DESPITE AMBITIONS FOR EQUALITY, SECURITY’S GENDER SPLIT IS STILL FALLING SHORT OF EXPECTATIONS

by David Braue

Can new transparency laws and better data help reach the 2030 gender equality target?

The Commonwealth Government’s moves to mandate the disclosure of details about Australia’s gender pay gap may be a significant move towards the oft-stated goal of closing the gap by 2030, but the fact that such legislation is necessary highlights just how slow the push towards equality continues to be.

The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 — introduced into Parliament on 8 February — will tap data already provided by employers and will force companies with 100 or more workers to publish data on their gender pay gap on the website of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), the national body charged with promoting the cause of gender equality in Australia.

Announcing the new legislation, the Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, said women in Australia were earning 14.1 percent less than their male counterparts. And she said that, at current rates, it would take 26 years to close the gender pay gap.

“Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close,” Gallagher said. “Let’s not wait another quarter of a century.”

During fiscal 2021-22, WGEA figures show women earned, on average, $26,596 less than men. They also show that, despite 53 percent of employers having set some form of voluntary target for gender equality in the workplace, just one in five boards of directors were gender balanced and more than one in five boards had no women members.

The new law would see publication of gender pay gap data starting in 2024, improving transparency for a business community that has often talked the talk of gender equality without walking the walk.

It is the latest in a series of measures by the new government designed to shine a light on the business community’s ongoing challenges to deliver gender equality.

Following the lead of countries such as the UK, US, Canada, and Denmark, Australia recently banned employment contracts that include pay secrecy clauses, hoping to spur the kind of change that has already been observed in other countries.

Research has shown that allowing employees to share and publicly discuss their salaries has reduced Canada’s gender pay gap by more than 20 percent and increased the salaries of US women by between four and 12 percent.

Authorities hope better numbers and the sense of market competition they bring will do the same in

Australia and other countries facing similar gender pay gaps.

“At a time when Australia is experiencing a critical skills and labour shortage, too many employers have failed to step up on gender equality leaving many women no better off than they were 12 months ago,” WGEA director Mary Wooldridge said. “This failure to improve needs to be a clarion call for all employers.”

EQUALITY IN 2030 – OR 2320?

Australia’s ongoing struggles to improve gender equality are echoed in every country. The United Nations — which has positioned gender equality as the fifth of its 17 core Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030 — recently warned that it could take nearly 300 years to achieve full gender equality worldwide.

Fewer than half of all women of working age are in the job market, according to the UN. Secretary-general António Guterres said only 7.4 percent of Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs, and “Progress towards equal power and equal rights for women remains elusive.”

Socially and economically disadvantaged women across the world face broad systemic and cultural challenges. However, the relatively well-educated and well-trained workforce of the security industry has the opportunity to help the world move towards broader gender equality.

It will be a long-term fight, and equality efforts continue to gather momentum slowly. That is why, as well as promoting equality-focused corporate cultures, businesses, schools and community groups need to continue promoting security and tech-related careers to girls early in their schooling.

According to Yolande Strengers, Professor of Digital Technology and Society in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, “There is a ‘diversity crisis’ in computing disciplines where girls and women account for only 28 percent of enrolments globally in information and communications technology. Progress has been slow, and in some cases we are falling further behind.”

Women currently comprise around 25 percent of the cybersecurity workforce, a figure similar to those reported for advanced disciplines like artificial intelligence (AI). Strengers said this figure was concerning in light of the need to ensure women are equally involved in the cutting-edge fields that will shape technology during the rest of this decade.

“In order to develop an inclusive discipline that invites people in through multiple pathways we must reposition, redefine and recognise that AI and other advanced sciences are social sciences as well as technical ones,” she said.

Despite setbacks to date, Jen Easterley, director of the US Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), remains optimistic that it is still possible for the cybersecurity industry to get to 50 percent women by 2030.

The key, she told a panel discussion during the recent CES 2023 conference, is “really embracing corporate cyber responsibility as a matter of good governance and good corporate citizenship [and] fundamentally shifting the paradigm of how government and industry work together to ensure persistent collaboration.”

She said increased visibility of gender diversity would be important: by being more open about cybersecurity’s weak spots, it would become possible to reshape the “episodic, unidirectional, non-transparent, non-responsive relationship we have… [into] one that is much more focused on shared responsibility for cyber safety.”

All In This Together

Nurturing a sense of shared responsibility necessarily requires including women more equally in decisionmaking and action around cybersecurity, and that means building an organisational culture that values the involvement of women from the top of the organisation to the bottom, as opposed so simply placing them in high-profile policymaking and enforcement positions.

“It shouldn’t be that [in 2023] we have to fight for women being in tech,” Jeetu Patel, a Cisco executive vice president and general manager who is also Cisco’s global executive sponsor for women, said at the recent Cisco Live! Conference.

“For every decision you make, if you actually have a combination of enough perspectives from women in that decision, you will just make a better decision, and we as a world will get better if everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in the global economy.”

And while this may seem common sense to many, Patel said the ongoing need for new laws and policies shows just how stuck in the old ways the world continues to be.

“[Equal opportunity] should just be assumed,” he said. “I hope that, in the next few years, it becomes assumed, so this is not something we have to fight to have. Every leader is accountable to make sure that 50 percent of the team, over time, becomes women so that we can have a better team of leaders in the organisation.”

However, to reach these goals it is necessary to have the means to track them, which goes back to the objectives of new pay transparency legislation being introduced around the globe.

You cannot change what you cannot measure, which is why improved data collection and transparency can make all the difference for companies that have, despite long-winded corporate mission statements espousing their commitments to diversity, so far failed to build the momentum necessary for real change.

“It’s all about knowing what’s happening in society, being a part of it, and being collaborative,” Gartner senior director analyst Donna Medeiros said at the company’s recent Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, where she highlighted the value of better data in driving corporate decision-making around areas such as social justice and diversity.

In many scenarios, Medeiros explained, “companies are waiting and deciding if they should be in on an issue or not. There are a lot of social issues going around, polarising employees, companies and societies right now, and maybe nobody wants to be the first person.

“But this scenario doesn’t mean you can’t do anything; it means you should be collecting information on what’s going on so you can inform your leadership and your board on what should happen if they really want to move out of the gate. … Consider yourselves agents of change for good for society, and think about the greater implications of all your planning.”

WGEA’s Wooldridge said, ultimately, “lasting change requires employers to make bold, creative choices that send a signal to all employees that gender equality is a core part of their business strategy and a priority for those in leadership and managerial roles.”

Better data “is a chance to measure how your organisation’s workforce composition and policies — and strategies for recruitment, promotion and retention — shape up against the competition,” she continued, “Because if you’re not making progress on these things, your employees will realise there are others who are.”

AMANDA-JANE TURNER

Cybercrime is big business, thanks to technical advancement and interconnectivity creating more opportunities. This regular column will explore various aspects of cybercrime in an easy-to-understand manner to help everyone become more cyber safe.