Not one of the boysSydney Morning HeraldNovember 27, 2005Hefty payouts and a few high-profile sexual harassment cases could be a turning point for women in the workplace - because money talks, Erin O'Dwyer writes.
IT'S ANOTHER day at the office.
Your boss pats you on the bottom and a male colleague remarks on your breasts. An after-work drink is followed by a series of lewd text messages and, at a male-dominated meeting, jokes are made about explicit email images.
For hundreds of Australian women each year, this kind of unwanted sexual attention is just part of the daily grind.
Thousands more encounter a far subtler form of sexual discrimination - structural inequity in workplaces where men in dark suits still dominate.
In the past two years, in Britain and the United States, banking leaders and international law firms have been forced to pay millions of dollars to women workers treated differently because of their gender. In Sydney, a $10 million landmark sexual discrimination case due before the Federal Court in February for the first time alleges that a culture of systematic discrimination exists at the nation's largest accounting firm. Senior PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Christina Rich claims she was sexually harassed by several partners at the firm, and that her career and those of other women were stymied by a "culture of discrimination, bullying and harassment". The 41-year-old also says partners discouraged her from speaking out and victimised her when she made a formal complaint. Rich says she was labelled "scatty", "emotional" and "high maintenance" by a senior partner.
It may well be years before the case concludes, but it has prompted predictions that a flurry of lawsuits will ensue from senior women fed up with hitting their heads on the glass ceiling. University of Sydney academic Associate Professor Catharine Lumby believes that by demanding financial compensation for discrimination, women are finally talking the sharemarket's language.
"Money is what will make people listen," Lumby says. "It's not as simple as a whole lot of men walking around saying 'we hate women'. It's that the worlds of work and private lives are still absolutely separate and for many women that means that issues that matter to them, such as child care, are deemed irrelevant."
That sexual discrimination still thrives is because women are seen as "sexual beings", Lumby says.
As a gender studies specialist, Lumby has insight into the male gaze. This expertise led to her role investigating football players' attitudes to women in the wake of the Bulldogs' Coffs Harbour sex scandal.
"People said to me 'they're footballers, what do you expect?"' Lumby recalls. "But the rugby league really got on the front foot with this. It's the law, accounting and banking firms that really need to get their house in order."
The $10 million Rich v PwC claim predictably includes damages for reputation, client base and future economic loss, but it also seeks orders that the company review its treatment of women and introduce a formal complaints process. Crucial to the Rich case are allegations that one partner left handwritten notes urging her to come to his room during a conference in 1999. "I am still waiting for you in my room . . .", one note said.
In a statement of claim before the Federal Court, Rich also objected to a partner who adopted the practice of kissing her on the cheek when greeting her. "I do not want to be kissed by you or treated as if I am some kid," she allegedly told him. She says he replied that he "knew what was best for her".
The harassment, she claims, caused anxiety, sleeplessness, damage to her relationship with her husband and a miscarriage. Rich says in her claim that partners discouraged her from pursuing the allegations and, when she made a formal complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in August, she says she was slowly squeezed out of the partnership - barred from meeting alone with clients and later barred from entering the PwC offices.
The firm has strongly denied the claims and says it is confident of a "favourable outcome".
THE CASE follows a rash of cases brought by top female executives overseas about being subject to systematic sexual discrimination. In July last year Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley paid $US54 million ($73 million) to settle a class action brought by 340 former employees. The women claimed to have witnessed an office striptease, work meetings scheduled in topless bars and of being passed over for promotion in favour of less-qualified men.
Across the Atlantic in London, Sydney-born lawyer Elizabeth Weston made headlines last year when she successfully sued Merrill Lynch. Weston was paid $1.4 million over a former colleague's comments about her breasts and sex life at a Christmas lunch in 2003.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward believes that formal complaints - either before tribunals or courts - can help combat injustices against women. She says they send strong messages to big business that simply handling complaints is not enough and that what is needed are preventative protocols via induction courses and continuing professional education. Until then, women will continue to be forced to hang out their company's dirty washing in court.
"In Australia, the Sexual Discrimination Act is 21 years old and there are 21-year-olds who have grown up with it," Goward says. "They do think they have the right [to take legal action] and they are not going to cop it in a way that perhaps women of my generation thought we should cop it."
But despite the law's coming of age, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission still receives about 400 complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination each year. A commission survey last year found a startling 41 per cent of Australian women and more than one in five men had experienced sexual harassment. However, less than a third of the sexual harassment experienced is formally reported to either employers or external agencies.
A commission review of cases finalised in 2002 found that 86 per cent of complaints involved a man sexually harassing a woman.
Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency director Anna McPhee says the number of complaints shows different forms of workplace discrimination are alive and well - whether overt sexual harassment or indirect discrimination such as corporate entertaining focused around drinking and sport.
McPhee says that change is best brought about from the top down by dedicated and competent women who show there are different ways to do business.
The agency's research shows women make up 45 per cent of the workforce and account for 56 per cent of university graduates, but scant few make it to the top. In the top 200 companies in Australia, women hold two board chairs and four chief executive positions. And while women hold 10 per cent of executive management positions and 6 per cent of all line management positions, they hold almost two-thirds of support positions.
At present women make up 12 per cent of partners at major accounting firms, and 16 per cent of partners at top law firms. The Australian Institute of Chartered Accountants has almost 13,000 female members, but more than 30,000 male members. "The old culture of command and control remains and until a critical mass is achieved, women and men who don't fit that norm will continue to be discriminated against," McPhee says. "A critical mass isn't necessarily 50 per cent. It can be 20 to 30 per cent where you start to see a cultural shift, but businesses are facing skilled workforce shortages and that is going to be a key driver in workplace flexibility in the future."
Feminist educator Dale Spender agrees with McPhee and recounts an anecdote about a female chief financial officer at a major bank who was recently faced with staff shortages. She called a 9am meeting and asked her team to contact all the female staff who had left to have babies and decided not to return. By 3pm that afternoon, the manager had a full staff complement - made up of young mothers delighted to be back at work with a job-share option and flexible hours. "Those women think they are in heaven and there is intense loyalty there," Spender says. "We have to be creative and flexible. Why can't men work that out?"
ONE WOMAN who has changed the legal industrial landscape for the better is Blake Dawson Waldron's first part-time partner, Liz Broderick. Almost nine years ago three woman in her small legal technology team announced within days of each other that they were pregnant. What they did not know was Broderick was also in her first trimester. "That amounted to about 50 per cent of our legal team, so we were faced with a real business issue," Broderick says.
The team sat down and discussed ways of working via remote access and flexible hours. A junior secretary with nannying experience was hired to help out on the days women brought their babies into the office.
Within four months the new mothers were all back at work. Indeed, the work-life program was so successful that now almost one in five of the firm's workers - men and women - job-share, work part-time or from home.
By encouraging women to stay at work, Broderick says firms can enable real cultural change to take place.
"There is not enough imaginative thinking and that leads to indirect discrimination against women because women still have the primary caring role," she says.
"It's probably unintentional but we don't see many women at the top of corporate Australia. I'm depressed about the time it's taking. A lot of women don't think we need to agitate but it's up to us as senior women, leaders in the community, to be talking about it and doing it.
"It's only through supporting younger people to actually work in different ways that things will change. You can't be what you can't see."
SHE SAYS/THE COMPANY SAYS
The claim: $10 million includes compensation for damage to Christina Rich's reputation and client base, future economic loss, counselling expenses and one year's reduced partnership drawings amounting to $680,000.
What Rich says:
In November 1999, Rich attended a conference at the Santa Monica Beach Hotel with a more senior male partner. She alleges that he left five handwritten notes under her door one night. "I am still waiting for you in my room . . . " said one.
In February 2002, a male partner said of her work: "That's because, Christina, they are talking to your breasts. You obviously get things through them I can't because of your looks."
Between February 2003 and July 2004, the same male partner refused her requests to attend conferences and external meetings relevant to her specialisation.
In September 2003, a male partner raised concerns about "underlying general discrimination suffered by senior females". He was rebuked and called a "traitor" by another senior male partner.
In May last year, at a PwC young leaders conference, a video of a woman sunbaking topless was shown. A male partner said: "Christina, is that you sunbathing on the beach?" When she objected, he said: "I don't understand why you found offence . . . [you] should be flattered."
In July 2004, Rich wrote to chief executive Tony Harrington alleging "a culture of discrimination, harassment and bullying within PwC affecting the applicant and others".
In August, she was directed not to meet with clients alone. Later that month her clients were allocated to other partners.
Restrictions were imposed following her complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in August 2004. They forbid her from visiting the PwC offices, accessing computers, communicating with the media, or seeking work in her profession.
What PwC says:
"I am saddened that Ms Rich is in dispute with the firm," says Harrington in a statement. "The firm was concerned by and took seriously Ms Rich's allegations. We have reviewed the allegations. The claim brought by Ms Rich will be defended and PwC is confident of a favourable outcome."
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