Reaching for the Summit – Australian Women in Power

Television presenter Geraldine Doogue recently turned her attention to an issue central to our times. How are women, represented at the top levels of power in Australia? In her book, The Climb, using candid and personal conversations with fourteen women leading the way in fields as wide-ranging as business, politics, religion, education and the armed forces, Doogue has revealed what it means to be a woman in power in Australia. Geraldine Doogue addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 2 October 2014.

REACHING FOR THE SUMMIT – AUSTRALIAN WOMEN IN POWER

GERALDINE DOOGUE 

It is a pleasure to be here I must say. And it’s lovely to be speaking on a topic like this.

I have brought along a prop, as one does if one is trained in television, which is The Power Edition in which I noticed very few women. I particularly looked and thought, “Yes, there’s not exactly many of us there.” And often the ones who are there appear for what I’d call personal growth and advance, rather than governing others, which is what I looked for. For me, that is the final frontier – gaining legitimacy due to the privilege of governing others.

That’s what I wanted to examine when I came up with the topic for my book, the idea which I pitched to Text Publishing – in a fit of rage, I have to admit. I was very angry at the time. It was last year after Julia Gillard had stepped down, or been put down, shall we say. It wasn’t that I wanted to mount a massive defence of Julia Gillard – I allow, actually, quite a lot of criticism of her in this book, from various people, significant criticism. But I was furious about some of the discourse that surrounded her, which I did not think would accompany a man. I just was seething.

I kept waiting – particularly after the Alan Jones comments, which was my personal tipping-point – for, particularly, the conservative establishment whatever their political affiliations, to come out and say, “This is a line we mustn’t cross.” To be traducing a man three weeks after his death, and accusing the man of dying of shame because of the daughter’s behaviour, was to me so shocking I was left speechless. It seemed, particularly for people who care about the maintenance of community codes which is typically a conservative interest, that there would have been some people who could have said much more than they did. A few expressed rather tepid criticism when there should have been an outright repudiation of that stepping over the line.

It was extraordinarily unkind, and most discourteous – even breathtaking. Maybe I was influenced by the fact that I’d lost my husband not terribly long before, and I knew how raw one was. But I couldn’t believe, whether or not one felt even vaguely aligned to Alan Jones, that there was no firm repudiation of it. As I wrote in my introduction to the book:

Nothing about her time at the helm was straight forward. There are widely differing verdicts on her talents. But, at the same time, many Australian women, and men, feel strongly that Julia Gillard was subject to types of discourse and representation that would never have been dealt to a man. For some anti-Gillard warriors, she moved into a category where anything goes, with no need for remorse about tactics; she was merely fair game, and an awful spectacle played out before us, tantalising some but horrifying most women, I suspect. Amongst some men, her time in power seems to have activated a form of deep-seated warrior response, with distinct overtones of sexual arousal, like the ultimate form of sexual contest. I found it revolting, hardly an inducement for the average woman to enter public life in Australia.

And I want young women, in particular, to feel that it’s worth a go. So I thought, “What do I do with this rage?” It’s pretty useless just being annoyed. I’ve never taken that view that it’s worthwhile just being super angry. So I decided to convert it into something positive, which is what I like in journalism. I decided to seek out women who were occupying positions of power across Australia, not just at the big end of town, rather from a wide range of arenas from across Australia. And people who weren’t necessarily just impressive due to personal growth, like Maggie Beer and Cate Blanchett. I didn’t want people who palpably grew themselves. I wanted that extra thing which really does, in our society, confer status and prestige and authority. That is the governance of others.

So I looked for people who were prepared to be relatively candid. I had to push myself into their unbelievable schedules and invariably got 35 minutes if I was lucky. I asked them all a series of questions, a template of questions. I didn’t want to know their entire life story; more how they kept themselves in their skin. There is that great line from Camelot, the Arthur character says to Guinevere, how do the ordinary people keep themselves in their skin. A very important feature of most research about leadership is that people have to make a fundamental psychological shift from being led to being a leader. Both women and men. If anything, though, the research suggests that it’s harder for women because women come into communities around them that they know are ambivalent about the psychological shift they’ve been forced to make. This presents a very interesting set of challenges for women.

The people I sought came from a range of arenas, all governing others or had just been. There are some remarkable stories. I was quite influenced, I must say, by Julia Gillard’s own words to me at an early pink fund-raising football game. She said, “At the end of the day, when I pull up the drawbridge at night, I want to be able to recognise myself.” That is a beautiful line which I used as a motif to find out whether these women did recognise themselves. I think all of them did. All of them were very comfortable in their skin.

Some people have said to me, “Well did they nominate their big setbacks?” Well, no, they didn’t. I didn’t dwell on them either. Their setbacks were invariably quite a long time before. They’d moved past the need to nominate them. Except Julie Bishop, who very interestingly told a wonderful story to me about being an articled clerk in the Adelaide Bar, which was her formation ground. She had become a clerk in a particular Adelaide law firm along with a range of young men. On the first Friday it was announced that the partners would hold drinks. Julie and her male colleagues went down. Male colleague was taken straight into a group of the partners and Julie was asked to serve the drinks. She has never forgotten it. Telling me this story Julie Bishop said “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Why am I telling you this 40 years on?” I said, “Well, I think I know why you’re telling me this. It’s still with you.” I think she was incandescent with rage to be quite candid and it has driven her on in an amazing way.

I wanted to hear female stories that other Australian women would recognise. A lot of the material about leadership comes from the US and a lot of it is quite masculine, even when it doesn’t mean to be. It just is. Because the encumbent have been males. So a lot of it is more solitary than women seek ideally. A lot of it is tilting at big windmills, almost a sort of grandeur and majesty. I didn’t hear that sort of ambition from any of the women. I’m not saying it’s just not there, but they didn’t nominate.

I had to rush the book really for my publisher – who was anxious about a clash of timing with the release of Julia Gillard’s book. So I had to be quite pragmatic. So I didn’t follow them down this line of their gigantic, big dreams.

I wanted to write a work that I felt Australian women – and I hope a lot of men – recognise. It’s very much a commentary on modern workplaces. But I also wanted a book of which women would say, “You know, I can see myself in that” or “She’s quite close to me but it’s not exactly me”. I’m not prescribing how people ought to respond but I wanted it to capture Australian workplaces and Australian dilemmas. I wanted the women to recognise their men and their daughters and sons. I hope I succeed at that.

These questions of power and authority intrigue me, I have to say. There’s a great line from Germaine Greer which I heard years and years ago: “When all’s said and done, when women finally got the key to the executive washroom all they discovered inside was the lavatory.” How very Germaine. Actually the truth is that a lot of people desire that lavatory or what they think comes with it. Indeed, it can be an amazing experience to gradually realise your own voice and the power of your own voice and to make that extra leap into the business of shifting the order of things, something you can do once in authority. It’s such a wonderful invitation, a wonderful privilege in a society like ours.

My vision is to see women much more comfortable about offering their talents. But I sense that until we women do work out how we want to divvy up our cup of life energy and distribute it fairly, we won’t get there. We certainly won’t have young women following us if we don’t look as though we’re having any fun, if we don’t look as if there’s some resolution to those really big choices. We’ll remain ambivalent about ambition unless we articulate the sorts of things that these women are articulating. As I did my interviews, I wanted a lot of things to be named and to be brought out into the open.

This question of ambition is really tricky. A lot of women are very ambivalent about talking about it, about naming it for themselves as something that they care about. Maybe this is changing among younger women. At Annabelle Crabbe’s book launch this week, there wasn’t actually talk about ambition, but much talk about surviving. It was very interesting for me, having raised my children, to see that next group in the middle of raising children working out how they divvy up duty, ambition and joy. I am fascinated by how women think of the role of ambition in their life. Do they think they have a right to be ambitious? Do they trust their talents? Mark Scott, my own MD, talks about his wife, Briony – who is a very prominent educationalist. His wife said one day, “I am sick to death of women coming before me arguing their limitations. I’m not going to allow it any more.” That’s a very perceptive remark. Mark Scott took that as very much a mantra. He now applies it in his work. I’ve found that a very useful thing.

I don’t expect everyone – and don’t ask everyone – to find the leader within. That is, frankly, a nonsense. That everyone has leadership waiting to come – it’s an arrogance that has been influenced by much of the American aspirational literature. A lot of us might decide not to take or make the trade-offs that these women have made. Many will want to be very good followers. And I would love people to feel more confident and satisfied with the role of following very well rather than believing that the only race that counts, or aspiration that counts, is that to be a leader.

I’ve watched this, over my time working in media, gradually creep up. Almost as if that’s the only way you prove that you’re a great citizen. The only way being to aspire to leadership. There are hierarchies in talent pools, and often some very talented people choose not to take the routes these women have taken. The marvellous Oscar Wilde wrote, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Which is, I think, another extremely good mantra to live by.

But I do admire the bravery that’s required to break stereotypes. There is tremendous bravery on display among these women. Whether it’s Simone Wilkie – the most senior woman in the army – learning to shut her mouth and not say the first thing that comes into her mind. Whether it’s Ann Sherry learning to look ahead constantly – she looks five to ten years ahead constantly in her role at Carnival Cruises. Or whether it’s Sue Morphet who chose the top job at Pacific Brands, and had to downsize it. Even though she’d been there for years and knew the place upside down, it was a big job to take on just before the GFC, inheriting a tsunami of problems. What she went through is really quite extraordinary.

So what were the patterns? I found that the family formation of these women was extraordinarily important, more than I’d imagined and more significant, proportionally, than a lot of the more sophisticated intervention measures later on. All manner of associations at law firms and CBD outlets are formed to persuade them that they should tilt at that executive windmill. Whereas family formation is absolutely critical. These were all very engaged, very lively families, with nothing passive or taciturn about them. I might add, some of them were very character building shall we say – in a good and toughening way.

Several women drew back from the final big fight. That really fascinated me. It’s almost like that night before battle when you’ve really got to weigh up how much blood on the floor are you prepared to cope with. How much are you going to continue to wear the results of having done the final assassination, as it were? Several of the women just said there were moments when they thought they were right for a job and they had it in the bag. But at the last minute there was a final change in the politics involved. They surveyed the scene and were smart enough, strategic enough, to look ahead and think, “It’s not worth it, I’ll fight another day on my own terms”.

Most of them sense they could do better in their public conduct, their speech making, and the way they rally people. Research does suggest, quite interestingly, that in the suite of skills dubbed characteristics of leadership – about eleven are usually used. In increasing numbers, there is an overlap between women and men. But, in a couple of areas, women are still seen to be not quite at the level of some men who have had more practice. One is that valley of death moment, when the problem was so big, such as the GFC, where it’s new territory and where there’s a need to start over. Then it’s a case of devising a new vision and drawing people along with you – very tough.

Regulation suits women. Chaos doesn’t suit women. A couple of my interviewees, Alana MacTiernan and Fiona Wilkie, told me, “Oh, we like a good crisis”. I said “Yes, but I bet you don’t welcome it.” Having been at places like Channel Ten, where men would say to me, “God, its exciting isn’t it? You don’t know when you go out in the morning what you’re going to come back to at night.” And I thought, “No.” I absolutely hated it. And I wanted to get out of it as fast as I possibly could. In fact I rarely think I’ve seen women thrive in that type of turbulent environment.

Finally, I might comment on the word “wiliness”. It’s an interesting word that pops up again and again in leadership discussion. Amidst people’s judgment about what they really want of a leader. It’s an unusual word, you’d agree, because it does sound a little dodgy, a bit duplicitous; you might not quite know where you are with that person. In fact, quite a lot of the discussion suggests that the wily leader, the person who moves his or her position, yet who’s strong and supple, is really the gold standard. Of course, really, there’s an integrity, a consistency, about it. But increasingly, if you look back through history, this word reappears. And it’s quite an open question as to how women will display wiliness, plus pull it off, as it were, make it work for them. I wanted, above all, to name some of these leadership challenges and them out in the public conversation in the hope that women – young women and young women, those who accompany people like my son who’s about to turn 21 – can really feel that there is a more level playing field and that the game is worth the candle. That’s my great dream. I hope you agree when you read it that I might have achieved something of that goal.