Blazing a trail

When I had my third baby, I was back at work in a month, baby in tow. His portable cot in my office became a regular stopover for my colleagues while I got a tri-weekly paper to the printers by deadline.

When he was old enough for childcare at eight weeks, the cot was packed away, and I spent my breaks in the small cleaning closet expressing milk in preparation for the next day.

Fifteen years on, not much has changed. There may have been advances like work-based childcare, flexible working hours and telecommuting, but for many women, remaining relevant and respected in the labour force, means making some major sacrifices.

For me it meant leaving the newspaper office and diving into a career as a freelance journalist, with the highs and lows that come with working for yourself.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the participation rate of women in the Australian workforce is around 59 per cent, compared to men at around 71 per cent. Although it has risen in the past 40 years from 43.4 per cent, the ABS notes that if Australia is to meet its G20 goal of reducing the gap in workforce participation rates between men and women by 25 per cent by 2025, a lot needs to change.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating said in 1994 “women’s skills are essential to the future growth of the economy” and as the world moves towards a more globalised workforce this is more true than ever. Back then, Keating believed the major problem facing women wanting to work was the lack of childcare. There may be more options available now for women in caring for young children, but it’s not reflected in their work participation rates.

In fact, the main breadwinner in a house is still more likely to be a man, women generally lean towards working part-time and in comparison to other OECD countries, the employment rate of women with children is very low.

There are more women managing full-time work, family life and career advancement, but the number is still woefully low. Only 37 per cent of managers in Australia are women.

Dr Bronwyn Evans is one of that 37 per cent. In 2017, Dr Evans took on a governance role at International Organisation for Standardisation as the vice-president (finance) in addition to her role as CEO of Standards Australia, a role that she has held for four years. She has spent 35 years in the engineering industry, holding executive positions at GE Healthcare and Cochlear and has been on a number of boards including John Holland Limited and the Medical Technology Association of Australia.

In 2014 and 2015, the Honorary Fellow of the University of Wollongong was included as one of Australia’s 100 most influential engineers and in 2016 was recognised as one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence.
She admits that despite her own success in a very patriarchal industry, there is still the proverbial glass ceiling.

“Absolutely there is a glass ceiling,” she says. “It’s due to a whole range of psychological things. There is almost a sense of questioning that [if women do get into senior roles] that this is the role for which they are ready. We don’t need to fix the women in the industry. We need to understand the fact that the institutional practices out there are challenging.

“Women are much tougher on themselves in the workplace than men especially in regards to self-assessment. In non-western countries, promotion is often more about class and money than gender. [Promotion to senior roles] is more about how our societies have evolved, so rather than looking at what we did historically, we need to ask what can we do now [to help women succeed], we need senior people helping to pull women up and telling them they can do it.”

Dr Evans was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Wollongong with a Bachelor of Engineering (electrical) in the late 1970s and says she was fortunate in her career to have a number of good sponsors and mentors among men with whom she worked as a young engineer.

“I worked at Tallawarra Power Station [just before it shut down] and there were not many women on the turbine floor back then. We were a curiosity and I feigned an interest in things like fishing and football to fit in,” she says.

"We don’t need to fix the women in the industry. We need to understand the fact that the institutional practices out there are challenging"

Dr Bronwyn Evans

“I never experienced any discrimination, nothing overt anyway. No-one ever said I shouldn’t be there or be in that industry.”

UOW alumna Justice Jane Mathews AO was also a pioneer in her field, and was the first woman to be admitted to full judicial office in NSW when she was appointed to the District Court in 1980. Before then, she was a barrister, and was often the only woman in a male-dominated environment.

“I became really aware of the low number of women in the law when I had to give a paper on the subject in 1982, and I did a great deal of research on the subject,” Justice Mathews says.

“It brought home to me the problems women were having in the field. There was a very low glass ceiling. There were hardly any women at the bar, which is the main stepping stone to the bench”.

In 1987, Justice Mathews was the first woman to be appointed to the NSW Supreme Court.

Justice Jane Mathews