International Women's Day 2022 - Hacking the gender balance

To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March, Michelle Price sits down with three leading women in cyber and technology. Joining us on episode 19 of OzCyber Unlocked is Kate Pounder, Chief Executive Officer of The Technology Council of Australia, Professor Lesley Seebeck, Honorary Professor at the ANU and in our spotlight, we’re joined by Melinda Cilento, CEO of CEDA. 

Despite the clear business case for gender parity, women are still significantly underrepresented in senior executive teams across the nation’s top public companies, as well as being underrepresented in the pipeline for these roles. 

In this episode, Michelle Price asks our panel about how we can get more women in to positions of power and why only there are only 18 women leading companies in Australia’s top 300 listed ASX companies. 

We’re also discussing some sobering statistics found by the 2021 Australian Census that it will take 65 years for women to hold 40 percent of executive leadership positions in Australia and whether gender quotas are helping women or hindering them. 

Kate and Lesley reflect on their careers, offer some fantastic advice and talk about why stereotypes and discrimination have no place in our modern society. 

For the special edition of our spotlight, Melinda Cilento speaks about the economic cost of a lack of diversity and what benefits diversity and inclusion can bring to not only the financial side of a business, but day-to-day operations. In fact, Melinda points us to research out of Canada that shows organisations that had three or more female board members, managed cyber security risks better than those with fewer. 

“The more diversity and inclusion – the better” 

Useful links:

Australia's gender equality scorecard: https://www.wgea.gov.au/publications/australias-gender-equality-scorecard

 CEW Census: https://cew.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/CEW-Census-2021-Media-Release-210908.pdf

https://apo.org.au/node/313941#:~:text=Key%202021%20findings%20include%3A,%2Dlisted%20companies%20(6.2%25)