Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to One on one by Fear and Breed. I'm
Natalie MacDonald. My guest today is Elizabeth Roderick. Elizabeth has
dedicated her life to improving the lives of others. As
Australia's longest serving Sex Discrimination Commissioner, she led the way
on key policies like gender equality, paid parental leave and
combating sexual harassment. She's worked with the United Nations on
(00:28):
humans rights violations and women's rights at work. She's the
founder of the Champions Have Changed strategy, working with hundreds
of CEOs to bring about real change in gender equality.
It's an extraordinary CV, and frankly that is barely scratching
the surface. Elizabeth Roderick, Welcome to one on one.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thanks very much, Natalie. Lovely to be in conversation with you.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Thank you, Elizabeth. I have to ask quite a broad opener,
what drives you? We've just gone through, you know, as
I say, a small snapshot of your CV, but what
has been the driving force behind that?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's interesting, isn't I often try and reflect on that.
I think, Natalie, I was born an identical twin, and
I actually think when you're born an identical twin, right
from the get go, you start to understand what fairness
looks like. For example, if your twin sister gets a
present which is better than your present, all of a sudden,
(01:26):
you know the world's unfair and you've got to start
to do something about it. So I think maybe it's
baked into my DNA from the get go. And then
as I've been through my life, I grew up in
a family which was quite a feminized family. My mother
wouldn't have described herself necessarily as a feminist, but I
see her as someone who was really always strongly in
(01:50):
favor of gender equality and advocating for women's rights. I mean,
she made a lot of decisions and my father did
a lot of a housework, but they shared equally. And
then I think when I was coming into the university
in the nineteen eighties, we had the you know, first
the Sex Discrimination Act came into being in nineteen eighty four,
(02:12):
and it was a time when the women's movement in
Australia was really taking off and I was lucky enough to,
you know, to ride part of that wave. So I
think that's probably what shaped me, together with the fact
that my father was a physician and he ran a
medical practice, and my twin sister and I we right
(02:33):
from a get go, from about age four, we would
take the patient's cups of tea and you know, lick
stamps on letters and whatever. But we were sitting around
people who often were in distress, who were there in
vulnerable moments because my father developed the first ever nuclear
(02:53):
medicine practice, so imaging technology, so he was looking to
see whether people had bone tumors, whether they had brain tumors,
you know, really quite significant illnesses. And I think growing
up in that environment, being in the surgery, being with
people in very vulnerable moments, also shaped me in a
(03:17):
way that I have a natural affinity to sitting with
human suffering as well. I mean, that's a lot of
my work. My work goes to the core of human dignity,
and listening to the people's stories all across the world
is a key part of what I do. And I
think that started when I was a very young child.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It's amazing to hear how that was cultivated and shaped
and supported clearly right from childhood. You mentioned having a
twin sister, and I read the most amazing story about
a coin toss that almost prompted a different study and
career path entirely. Can you share that with us?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, Natalie. I mean, the fact is,
my twin sister and I we went to separate schools.
I mean, my mum believed fundamentally that competition should be
something for the outside world, but she didn't want competition
in her own family. So she sent my sister in
one direction and my dad drove me in the other direction.
(04:16):
And from kindergarten we're at the different schools. And then
when it came time to decide what our careers would be,
and interestingly, out of five hundred, because the HSC was
out of five hundred, then we ended up with four
marks difference despite having been in different schools for the
entire time of our schooling. So we were both able
(04:40):
to get into various courses. But we both decided we
were interested in physiotherapy because that's what my mother had
developed a really strong career in, but also law, because
we thought law was also a profession where you could
start your own business and if you wanted to have
a family, you would be more ab to integrate work
(05:01):
and life. I mean, how we came up with that idea,
I just can't imagine. But anyway, so we decided to
toss a coin, which we did. I'd love to tell
you we did some detailed analysis about each of our
attributes and whatever we didn't. We tossed a coin, and
my sister became a physio and I became a lawyer.
And that's that's where it ended up.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Just imagine the different career path you could have ended
up following. And to speak to your career path, fast
forward to two thousand and seven. You've been appointed Australia's
Sex Discrimination Commissioner at a time when Australia had its
first female PM, a female head of state, female New
South Wales governor, and the nation's first paid parental leave scheme.
But the broader outlook that you actually inherited was deeply
(05:47):
different to that.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean it was interesting though.
I go into boys' schools and I get the question,
do you have to be a woman to lead in
this country? Because even then, I think we had a
female press here in New South Wales as well, so
everyone was female, But as you correctly say, we didn't
have a critical massive women coming up behind to be
(06:09):
the next female prime minister or a head of State
or indeed premiere. So and what I started to notice
in two thousand and seven as well is that the
world was shifting slightly. I mean, we've seen a huge
shift in the last couple of years, but it was
shifting slightly, sometimes in a really positive way, but also
(06:32):
we were starting to see a little bit of a
backlash coming through on gender equality. And I decided at
that time, as I was stepping up into the role
of Sex Discrimination Commissioner, that I was going to go
out all across Australia on what I called my listening
tour to really understand what inequality and particularly gender inequality
(06:55):
looked like, so to really understand the lived experience. And
that's what I decided to do.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Stay with me, Elizabeth will be back in just a minute.
I'm speaking with former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick. I'm
curious to understand Elizabeth. You mentioned there, you know, you
were seeing a change in conversation, and obviously in twenty
ten you launched Champions have changed coalition. Is there anything
(07:25):
that you'd have done differently perhaps then or even in
the years since.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
It's interesting. I think you know, as I was going around,
I actually started to understand that gender stereotypes and norms
actually imprison men as well as women, and I don't
think i'd ever understood that before, and that really took
me on a journey where I started to conceive the strategy,
(07:55):
which ended up being male champions have changed, but which
engaged men as strong allies in creating gender equality, because
up until then men were seen to be the problem.
And indeed, what I start to understand was that gender
quality is about the redistribution of power, whether that's in
the family, in an organization, or indeed in the nation,
(08:18):
and that if we want to redistribute power, then we
need to engage with those who hold the leavers of power.
And then, as today, and we've seen a huge pushback today,
but then, as today, the people who held the leavers
of power were largely, not exclusively, but largely men. And
(08:40):
so the engagement of men was very, very important at
that time, and I think it continues to be really important.
But maybe if I looked at something that we would
have done differently is maybe it's about the language we
use and the way we express gender quality, because I
still think there's a strong view that gender quality benefits women,
but it doesn't benefit anyone else. And we know from
(09:02):
all the research that that's just not true. When you
invest in women, you invest in families. You strengthen families,
you strengthen communities, you build strong economies, you build greater
levels of peace, prosperity, social cohesion in the world. That's
the benefit of gender quality, not a scenario where women
(09:26):
are winning and men are losing. And I think there's
a lot of misconception around that.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You mentioned male champions have changed it did? It started
as a group of six has now scaled into a
global movement. It's the kind of scale that most change
makers or business leaders dream of. But how did you
begin and really what was that accelerator?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, we began, as I said, by understanding that men
were absolutely critical to this picture. And then I went
out and talked to influential, powerful men. Now I'd love
to tell you did an analysis about which man was
the most powerful or whatever. I didn't. I just picked
up the phone and rang some of the men that
i'd read about in the paper or you know that
(10:10):
I knew were leading some of the iconic institutions in Australia,
and I put before them. Some of the data which
I spoke to, the gender inequality, the fact that only
eight percent of board directors in the country were female,
that only two percent of CEOs of organizations, you know,
(10:30):
corporate organizations, were female. And the first man I spoke
to he had twins, a twin, a boy and a girl.
And I figured that if I showed him that his
daughter would never have the same opportunities as her twin brother,
all because she was born again, then maybe he would
(10:52):
be engaged to come on board with me. And indeed
that's exactly what happened. You know, he saw that gender inequality,
he saw it at a very personal level, and he
became probably my first champion of change. And then I
went out and recruited a small number of others. We
probably started with about eight. And indeed, the first few
(11:15):
months it was late running group therapy, like everyone was,
oh my god, we've tried this and that's not working.
And then she left, and then we only had one
woman left, and then that one left. But over time
we started to understand, you know what, we've got power,
we've got influence. You know, small groups can change the world,
So why don't we step up in a much more intentional,
(11:37):
action based manner, and that's really where the strategy started.
And as you said, Natalie has gone out to around
two hundred and sixty CEOs of the most influential organizations
in the country sharing what they're learning. Because we know,
creating more gender equal organizations and more gender equal nation,
(11:58):
there is no one silver bullet. You're testing, trialing, adapting
and learning from that process. So all of those CEOs
are sharing with each other. They're sharing across sectors for example,
you know the property sectors, sharing with the sports sectors,
sharing with the military and command and control organizations, mining
(12:21):
and resources, transport companies, all learning from each other about
what strategies are working and what strategies wan't. And that's
a pretty powerful combination and it's powerful for this moment
when we're seeing significant shifts.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And just lastly, Elizabeth, obviously you've worked in Australia, you've
worked with the UN global, you've shared over the last
after over our conversation, you know, conversations with leaders. To
your mind, what skills must leaders of the future possess,
particularly an environment as you say, around stagnating productivity of AI.
(13:01):
What are the must have skills that leader of the
future need.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I mean they must have. Skills for me are very
human skills. They're skills of empathy, the ability for deep
listening to really understand, I think is an absolute core
leadership skill. Skills like collaboration, vulnerability. I mean, the leaders
that are doing the best in this moment are those
(13:26):
who are prepared to be vulnerable to really admit that
they don't know what the answers are. I mean, most
of us don't even know what questions to ask anymore.
We're just learning through experimenting, through you know, interacting with
people in deeply respectful ways. So I think all those
skills are very important. And for me, yes, of course,
(13:48):
you need strong strategic skills. You need to be able
to have a vision and communicate that vision, but you
need to inspire because I do worry Nadie the in
this moment, there's a lot of narrative which is about
which is quite distressing. It's all about deficit, and I
think we as leaders need to provide hope because it's
(14:13):
such an interesting time to be alive. I mean, in
my world, in human rights, what I'm seeing is, you know,
a backlash against human rights democracy the rule of law,
and I could be really bound down by all that,
I could start to slide down a slippery slope. But
(14:33):
it's the small shifts and steps that every day people
all across the world, and everyday Australians most importantly, are
making to improve our world. That's what gives me inspiration.
It's the stories of courage that I listen to of
the people that I meet out in the field, whether
(14:56):
that's you know, down the bottom of a mine in
in Mongolia or indeed in an office block in Sydney.
You know, those people who care enough to take intentional
steps to build higher levels of gender qualium at the
end of the day, a better world. So I think,
(15:18):
you know, all those skills are ones that leaders need,
particularly hope and courage. They're both like muscles. The more
you use them, the easier it becomes. That's what I've found.
And optimism my final word. You know, optimism is so
very important in this moment.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Elizabeth, thank you so much for talking to fear and greed.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That was Elizabeth Roderick, former Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner and
founder of Champions of Change coalition. I'm Natalie McDonald. And
this is one on one by fear and greed,