ESG Matters International Women's Day Special: transcript

Transcript

Paul Jenkins:
Thank you for joining me for this special episode. I'm Paul Jenkins, global managing partner at Ashurst. Today I speak to a pioneer in gender equality, Elizabeth Broderick, AO. Liz was Australia's longest-serving sex discrimination commissioner, founder of the champions of change coalition of which I'm proudly a member, chair rapporteur of the UN working group on discrimination against women and girls, as well as a former partner and board member here at Ashurst.

Paul Jenkins:
This special episode has been released today on International Women's Day, an opportune time to reflect on this year's theme of Choose to Challenge. You'll hear from Liz with some stories about her time here at Ashurst, her work with the UN, and what drives her to continue to press for change in the area of gender equality. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Paul Jenkins:
First question I have for you, Liz, is reflecting on your exceptional career and the path you've taken to date, what inspired you to make the move from a career in law to focus on gender equality?

Elizabeth Broderick:
Well, it's wonderful to be here, Paul, with you. I love coming back to Ashurst. I had such a brilliant time here. I spent almost 20 years in the firm. And when I reflected on it, I thought most other law firms would have thrown me out long before. But not Ashurst because I think just reflecting back on my time, it was a firm that walked a different path, a strong path around creativity and innovation. So I didn't go into gender equality because I wanted to leave Ashurst. I suppose that's my first point. I loved every day of my 20 years there but I did come to a time where actually I was fortunate enough to be Telstra's business woman of the year. And at that time it gave me the opportunity to look above law. So I look outside the legal sector to so many other sectors, including manufacturing pastoralists, just to start to understand that the issues that women were facing, what issues common in so many other sectors.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And I suppose that started me on a path of doing more and more advocacy, particularly because it was a time when I had my first child, a son who feels he grew up here at Ashurst. He used to come in, we turned the matter room into the baby's creche. We didn't ask for permission, we figured with us for forgiveness afterwards, but I came to a stage where I was doing more and more advocacy and I thought, I want to have a national voice. I want to have a global voice on these issues. These issues are so critical to women's ability to really develop strong careers, careers in every way equal with men. And that's really what led me on my path to gender equality.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And then I was fortunate, because at that time, Prue Goward was stepping down as Australia's sex discrimination commissioner and I had the opportunity to apply for that role. And I have to say I was as surprised as anyone else when I was appointed, but it was a gift. It was really a role that fed my soul and that's really what took me into my journey on gender equality.

Paul Jenkins:
There was interesting the comment that she made about having your son in here in the matter room. How did you manage that flexibility back then? Was it the norm or was it something that others did? Or did you have to create a new path back then when you were a new mother to have that flexibility in the role?

Elizabeth Broderick:
It was in the mid-nineties, so flexible work was not a thing. In fact, we called it part-time work. And I still remember when I had a day that started like any other day, when one of my lawyers - I was leading a small team by this stage - came to tell me that she was pregnant. Oh, fabulous. That's terrific. When will you be taken parental leave? And we had that conversation. Well, that same afternoon, the next lawyer came to see me and said, "Guess what, Liz? I'm pregnant." Oh, well, fantastic. Great. When do you want parental leave? And when they found out the next day that I was also pregnant, we had over 50% of the legal team on parental leave at exactly the same time. So as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So we had to redesign the way we worked.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And I said before about turning the matter room into the baby's creche. We realized that there were times when we needed to be in the firm. We couldn't access childcare. We tried all the options, mom and grandmother and daycare, but that wasn't working. So we had a situation where we used to bring our babies to the matter room, and we had the creches set up, and I still remember interviewing a general counsel in the room next door. And he says to me, "Oh, is that a baby's cry I can hear?" I said, "I don't think so, this is a law firm." So, but we went on from that, and one of the best things we did, actually, was to employ what we called a new junior secretary.

Elizabeth Broderick:
So I was brought a stack of CVs for this new secretarial position. Halfway through, I came to Michelle's CV. Now, Michelle had been a secretary for two weeks, but she'd been a nanny for six years. And we figured with those credentials, we really needed her on the team. So she joined us. And that's why I say my son, and indeed my daughter, and everyone in our team, their kids grew up in the firm in a very professional way, of course, not in any of the public spaces. But they saw the work that I did. They knew my deep commitment, not just to the firm, but also to helping people access legal services. And they knew it was important in my life. And I still remember the day I made the decision to go, just how devastated my kids were. "Mom, you can't leave Ashurst. You can't leave the firm."

Elizabeth Broderick:
So, yeah, no. And I think that's another reason why I stayed. But flexible work, the other thing I'd say about that, Paul, was I was the first partner on the board to work in a flexible work arrangement. So that have been in the early 2000s. And I think that real, not just quest, but that push for flexibility, and recognizing that work is what we do not where we go. Work has an infinite number of modalities. That is even more important now than it's ever been, particularly as we live with COVID.

Paul Jenkins:
Liz, just on a similar theme in terms of that creating and driving change, how you founded the Champions of Change Coalition back in 2010. And we've seen at times that there've been significant steps forward in gender equality and other times we've seen that there's been steps down backwards. I'm keen to get your thoughts on how you managed to keep the faith through that period, which can be very difficult in terms of driving that change, and what keeps you going. What's the motivation that keeps you going to create that change?

Elizabeth Broderick:
You're right, Paul. Sometimes you can actually lose faith in the possibility of change. And particularly in my world now, with my work with the UN, I'm now the lead rapporteur on women's rights across the world. And some of the things that I'm seeing playing out just so deeply distressing. But I think when I step back and I look historically, I mean, even if I looked at my grandmother, her life, and then my mother's life, and now the fact that I could be a partner of this firm with two young children, that I could bring them into work, that I could continue to develop my career.

Elizabeth Broderick:
That was possible because women who I'll never know, but they cared deeply enough to step up in previous generations. So that also was another impetus for me stepping up in my generation. And I just see my young daughter who started as a summer clerk at Ashurst, and will be starting as a graduate in 2022. The life that she'll have will be so much more empowered than my life. So when I come to those points where I think change is not possible, it's never going to happen. I stand...

Elizabeth Broderick:
Change is not possible. It's never going to happen. I stand back and take a longer-term view, and I remind myself that progress is happening. Not only that, I remind myself of a courageous women's human rights defenders across the world. That's another joy of the work that I do. I'm engaged with women's human rights defenders in most countries of the world, in every region, and every day they stand up to advocate for change at great personal risk. Not just risk of reputational damage and shaming, but risk of being raped, summary execution, being detained and incarcerated.

Elizabeth Broderick:
I mean, just last week, we were fortunate enough to work with others to secure the release of a number of human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia, women's human rights defenders. So these are women who have taught me, also, that being well, both physically and mentally, is the ultimate act of women's empowerment, and in most countries of the world today, it's the ultimate act of political defiance. So I will be well mentally, and I will be well physically, because the movement for gender equality is only as strong as those individuals who make it up. So that's my personal quest and my personal challenge.

Paul Jenkins:
That's great, Liz, and we all have a small role to play. Some of us, a more significant role. We can come back to the role in a moment that men can play, and that you've encouraged men to play, to also create that change. But that's what's been really exciting for me, is that you have allowed the group of people that are involved in that change to be larger through the Champions of Change Coalition, by really enlisting the support of men as well as women. What you said to me was that it's not a women's issue, it's not women's business, gender equality, it's actually all of our business, and that's been inspiring for me.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Now, I couldn't agree more with that because this is a key economic and social issue. In fact, when I started to think about that, because when I left Ashurst and I went to become Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, I kind of had in my mind that I would just open up my, what we used to call the Rolodex, my contact network, I was well-connected, and I would help amplify women's voices.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Of course, the collective action of women is absolutely critical. It's pretty much what's got us the rights that we have today in most countries of the world. But then I started to understand that, actually, gender equality is about the redistribution of power, whether it's in a family, an organization, or a nation, and if I want to push to redistribute power, then I need individuals who hold the levers of power. That's largely, not exclusively, but in most countries of the world today, it's largely men.

Elizabeth Broderick:
So if we want to create more gender equal nations, we need actually as well as the collective action of women, we need it to be supplemented by the collective action of men. Men taking the message of gender equality to other men. That really is where the ... what started as the Male Champions of Change, and it continues. Even though the name's changed to Champions of Change Coalition, it is still a strategy which focuses fairly and squarely on men's responsibility and accountability for change, because most of the organizations and systems that exist in trusted institutions at the national level, they were designed by men for men and they're largely run by men. So we need men to step up beside women and shift those systems for all of us.

Paul Jenkins:
Just now a little bit more in relation to your UN role. In 2017, you were appointed by the United Nations in Geneva as a special rapporteur, an independent expert, and you're currently Chair Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls. In this role, what have you identified as some of the issues continuing to impact gender equality across the world?

Elizabeth Broderick:
It's a fabulous role, this role, and it really has three components, Paul. First thing is, I lead the UN country missions to different countries around the world, making recommendations as to how to lift the status of women and girls in those nations. Now, you can imagine during a period of COVID, there's not much physical leading, although we're still in contact and doing our work in many nations. That's the first thing.

Elizabeth Broderick:
The second thing is, every night I write to the leaders of nation states, drawing to their attention human rights violations happening in their nation and asking them to investigate, to explain. The third thing I do is I work with others to lead global thematic reports which will change international human rights standards and norms. So, for example, the year before COVID, I consulted in every region of the world on women's rights in the changing world of work, how is technology, demographic change, climate shifts, how are they impacting on women's work, and what are recommendations to nation states, particularly in terms of policy environments?

Elizabeth Broderick:
So then COVID came along, and indeed COVID has actually deepened existing inequalities. It's not that COVID has created new inequalities, it's deepened the inequalities that always existed, but for some were not evident. So I think there's a greater urgency now, more than ever before, to step forward on gender equality, on women's rights. Let me just give you a couple of examples. Because of COVID, what we've seen is some governments' responses have been to introduce even more discriminatory and restrictive laws.

Elizabeth Broderick:
I just want to talk to you about the issue of sexual and reproductive rights. In the U.S., in countries in Latin America, reproductive services have been declared discretionary surgery, and indeed, in many of those countries, you can no longer access abortion or any of those things. In fact, in the U.S., they now have some of the most regressive abortion laws in the world. Probably, Nicaragua is probably leading there because just two weeks ago, they introduced a constitutional ban on abortion. So that's just one example.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Another example is that a lot of the services that women rely on, such as childcare, disability services, those services have been cut because of austerity drives, because governments don't have much money, so they're cutting back on those. What we're seeing is, the care burden of many women is increasing. I mean, even here post-COVID, the care burden on women has almost doubled, is what our research in Australia shows. So that is, children are out of childcare, kids are out of school, there's more people in the household, elderly relatives need more care. So that's been an issue.

Elizabeth Broderick:
The other two issues just briefly to mention is that there's been a significant increase in violence against women, that's particularly domestic and intimate partner violence, and also sexual violence. The other issue to say is that women, because they're employed in more precarious employment, casual roles, and particularly women from different backgrounds, what I call diverse women, women from culturally, linguistically diverse, indigenous women or whatever, they have been losing their jobs at a much higher rate than comparable men.

Elizabeth Broderick:
So these are some of the issues that I'm looking at across the world, and I think the important message to take away is that it's not that COVID has brought discrimination against women. What it's done, it has deepened the inequality, and that also presents an amazing opportunity because as we rebuild to live with COVID or live after COVID, we can rebuild greater ... a gender equal world, and that's really where my energy is going to.

Paul Jenkins:
Yeah, just on that point around opportunity. I mean, since you've been in the role since you've been in the role since 2017. Do you feel that we've been making some progress in gender equality on the global stage, or is it still very much shining a light on the issues so that people are aware of where we need to make progress and where the opportunities are? Or can you feel that there is some development and some progress?

Elizabeth Broderick:
There is some progress. I was fortunate enough to address the General Assembly, and they planned a recession just in September. And I was able to point to a doubling of the political representation of women across the world. Having said that, still 75% of parliamentarians are male, but there has been a doubling. There's been a reduction in maternal mortality, really significant. There's been an increase in the number of young girls entering primary education, although of course, COVID's had a bit of an impact on that. And I think most importantly, there are in most modern legal regimes today, women have some level of empowerment in the family.

Elizabeth Broderick:
So there has been quite a deal of positives. And in technology as well, the ability for women to access technology for flexible work and other things. So, all those things have been a real positive. And if I brought it back here to Australia, what we're seeing here is a doubling of the women on boards. More than a doubling, almost a tripling of the number of women on boards, and we are seeing a slight uplift in the number of women in C-suites and corporate Australia. So there's a lot to be positive, but are we anywhere near gender equality? No, absolutely not.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And interestingly, just coming back to the General Assembly, when I thought about my remarks there to the leaders of the world, I went back to where we were 25 years ago. Because 25 years ago in Beijing, the fourth women's World Conference was held. It was the largest gathering of world leaders on women that the world had ever seen. And it set what's called the Beijing Platform for Action, which was an agenda for the world on how to progress towards gender equality. And 25 years on, I asked world leaders to reflect on whether the promises we'd made at the birth of those young women, all the women, all the girls who had been born in 1995, in all their diversity, had we delivered on those promises? And I think the resounding conclusion is no.

Elizabeth Broderick:
We've progressed somewhat, but one of the reasons that there's a lot of angst about holding a fifth women's World Conference is we think that we won't be able to get the level of agreement that we did 25 years ago. So, that's telling you something about the pushback we're seeing on gender equality and women's rights across the world today in 2021.

Paul Jenkins:
Thanks very much, Liz, for that context. It's probably a good time for us to then come back to the theme for International Women's Day this year, which as we know is Choose to Challenge, which has very much been one of the core principles of the Champions of Change Coalition as well. I think perhaps for listeners, it would be interesting to know a little bit more about the Champions of Change Coalition, what was formerly called the Male Champions of Change. If you wouldn't mind telling us about why you started it back in 2010, the evolution, and some of your proudest moments over that period.

Elizabeth Broderick:
I started the Male Champions of Change, as it was then, because I wanted a strategy, or really a social movement of men, stepping up on gender equality, recognizing that it's a key economic and social issue, not a women's issue. And men needed to use their power and influence, their collective voice and wisdom, to step up beside women in help building a more gender equal world, and most importantly, more gender equal families and workplaces. So, that was the genesis of it. And we started with six.

Elizabeth Broderick:
I still remember ringing the first CEO, beautiful man who was a CEO of IBM across our region. And I knew he had twins, a boy and a girl, and I helped him see that by running through all the data around inequality... At that stage, I think we had less than 8% of women on boards, 3% at executive level. I took him through the data and I helped him see that without intervention by powerful, decent men like him, that his daughter would never have the same opportunities as her twin brother. And the only reason for that was because she was born a girl. And I think he was so enraged by that he signed up. And then I realized you just need a few to sign on somewhere, and then once you start to get six or so, then you get a critical mass. And if you get the right six, then others want to join in.

Elizabeth Broderick:
So where are we now? We're out around 270 CEOs. We have around 17 different groups. We have some global groups, the Global Tech Group. We have a group in Pakistan, a group in the Philippines, and other parts of the world. And of course, we had a number of groups here in Australia, including the Founding Group, the group poll that your part of, which I love because it's a cross-disciplinary group. It's got in the command and control environments, the private sector, the government, everyone on board. And then of course, we've got the 20 most powerful men in sport. And now as we've evolved, we have probably as many fantastic female CEOs, or approaching that, as men involved in the Champions of Change strategy. Hence, the name change.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Having said that, the accountability still attaches to men. So, that's their accountability and responsibility. But just coming back to your questions about the proudest moment, look, there's been so many brilliant moments of our strategy. It's so much better than I could ever have imagined back in 2010. Beyond belief. It's a bit like kids, I reckon. I'm so pleased they're not limited by the expectations I had from them, and that's the same as the Champions of Change Coalition. There's so many moments. When I'm sitting on a country visit just hearing about looking at what's happening in Nigeria at the minute as all those young girls are marched into the jungles, kidnapped at night from their boarding school as a way of stopping girls' education, I hang on to Champions of Change and the light that comes from that strategy.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And it was brought home to me just last year, actually early last year. I was teaching. I was out at one of the universities here, teaching on their graduate law course. And I talked about what it was like to be an agent of change, and this and that, and the Champions of Change. And at the end of my presentation, the professor said, "Would anyone have any questions or comments?" And there was a young woman in the front seat. She jumped up and she put her hand up. She said, "Look, I do. I don't have a question for Liz, but I just have a comment." She said, "Four years ago, my father became a Male Champion of Change," she said.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And I'm thinking at this point, "Oh my God, where's this going? This could be my worst moment or [inaudible 00:23:01]." And she said, "But I just want you to know, Liz, that from that day on, everything about my life has changed." She said, "He's interested in my university, he's interested in my career aspirations, he's more engaged at the family dinners. We're going on family holidays more. He knows now. He asks me about my lived experience of gender quality. He's interested in me." She said, "And I want to thank you for that."

Elizabeth Broderick:
Now, how brilliant is that? Because Male Champions was never started to change family dynamics, but it does bring me back to probably the core understanding that I now have, and that his that gender equality starts in the family. If you can shift the family, you can shift so many other institutions, from not just organizations, private sector organizations like [Ashers 00:23:55], but going to national governments and whatever. Yeah, it was a beautiful story. [crosstalk 00:24:00] There's so many moments of joy, but that was one of them.

Elizabeth Broderick:
There's so many moments of joy, but that was one of them.

Paul Jenkins:
As you said, I was very fortunate. You asked me to join the national 2016 group shortly after I became global managing partner in 2016, and what I really picked up was how other leaders are dealing with gender equality issues within their organizations, and that there's many different ways you can address those issues, and to a large part it does come down to the tone that the leader in the organization sets, and whether they are really keen to drive that change, and then how they go about it, the techniques they go about it, and the benefit of setting strategies around change, setting targets and not being afraid to set targets that you are going to ensure that you meet.

Paul Jenkins:
And one of those that we did back when I first became global managing partner was to lift the number of women involved in senior leadership roles, which was very low I think. It was less than 20% of our organization, of our firm, women were in senior leadership roles, and now I'd like that to be above 30%. It's now 32%, and as of 1 May 50% of my executive team will be female. At the moment, it's just about at 50%, but very shortly it will be 50%. Hopefully, that's another proud moment for you in the sense that you've helped me create significant change, and putting me together with those both of leaders it's really helped me think about ways to drive the change in my own leadership shadow.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Congratulations, because I think what you're evidencing there is intentionality. We can all create change, and you're coming back to the theme of choose to challenge. We can all choose to challenge as you did there, and when we're intentional we choose to challenge. That's when we drive impact. Congratulations-

Paul Jenkins:
Thanks.

Elizabeth Broderick:
... but your job's not done Paul, so don't think it is.

Paul Jenkins:
That was the next point I was going to make is that we still have a long way to go, and if you look at the number of female partners at the firm I set another goal that I wanted that to be at least one third in the short term. It should be 50%, but at one third in the short term. We're still at less than 30% of female partners. We're increasing every year, but we still got a long way to go to reach equality there as well.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And I think that's hard because what you're talking about there is changing some of the structure of work to really achieve that, because we know retaining women, and particularly those with caregiving responsibility, which is why the opportunity at the minute with COVID-19 we can't revert to what normal used to be. We need to hang on to our experimental mindset just as we did back in the mid-90s, and we just experimented with things, recognizing, as I said before, that work is what we do, not where we go, so how are we going to ensure that we continue to have the diverse talent that we need, that we retain top talent, and we build inclusiveness wherever you are.

Elizabeth Broderick:
You can be contributing from wherever. I'm running as the lead reporter on women's rights across the world and I haven't been out of Australia in 12 months. That doesn't mean I haven't contributed. I absolutely have. I think it's about shifting the mindset, and I do worry that post-COVID, or while we're readjusting, and building back better, whatever that means, we might build back to a default position, which would not help gender equality.

Paul Jenkins:
You're absolutely right. There's a big opportunity for all leaders at the moment to really show things up. To use that phrase the new normal there's different ways we are doing things. We have to make sure that we continue with those new ways over the next period.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And maybe that's the challenge I'd leave the firm with.

Paul Jenkins:
Yeah. That's right.

Elizabeth Broderick:
How can we build gender equality as central to our COVID recovery? I think it's critical. And coming back to your point on intentionality so that we're aware that the decisions we make will either deliver on that promise, or will not, so that would be one thing that I would challenge.

Paul Jenkins:
Our vision as a firm is to be the most progressive global firm, and that challenge very much fits in with that vision, so that's something that we can go away with, and to think about how we can achieve that.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And can I also just put the second challenge out as well, Paul?

Paul Jenkins:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Elizabeth Broderick:
And that is coming back to where we started our conversation and that's about how do you continue to believe that change is possible and stay well in a sense. I'd challenge everyone listening to this podcast to make self-care a priority because we are going through a period of uncertainty, complexity. We don't know the answers. We don't even know what questions to ask, but what we do know is to have impact, to drive change, we need to be well, so self-care needs to come up as the priority.

Elizabeth Broderick:
I'm going to challenge myself to keep that as a priority. I'm going to challenge in my own family who does the paid and unpaid work and how that works in the family, and also in the relationships that we have with the people that we love, our partners. Are they always respectful? Because I think what I've learned also is that our children, the children that are in your care, they will take what they see in the home, whether it's same sex, heterosexual couples, or whatever, they will take that into their own lives.

Elizabeth Broderick:
That's where gender equality starts. And then, of course in the organization we're going to call out sexism. We're going to have flexible work as a fundamental, not a favor. We're going to ensure men have access as much as women. We're never going to allow a woman's pregnancy to interfere with the development of her career. We're going to call out sexist jokes. That's in the organization, and then at a nation level, a nation state level we're going to lift our voices. We're going to call out sexual assault, sexual harassment, and really lobby those who are our elected representatives to stay strong on gender equality.

Paul Jenkins:
Thank you so much, Liz. Thanks for joining us on International Women's Day. You've really given us some challenges there to choose to challenge, and I look forward to taking all of those ideas, and it's inspirational to hear about your life story, and how we can challenge the issues of gender equality that we are continuing to see back within our organizations, and more broadly in society, so thanks so much again.

Elizabeth Broderick:
Thanks, Paul.

Paul Jenkins:
Thank you for listening to this podcast. I hope you found it worthwhile and insightful. To learn more about the ESG Matters Podcast, and our 30 for Net Zero 30 series please visit ashurst.com/podcast. To ensure you don't miss future episodes subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. While you're there, please feel free to keep the conversation going, and leave us a rating, or a review. Thanks again for listening, and goodbye for now.