TalentTuning

Nature or Nurture? The Complex Ingredients of Female Success

But Jackson, known as something of a female trailblazer in blue-chip boardrooms for the past two decades, has another point to make about the controversy over the lack of female representation on boards and in the ranks of senior management.

In a private roundtable panel of directors in Melbourne hosted by ANZ private banking head Catherine McDowell and attended by The Australian, several senior female company directors and board advisers suggested the push had turned into a bandwagon upon which some younger women were too eager to climb.

"Because the focus in the media has been about directors, directors, directors, there's a lot of women mid-career who think: oh I should go now from where I am to be a director because I don't want to miss the opportunity," Jackson told the forum.

"And ... my stand on things is well, if you're not quite fitting in with the organisation that you're currently at, then find another organisation to be an executive in because we want more women to be executives as well as we want women to be on boards."

She is chairwoman of Flexigroup, a former chairwoman of Qantas and former director of ANZ Banking Group, BHP Billiton, Southcorp and Fairfax Media.

Jane Harvey, who is on the boards of Medibank and IOOF, and is an independent director for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, put it more strongly.

"I worry about some of the younger women," Harvey said. "Because like all the other women around the table, we get approached all the time by young women who want to have coffee with us, and aspire to be on boards. But you have to sort of tell them they have to be successful in their first career as well.

"That's important, because part of being a director is the ability to impart wisdom to the executive team that you're on the board of," she said.

"And you want to earn the respect of that management team, so some of these young women, they haven't actually already achieved and made a name for themselves in their first career and they see it as a part-time job or something that fits in with the children and that sort of thing.

"So it's an alternative career, not something that reflects upon the experiences and the credibility that they bring from their prior lives."

With increasing regulation affecting directors, there are also risks. Board adviser and senior executive coach Rosemary Grieve said she was wary of "younger women rushing in very eagerly wanting to be part of this pool without necessarily understanding the huge personal risks that are being taken on when you come a director".

Margaret Jackson also said women needed to support other women in their push for representation in executive teams or in the boardroom.

"Not every successful woman has been generous in helping other women to come along, whereas men do tend to be a bit more supportive of their proteges.

"I think, by nature, women are a little more competitive with each other than men are competitive with each other," she said, before adding that there had been a shift over the past decade, with women being much more supportive of other women.

"Men are much better in putting their hand up to say: I want to be promoted, I want to take this on, whereas women in general - and not every woman fits the role - are more expecting people will ask them to take on the role."

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Source: The wall Streat Journal