Hitting Them Where It Hurts

The Sunday Age

Sunday November 27, 2005

ERIN O'DWYER

Is litigation the only way women can beat discrimination at work, or will skills shortages force a revolution, asks Erin O'Dwyer.

IT'S another day in 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.

For hundreds of Australian women each year, this kind of unwanted sexual attention is just part of the daily grind. Thousands more encounter a sexual discrimination that is far more subtle: inequity in workplaces where men in dark suits still dominate.

But enough is enough for a growing number of women, who are using high-profile sex discrimination cases to hit back at bullyboys in the hope that they can banish boorish workplace cultures to the history books. They are called the 21st-century suffragettes and their barricade song is gaining strength.

Over the past two years in Britain and America, banking leaders and international law firms have been forced to pay out millions to workers treated differently because of their gender.

And last week in Sydney, a $10 million landmark sexual discrimination case came before the Federal Court for the first time, alleging a culture of systematic discrimination exists at the nation's largest accounting firm.

Senior PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Christina Rich claims she was sexually harassed by a number of senior partners and that her career, and those of other women, was stymied by a "culture of discrimination, bullying and harassment". The 35-year-old also claims that PwC managing partners discouraged her from speaking out and victimised her when she made a formal complaint.

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 head on the glass ceiling.

University of Sydney feminist academic Catharine Lumby is encouraged by the suggestion, saying that by demanding serious financial compensation for discrimination, women are finally talking the sharemarket's language. "Money is what will make people listen," the associate professor 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 still seen as "sexual beings", she says.

"Women's bodies are visible in the workplace, yet men don't see themselves as embodied," Lumby says. "Women are constantly negotiating the way in which they are seen . . . as potential sexual partners, as potentially pregnant."

A gender studies specialist, Lumby's insight into the male gaze comes from years of working in the media, which she believes has lifted its game since the 1980s. It also comes from her role investigating rugby league players' attitudes to women in the wake of the Canterbury Bulldogs' 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 PwC review its treatment of women and introduce a formal complaints process.

Crucial to the case are allegations that one partner left Rich handwritten notes urging her to come to his room during an international conference in 1999. "I am still waiting for you in my room," one note says.

In a statement of claim before the Federal Court, Rich also objects to a partner who kissed 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 claims he replied by saying he "knew what was best for her".

The harassment, she claims, caused anxiety, sleeplessness, damage to her relationship with her husband and, last year, a miscarriage.

The firm has strongly denied the claims and says it is confident of a "favourable outcome".

But Rich claims that senior partners discouraged her from pursing 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 with clients alone and later barred from entering the PwC offices.

The case follows a rash of claims about systematic sexual discrimination in the office brought by top female executives overseas.

In July last year, Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley paid $US54 million ($A73 million) to settle a class action brought by 340 former employees. The women claimed to have witnessed an office striptease, said that work meetings were scheduled in topless bars and that they had been passed over for promotion in favour of less qualified men.

And in Britain, Sydney-born lawyer Elizabeth Weston made headlines last year when she successfully sued Merrill Lynch. Weston was paid $A1.4 million over a former colleague's comments about her breasts and sex life at a Christmas lunch in 2003, although she lost a subsequent action this year. She was one of several female litigants who successfully sued their bosses for six- and seven-figure sums in Britain last year and, for their little sisters, there ain't no turning back.

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 a 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. Two-thirds of complaints arise from the workplace, with almost half of the harassers being co-workers and more than a third being a person in authority.

Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency director Anna McPhee says the number of complaints shows workplace discrimination is alive and well - whether it's sexual harassment or indirect discrimination, such as corporate entertaining focused on drinking and sport.

McPhee says that change is best brought from the top down - by dedicated and competent women who show there are different ways of doing business. But boosting numbers of women in middle management and executive office is going to take time.

Her agency's research shows that women make up a record 45 per cent of the workforce and account for 56 per cent of university graduates, but scant few make it to the top of their game. In the ASX200, women chair only two boards and hold only 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, compared with almost a third of men.

Women make up 12 per cent of partners at major accounting firms and 16 per cent of partners at top law firms. But the Australian Institute of Chartered Accountants membership figures do not bode well for the future. The peak body 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," says McPhee.

"A critical mass isn't necessarily 50 per cent. It can be 20-30 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 and says this reality is already starting to hit home. She 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 not returned. By 3pm that afternoon, the CFO had a full staff compliment made up of creative young mothers delighted to be back at work, job-sharing and doing 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?"

© 2005 The Sunday Age

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