STARTUPS NEED GENDER DIVERSITY

The first female chief executive of Austrade, Stephanie Fahey, talks about the benefits of gender balance in senior management and believes start-ups are sabotaging their future by not including women in their boards.

- Shipra Singh

“Women leaders bring diversity of thinking and that’s what we need to run businesses in any country,” Stephanie Fahey, CEO, Australian Trade and Investment Commission or Austrade, told Entrepreneur India. There is plenty of data available to support Fahey’s argument. In a 2019 report by International Labour Organization (ILO) titled ‘Women in Business and Management: The Business Case for Change’, almost three-quarters of the 13,000 companies surveyed reported that gender diversity in senior management roles resulted in profit increase of between 5 and 20 per cent.

Ask Fahey, and she says diversity brings better decision making. “Women bring different perspectives,” she explained. “For instance, women are major consumers. At most times, they make buying decisions for the household. So, in the case of businesses that target women as the customer, who better to develop product that’s going to be attractive to a woman than another woman.”