It is vital for women in business to join a business networking organisation such as IWIB with regular networking lunches, high profile speakers, helpful information and exchanging of ideas.
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Recent figures from the Australian Government reveal the reality of gender disparity in our workplaces - just 16 per cent of CEOs are female and 28 per cent of key management positions are held by women.
Dr Melissa Wheeler, research fellow in Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Business and Economics, says the lack of senior women isn’t the problem but the hiring process.
“Research shows that we have an unconscious bias, which can lead you to choose a man over a woman for a role - even when you are faced with almost identical candidates,” she says.
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And this, he says, has a lot to do with Australia’s “long work hours culture”. Around 22 per cent of employed men report usual weekly work hours of 50 or more, compared with just eight per cent of women.
Also the Australian Bureau of Statistics finds that full-time working women spend 25 hours a week on domestic activities and childcare, compared with just 15 hours a week for full-time working men.
“Women still take on the bulk of household chores and assume greater child care responsibilities,” she said. “This means that men are spending more time at work building experience, skills and networks.”
According to the research, surveyed male entrepreneurs were twice as likely to raise $100,000 or more of outside funding for their startups than female entrepreneurs.
This affects nearly every aspect of their startups, including hiring employees, renting office space and setting reasonable work hours. Yet men and women approached fundraising in the same way.
Women are also more likely to start a business from their home - 68 per cent versus 48 per cent. They are also more likely to register as sole proprietorships than men (49 percent versus 31 percent).
So what can be done about this?
- Women need to self promote so IWIB is an ideal platform to discuss ideas, share information and learn.
- Women are judged on their appearance and it comes mostly from other women. People have in their head a vision of what a leader should look like so dressing for the role is important.
- Until we see a greater sharing of roles and responsibilities at home, women, on average, will always be disadvantaged in the labour market relative to men.
Sources: entrepreneur.com and pursuit.unimelb.edu.au