaker 1: would naively I would have said that's down on my
Speaker 1: list of things of priorities. I think it's important in
Speaker 1: the role modeling effect because boards are very celebrated and public.
Speaker 1: There is evidence that more women on boards do make
Speaker 1: a difference to the nature of the conversation and particularly
Speaker 1: the nature of the conversation around diversity and inclusion, so
Speaker 1: it's a trigger point for them getting further change. But
Speaker 1: I agree with you that if we ended up with
Speaker 1: businesses where the boards were always half half, but when
Speaker 1: you looked at the pipeline in the business, you still
Speaker 1: saw women clustered in the junior grades, big gender pay gaps,
Speaker 1: are not enough attention paid to work in family life,
Speaker 1: that would not be a victory. I think we want
Speaker 1: every point in a woman's life journey, and particularly from
Speaker 1: the work I'm doing at King's College, London, with the
Speaker 1: Global Institute for Women's Leadership. We're focused on the work journey.
Speaker 1: We want every point in that to be one where
Speaker 1: a woman is not treated in a lesser way than
Speaker 1: a man. Yeah, so let's talk about, first of all,
Speaker 1: who does this. Well, when you look around in your
Speaker 1: current position, King's College, in this program you just talked about,
Speaker 1: you must look around the world and you must say, Okay,
Speaker 1: there is someone who's a group, country, community, what have you,
Speaker 1: that's that's solving this problem in a way that we
Speaker 1: can use as a model. So your models. We're certainly
Speaker 1: looking for models, but there's an information problem that we've
Speaker 1: almost got to solve first, which is we've got any
Speaker 1: number of indexes about gender, but they are not focused
Speaker 1: on this question of women's leadership. And because they tend
Speaker 1: to include statistics about women's general health, women's education levels,
Speaker 1: then they cluster at the top the wealthiest nations in
Speaker 1: earth that have largely solved those problems, but they don't
Speaker 1: give you a fine grained look at women and leadership.
Speaker 1: So we are working to build an index that would
Speaker 1: do that, which would enable you to just do a
Speaker 1: comparison on women leaders politics, business, civil society. The law technology.
Speaker 1: If we had that information, we'd be able to surface
Speaker 1: some clearer examples. But just looking at the moment you
Speaker 1: get all sorts of interesting things popping up. Malaysia there
Speaker 1: are more women in it, far more than the global
Speaker 1: statistics would lead you to believe. So then you can
Speaker 1: go and unpack why is that Slovenia we looked at
Speaker 1: because there are far more women judges than the global
Speaker 1: statistics would lead you to expect. When we unpack that,
Speaker 1: we actually found that they've got a very rules based
Speaker 1: legal system with very little discretion. So being a judge
Speaker 1: is not viewed as that fantastic a job. It's a
Speaker 1: more mechanistic job. So we want to get more information
Speaker 1: to keep looking. Many big businesses, you know, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of the biggest global companies in the world are very
Speaker 1: serious about this agenda. And you know, you can point
Speaker 1: to individual things they're doing that are working, but no
Speaker 1: one's done the big solve. There's no one that you
Speaker 1: can just point to and say, if everybody did what
Speaker 1: X is doing, then we would fix this. But if
Speaker 1: I was I was a twenty one year old woman
Speaker 1: whose ambition was to be the leader of a country,
Speaker 1: and in the world, and you could wave a magic
Speaker 1: wand and make me a citizen of any country in
Speaker 1: the world. Where would you Where would you send me
Speaker 1: to maximize my chances? The statistics that tell me that
Speaker 1: I'd have to send you to Iceland or one of
Speaker 1: the Nordic Scandinavian style countries. The statistics would tell you
Speaker 1: I could send you to wander But then we'd have
Speaker 1: a complex debate about how much power is in the
Speaker 1: parliament versus how much is in the hands of the president.
Speaker 1: But they're the nations on Earth that come up with
Speaker 1: the largest numbers for women. MP's on the business, could
Speaker 1: send you to New Zealand? Yes, Yes, on the business?
Speaker 1: What did the business say? The one of the questions
Speaker 1: I had about the business was there seem to be
Speaker 1: two You were talking about how there's very few women
Speaker 1: in a T and women tend to be overrepresented in
Speaker 1: HR and HR is not nearly that kind of pipeline
Speaker 1: to upper leadership as areas for companies? What is the
Speaker 1: rate approach to solving our problem? Is it elevating those
Speaker 1: areas where women are already strung so that you could
Speaker 1: it becomes legitimate to become CEO if you came up
Speaker 1: through HI or is it getting women out of HR.
Speaker 1: I think it's a bit of both, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a profound reworking of what we think merit is.
Speaker 1: And there's some fantastic writing on this at the moment,
Speaker 1: a great book about why we keep promoting incompetent men,
Speaker 1: and it challenges us to look at the way in
Speaker 1: which selections get done in businesses. So our interviews where
Speaker 1: we look really and we're assessing charisma the best way
Speaker 1: of selecting people to go into jobs. And then as
Speaker 1: we go up the promotion track, the frames around men
Speaker 1: and women. You know, he's always there in the office,
Speaker 1: so valuing sort of presentism rather than outcomes. People who
Speaker 1: have got a lot of confidence, who are there grasping
Speaker 1: at opportunities, who may not be leading their teams well
Speaker 1: or actually delivering, but everybody notices them. They are more
Speaker 1: likely to be the ones that get promoted. And he's
Speaker 1: done in this book, are the author a wonderful analysis
Speaker 1: of how that is gendered, how our very view about
Speaker 1: what merit is is gendered. Let's let's talk about the
Speaker 1: kinds of steps one would practical steps one would like
Speaker 1: to see to kind of reverse that. But let's start
Speaker 1: with that. So if in fact that where we assess
Speaker 1: merit is gendered, how do we ungender it? How do
Speaker 1: we ungender it? Well, first, I'd say we don't know
Speaker 1: everything we need to know, which is why we're still
Speaker 1: researching it. But of the things we do know, gender
Speaker 1: blind selection processes make a difference. So instead of sending
Speaker 1: in applications you know John Smith, you know Sue Jones
Speaker 1: where you can see from the front, you take the
Speaker 1: names of other forms of identifiers. Instead of doing CVS
Speaker 1: style explorations, you ask candidates to solve a problem and
Speaker 1: send it in and assess on that that you in interviews.
Speaker 1: Instead of just having a chat, which might allow a
Speaker 1: charismatic candidate to structure the conversation, you have a very
Speaker 1: clear set of questions that every candidate gets asked to
Speaker 1: respond to in the same order. So you get clear comparatives,
Speaker 1: more metrics, you around what achievement is, so not dealing
Speaker 1: with things on the face of them, but digging behind
Speaker 1: when you're looking at promotion tracks. All of those things
Speaker 1: make a difference. The introduction of structure, in other words,
Speaker 1: has the even if it's not explicitly intended to favor
Speaker 1: one group of another has the effect of loveling the
Speaker 1: pen playing field. Yes, it does, because if you imagine
Speaker 1: yourself and where we all as human beings respond to this.
Speaker 1: If you and I were sitting here now on an
Speaker 1: interview panel, and we're going to see ten candidates today,
Speaker 1: then the one that bounces into the room full of
Speaker 1: confidence seems charming. You think to yourself, well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: mind having a drink with them at the end of
Speaker 1: the day when we get through this bloody interviewing process,
Speaker 1: they're the one that you're most likely at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, when we're exhausted to say who should
Speaker 1: we give this job to? They will be the candidate
Speaker 1: that we remember. But have we really made a thoughtful
Speaker 1: selection or just fallen for a sort of confidence? Charisma?
Speaker 1: And some jobs require you know, if we were selecting
Speaker 1: someone to be an on air television presenter, then maybe
Speaker 1: confidence and charisma would be right at the top of
Speaker 1: the list. But if we were running a business and
Speaker 1: we were selecting a new head of our technical division,
Speaker 1: or even a new head of our financial division, actually
Speaker 1: confidence and charisma probably we aren't anywhere near the top
Speaker 1: of the list in terms of the skills we need.
Speaker 1: Why is searching I don't I'm not I don't disagree,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious. Why is something I've always puzzled about it.
Speaker 1: Why are informal selection processes that default to rewarding people
Speaker 1: for confidence in charisma gender? There are plenty of women
Speaker 1: who are incredibly charismatic. I've never insered why so there's
Speaker 1: it's an attraction to a male variety of charisma that
Speaker 1: seems to be the issue, not an attraction to charisma
Speaker 1: as a whole, right, because there's toun Like I said, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: plenty of confident charismatic women, but unconscious bias research would
Speaker 1: tell us that we easily put a frame around a
Speaker 1: confident charismatic woman that she's pushy, too strong, because she's
Speaker 1: going again the stereotypes whispering in the back of our brain,
Speaker 1: that we expect women to be a little less forthright
Speaker 1: than that, whereas we have an unconscious bias that we
Speaker 1: expect men to be pretty out there, pretty comfortable in
Speaker 1: their skin, owning the space, and so we don't in
Speaker 1: any way mark a man down for that. So it's
Speaker 1: not I'm not trying to put the proposition that confidence
Speaker 1: and charisma are somehow unequally distributed between the sexes. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that. I think they're differently. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, And you know, once again, I'm conscious
Speaker 1: in all of this we end up talking in sort
Speaker 1: of generalities and some stereotyping when we're actually trying to
Speaker 1: get away from stereotyping. So I'm not trying to say
Speaker 1: every human interaction is like that, but the analysis would
Speaker 1: tell us that on average, more of those things come
Speaker 1: into play for women than come into play for men.
Speaker 1: You had that the Labor Party in Australia had an
Speaker 1: affirmative Action policy which sat clearer goals for how many women,
Speaker 1: how many seats are to be held by women. Talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that approach, that idea. Instead of
Speaker 1: using soft methods of changing things, you go in and
Speaker 1: you sat hard standards that reflect on how well it
Speaker 1: worked for the Labor Party in Australia, And do you
Speaker 1: think that is a strategy that should be used in
Speaker 1: many different domains To give you the Australian story just
Speaker 1: in snapshot, if you go back to the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: in our National Parliament, both sides of politics conservative and
Speaker 1: progressive we're around about fourteen percent women and the Labor
Speaker 1: Party looked at that and said we need to change it,
Speaker 1: and so it ultimately went for a structural solution for
Speaker 1: an affirmative action target and different jurisdictions. Even though we're
Speaker 1: sending people to a national parliament, there are still some
Speaker 1: differences between how in the State of Victoria's seat selection
Speaker 1: will be done compared with New South Wales or South Australia.
Speaker 1: So there wasn't just one answer to how to get
Speaker 1: that done. But for example, in the State of Victoria
Speaker 1: where I was, the system was you preselected for the
Speaker 1: whole round, every member for the House of Representatives, every senator,
Speaker 1: and if you hadn't hit the target for winnable seats,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't cluster the women in the unwinnable seats.
Speaker 1: If you hadn't hit the target for winnable seats, then
Speaker 1: you'd have to have the whole preselection round again. Now
Speaker 1: in politics, this is an unimaginably bad sanction. Every vote,
Speaker 1: every double cross is on the table because you've already
Speaker 1: done the round once and now you're going to do
Speaker 1: it again. So people delivered to the target and it
Speaker 1: worked and so labor has been as high as forty
Speaker 1: eight percent women. On the other side of politics, they
Speaker 1: went for a less structural approach or a zero structural approach,
Speaker 1: and they said they'd have training and mentoring and all
Speaker 1: the sort of softer stuff, and they have incrementally inched
Speaker 1: their way forward to about twenty two twenty three percent
Speaker 1: women in that zone. Now, I think when we come
Speaker 1: back from that Australian experience and say, what's that telling us,
Speaker 1: it's really telling us something about the big debate, and
Speaker 1: the big debate that sort of rages is do we
Speaker 1: need to fix the structures or do we need to
Speaker 1: fix the women. Do we need to say to the
Speaker 1: women be more confident, lean in, you know, exhibit these
Speaker 1: kinds of behaviors and you'll get through. Or do we
Speaker 1: need to fix the structures. And once again, like all
Speaker 1: debates that rage back and forth, there's a bit of
Speaker 1: truth on both sides. But I'm a real believer we
Speaker 1: need to fix the structures. And I think the Australian
Speaker 1: example helps prove that that it's not just about more
Speaker 1: training and you know, sort of mentoring and things like
Speaker 1: that for women. It's about a more profound set of
Speaker 1: issues than that. Do you think of those kinds of
Speaker 1: quotas as permanent or are they're temporary until you get
Speaker 1: women and men into rough alignment. I think they're temporary
Speaker 1: and once you get to a world and it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you'd have to go through the mechanical process
Speaker 1: of getting rid of the rule. I mean we're almost
Speaker 1: at that point in Australian politics, Australian Labor politics, where
Speaker 1: the rule is no longer uppermost in people's mind. Oh heavens,
Speaker 1: are we going to meet the rule? That we're going
Speaker 1: to meet the rule? Because now we've just got to
Speaker 1: a stage where as it comes out, is going to
Speaker 1: meet the rule. So there's less of a drive coming
Speaker 1: from the statute that we adopted as a political party,
Speaker 1: and it's more just the norm. So it'll fall away
Speaker 1: in impact once you get to a critical mass of women.
Speaker 1: Did you notice down steam of facts from that rule?
Speaker 1: Did you wither more women entering into politics as a result, Well,
Speaker 1: certainly there were more women selected for parliament. I think
Speaker 1: more women who came into the Labor Party could imagine
Speaker 1: themselves in parliament, and because of our Westminster system, because
Speaker 1: he had more women on the back bench, it was
Speaker 1: more likely they'd come through into the ministry, and so
Speaker 1: we had ministries that could have more women at the
Speaker 1: front of them. So yes, it flowed through everywhere. The
Speaker 1: argument that was used in Australia on the conservative side
Speaker 1: of politics was all know, that means that you're not
Speaker 1: selecting people on the basis of merit. But once again,
Speaker 1: that takes us back to the point about what's merit
Speaker 1: and if you believe that it's equally distributed between the sexes,
Speaker 1: and you're seeing a result that's seventy percent or more men,
Speaker 1: and that's telling you that there are women of merit
Speaker 1: who didn't get to come through. Was there a backlash
Speaker 1: within talking about within the labor universe? Was your backlash
Speaker 1: and what was the nature of the backlash? How long
Speaker 1: did last and what were the what were the kind
Speaker 1: of argument Presumably that argument was used. Oh yes, that
Speaker 1: argument was definitely used there. This was a fierce debate.
Speaker 1: This wasn't I feel like I may have told the
Speaker 1: history in a more benign way than it was lived.
Speaker 1: This was a fierce debate within the Labor Party as
Speaker 1: to whether this rule was going to be adopted, and
Speaker 1: it was finally adopted at a national conference, and right
Speaker 1: up until the moment of adoption there was fierce resistance
Speaker 1: to it. Fortunately the then Prime Minister Labor Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Paul Keating was a supporter of it, so that profoundly helped.
Speaker 1: But I remember one of the women who had been
Speaker 1: right at the front of this campaign telling us afterwards
Speaker 1: that a very senior may or politician rushed over to
Speaker 1: her after the rule was adopted and said, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: you bitch, as you've won, to which she said, I
Speaker 1: want that on my gravestone, you know. Would you recommend
Speaker 1: that for any country. I'm always conscious that in our
Speaker 1: complex world, you can never just pick something up and
Speaker 1: smash it down into someone else's system and say job done.
Speaker 1: And we've seen too much of that done around the world.
Speaker 1: But I would certainly advocate that every political party thinks
Speaker 1: through whether a mechanism, a target, a quota would work
Speaker 1: for them, you know, and you'd have to adapt it
Speaker 1: to systems. But I think unless you've squarely looked that
Speaker 1: debate in the phase, you're probably not going to get
Speaker 1: to the profound change we need to see. You have
Speaker 1: a good natural experiment in Australia if you have one
Speaker 1: party that has them and one party that doesn't. You
Speaker 1: can track and see how the two rates of female
Speaker 1: participation differ over time. Yet little study and to talk
Speaker 1: about let's talk on other instito no things around things
Speaker 1: that family leave and what will be next on your
Speaker 1: list if you so, let's talk about the institutional agenda
Speaker 1: of female leadership quality. What's next on the list after? Well,
Speaker 1: I think quotas can play a role, but you know,
Speaker 1: many of the other things we've talked about in terms
Speaker 1: of how merits viewed and who gets promoted, those things
Speaker 1: need to be looked at. Then on the sort of
Speaker 1: work family life. Once again, we don't know everything we
Speaker 1: need to know. And you know, the toolbox that we
Speaker 1: have for change in big businesses, in political parties is
Speaker 1: a pretty thin toolbox. And I was absolutely persuaded of
Speaker 1: how thin the toolbox was when I studied it after
Speaker 1: being in politics and wanting to write my book and
Speaker 1: write thoughtfully about gender. So there's lots of us, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of work for us at the Global Institute for
Speaker 1: Women's Leadership and others around the world to do to
Speaker 1: multiply the number of tools in the toolbox. But all
Speaker 1: the things we know work now, an important one is
Speaker 1: work life flexibilities, but making sure that they are used
Speaker 1: by both men and women. So there's very clear evidence
Speaker 1: that if you've got flexible work policies and it's only
Speaker 1: ever used by women, then that's the mummy track, and
Speaker 1: that's the second track, and it's the track that's hard
Speaker 1: to get promoted out of. Whereas if those flexibilities are
Speaker 1: used by both men and women, then it is no
Speaker 1: longer a neck detriment towards promotion. So actually, you know
Speaker 1: men stepping up and saying I'm going to take leave
Speaker 1: at the time of the birth of my child. I'm
Speaker 1: going to not work in the office on Thursday or
Speaker 1: whatever it is because I'm going to stay at home
Speaker 1: and look after our baby. All of those things. If
Speaker 1: those flexib abilities are used by men, then there will
Speaker 1: be less punishment involved in using them. How do you
Speaker 1: get men to use them as much as women? Well,
Speaker 1: it's one of those Once it gets started, I think
Speaker 1: it will spread, But initially I think you need men
Speaker 1: at a leadership level to do it, to give permission
Speaker 1: to other men. I mean, I can understand why a
Speaker 1: man would think I've never been in a workplace where
Speaker 1: anybody else has done this. If I'm the first one
Speaker 1: to do it, is everybody going to be looking at
Speaker 1: me going wow, that's kind of No one's going to
Speaker 1: say it to my face, but are they going to
Speaker 1: be thinking wow, that's kind of interesting. You know, how
Speaker 1: invested is he in his job if he's looking for
Speaker 1: all these flexibilities? You know, can I afford that risk?
Speaker 1: Because I want to be promoted to well in my career,
Speaker 1: So role modeling from the top that yep, it's okay
Speaker 1: and your career will be fine, I think is really important.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something you said at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. I think this is a good place
Speaker 1: to wrap up, and that is I was curious about
Speaker 1: this connection between educational opportunity and leadership rules, because it
Speaker 1: does strike me that if you looked at least at
Speaker 1: industrialized countries in the educational battle is more than being one.
Speaker 1: It's it's women are now performing men educationally and at
Speaker 1: many levels. So does that once again, is this one
Speaker 1: problem or is it two? And or do you think
Speaker 1: we're just going to see that that's the fact that
Speaker 1: we've now seemed to be winning the educational battle in
Speaker 1: the industrialized world mean that the leadership battle is an
Speaker 1: inevitable electric down the line. I think education is necessary,
Speaker 1: but not sufficient condition to fix the rest of gender equality.
Speaker 1: If it was sufficient, then you and I would live
Speaker 1: in gender equal societies because in our societies more women
Speaker 1: get in the US context college education my context, university
Speaker 1: degrees than men, So we would have won. So we
Speaker 1: know that it's not the silver bullet. But unless we've
Speaker 1: got equal chances in education, then I think the rest
Speaker 1: becomes a bit of a pipe dream. So when I
Speaker 1: look at statistics from around the world, and obviously my
Speaker 1: focus through the Global Partnership for education is not in
Speaker 1: the developing world, and you see statistics like only one
Speaker 1: in ten girls finishes secondary school, that is not a
Speaker 1: society where we can see gender equality coming onto the
Speaker 1: landscape anytime soon. So we do have to invest in
Speaker 1: that education challenge. Make sure girls get a great education.
Speaker 1: It ultimately matters for their prospects for leadership, but it
Speaker 1: matters for so much more. The evidence is clear that
Speaker 1: a educated girl will tend to marry later, she'll have
Speaker 1: fewer children, she'll be able to earn income for a family,
Speaker 1: be less likely to get HIV AIDS should be more
Speaker 1: likely to send her kids to school, and so it
Speaker 1: goes and you get on an upward cycle of development
Speaker 1: and empowerment. So we do need to make sure that
Speaker 1: that is happening, and that requires a huge global efforts
Speaker 1: because there's so much to do. But even as we
Speaker 1: do that, we've got to be solving this leadership challenge.
Speaker 1: And one of the things about getting to work in
Speaker 1: both spaces is I do get to talk to women
Speaker 1: from right around the world, including women from many developing countries,
Speaker 1: from many parts of Africa, and people would look at
Speaker 1: the leadership challenge and say, wow, you know that's so
Speaker 1: culturally specific. It'll be incredibly different in Australia than it
Speaker 1: is in Nigeria or something like that. And that's partly true,
Speaker 1: but not one hundred percent true, because when you talk
Speaker 1: to women in Nigeria or other parts of Africa, many
Speaker 1: of the things that'll rise that are holding women back
Speaker 1: are things we've talked about in this conversation. So Wow, Iceland, Rwanda,
Speaker 1: or in New Zealand, that's where you need to be
Speaker 1: for a shot add equality. At least, that's where a
Speaker 1: lady version of a twenty one year old Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 1: needs to be. It's a relief to hear that somebody
Speaker 1: with Gillard's experience is now figuring out how to level
Speaker 1: the playing field for other women. Ultimately, her advice about
Speaker 1: quotas and fixing the structures versus telling us to lean in,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm taking away, and hopefully that's how one
Speaker 1: day I'm going to be one of those bitches who wins.
Speaker 1: Solvable is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation,
Speaker 1: with production by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and
Speaker 1: Ruth Barnes from Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is
Speaker 1: Neia LaBelle, Research by sher Vincent, Engineering by j Gambrel
Speaker 1: and the great folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed
Speaker 1: by Pascal Wise and special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fine,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Carli mcgliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about solving Today's biggest problems at Rockefeller
Speaker 1: Foundation dot org slash Solvable. I'm Mave Higgins, Now go
Speaker 1: solve it.