When Qantas appointed its new chief executive, Vanessa Hudson – its first female leader in a century since the airline’s founding – it marked a turning point in the promotion of women to the top of Australia’s biggest companies. Hudson’s internal contender for best job was a colleague, Olivia Wirth, while the most likely external candidate, Jayne Hrdlika, is now at the helm of the airline’s rival, Virgin Australia.
In 2020, only 5% of the ASX’s 20 largest publicly traded companies were run by women. Advocacy group Chief Executive Women (CEW) warned last year that it would take 100 years for corporate Australia to achieve a 40% gender balance. Yet the ratio has now suddenly jumped to 30% in the ASX20 as some of Australia’s biggest telecoms, mining and retail companies have appointed a wave of female leaders – such as Sherry Duhe, interim managing director of Newcrest Mining, which is the target of a $19 billion offer.
The rise of the Australian female chief executive was evident at Macquarie’s annual business leaders conference, held in Sydney last week, when fund managers may have witnessed five consecutive sessions chaired by women leaders addressing rare earths , iron ore, oil and gas exploration, telecommunications and outdoor advertising.
Macquarie itself named its first female CEO in 2018, when it promoted Shemara Wikramanayake to the top job. Starting next year, she will have twice as many women on her board as there are men. Wikramanayake, who has previously described the struggle to attract women to financial services jobs, welcomed the increased gender representation which, she said, was “more reflective of the community.”
The ASX – which appointed a female chief executive in 2022 – suddenly looks in better shape than the FTSE 100, which counts only one female chief executive, GSK’s Emma Walmsley, among its 20 biggest firms. The recent promotion of Margherita Della Valle of Vodafone ad permanent chief executive brings the number of female leaders in the overall FTSE 100 to just eight.
The rise of the new generation of women leaders reflects Australia’s move to broaden the gender base of its political and business makeup in recent years. The Labor Party set a quota for the number of shortlisted female candidates in winnable parliamentary seats in the 1990s, and has steadily increased those quotas to nearly 50:50 today.
The elevation of executives like Hudson’s and Telstra’s Vicki Brady has been widely celebrated, but with the caveat that the toxic culture of misogyny within parliament and sections of Australia’s business establishment cannot easily be swept away. The showdown within the country’s mining industry, which has been hit with reports of horrendous assaults on female miners – shows that some industries still have a long way to go.
CEW cautions that there are still too few women in feeder CEO roles with P&L responsibilities outside of top companies. “Women are typically underrepresented in these roles with women holding just over one in 10 management roles in the ASX300 in our most recent census,” a spokeswoman said.
Eliza Littleton, a senior economist at the Australia Institute’s Center for Future Work, said that while the surge in female chief executive appointments has been encouraging, this progress has not yet been reflected in the country’s broader job market. With a gender pay gap of over 13%, women still earn significantly less on average than their male counterparts. “We won’t see the gender pay gap close until 2053. It’s really slow progress. High-end ones tend to be exceptions to the rule,” Littleton said.
Professional women’s votes played a big part in electing a Labor government that promised to tackle inequality in the workplace. This week’s budget will set out Labour’s policy plan to improve women’s conditions in the labor market in areas such as childcare benefits, paid parental leave and increased pay for health workers. The government has already set up a task force on women’s economic equality.
Hudson hopes the rise of a new generation of women leaders will continue, but the full impact of her elevation has been felt much closer to home. She described telling her two daughters that she had won the competition to take on one of Australia’s most challenging leadership roles. “I’ve always been a mother who wants to lead by example, and hearing their thoughts last night was incredibly meaningful to me,” she said.
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