Flexible work widely offered, except where future leaders need it most: BCEC, WGEA report

Corporate Australia needs to start looking at how senior and leadership roles could be done part-time if it wants to boost gender diversity at the top, think tank Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre says.

A new report from BCEC and Workplace Gender Equality Agency found more women were present at every level of management than they were a decade ago — with women holding nearly 26 per cent of CEO positions in 2025, up from 15 per cent in 2015.

But they were also more likely to resign from leadership position than men.

Key factors associated with women leaving management roles included uneven distribution of caring responsibilities and a lack for flexible work offerings for both women and men at key moments in their careers.

More than 90 per cent of organisations offered flexible start and finish times in 2024-25 and 86 per cent offered part-time work, but only 13.2 per cent designed management roles for part-time work.

“I don’t regard it to be necessarily a cost equation, I think it’s more that perhaps there is a sense in which management roles simply have to be a full-time commitment,” report co-author and BCEC director Alan Duncan said.

“I don’t think there is any strong evidence that would suggest that there is a loss of performance, a loss of productivity if one were to able to adapt to that (part-time) work contribution.

“This is not about preferencing women, this is about allowing talent to progress unencumbered. Your needs now might be different from your needs five years down the track and so if an organisation really tends to that then they tend to get stronger returns.”

Professor Duncan added there was “nervousness around part-time imposing a penalty”.

“I think organisations should do whatever they’re able to to ensure that idea of a promotion penalty for those in part-time positions, even if it’s a perception, that perception is challenged,” he said.

The report recommended organisations design management roles that could be performed flexibly and ensure flexible work does not limit promotion or pay progression.

“Offering part-time work is very different from designing senior jobs that can actually be done part-time,” BCEC senior research fellow Silvia Salazar said.

“If flexibility disappears as people move up the organisation, employers risk narrowing their leadership pipeline just as experienced workers are ready to progress.

“The goal should be to make flexibility part of a career pathway, rather than something that comes at the expense of career progression.”

The report also revealed employers with female chief executives and key management personnel were more likely to have flexible workplace strategies, which gave them a competitive advantage.

A comparison of ASX-listed employers who report to WGEA found those with more women in leadership consistently outperformed their peers in areas such as market value and investor returns.

WGEA chief executive Christine Castley said analysis showed employers where they could make better use of the talent already available to them.

“This is where the opportunity lies. Good workforce data can show employers where talent is progressing, where it is being lost and where they may be overlooking capability they already have,” she said.

“Recruitment is part of the picture, but so too are retention, career pathways, job design and working arrangements that enable people to stay and progress.

“Making better use of the talent already available to us is good for workplace gender equality, good workforce strategy and good business.”

The report pointed to a so-called “male pedestal” effect as a barrier to career progression. It’s where men represent a larger share of senior roles compared to their share of that sector’s workforce.

In some women-dominated industries, like health care and social assistance, men make up just 22.2 per cent of workers but hold around half of CEO and head-of-business positions.

“The pedestal effect asks employers to compare who leads a sector with who works in it,” Professor Duncan said.

“Women can dominate an industry numerically and still be significantly underrepresented at the top.”

BCEC and WGEA’s other recommendations included measuring recruitment, promotion, pay and retention outcomes by gender, identifying where women were falling out of the pipeline and reporting progress to boards.

It also recommended organisations encourage men to take parental leave; strengthen return-to-work pathways; and address childcare and caring barriers that limit workforce.

The report made recommendations on the role employers could play through better job design.

Women’s employment following the birth of their first child varies considerably according to the industry they worked in beforehand.

Women also report more unpaid work than their partners, even when both are working full-time.

Dr Salazar said sharing care at home was part of the workplace story, with only 11 per cent of organisations having a target to increase men’s use of parental leave.

“Employers cannot determine how care is divided at home, but they can help make sure that becoming a parent does not mean stepping off the path to career progression,” she said.

Professor Duncan said over the past five years, WA had made progress in closing its aggregate gender pay gap, which is the highest across the country at 28.8 per cent. That compared with the national figure of 21 per cent.

The report highlights how workplaces adopting a 40:40:20 split (when teams in all industries comprise of 40 per cent men, 40 per cent women and 20 per cent any gender) would cut the gender pay gap from 28.8 per cent to 17.1 per cent.