Featuring Phil Rowland, Diana Mousina and Kathy Mac Dermott
Thursday 4 March 2021
PR:
Hello and welcome to Talking Property with CBRE. A podcast where you hear the latest from industry leading experts on trends shaping the property industry. My name is Phil Rowland, CEO of CBRE’s Advisory Services in Australia and New Zealand, and I’m your host for today's special episode for International Women's Day.
This year’s theme of International Women's Day is challenge. In other words, if we choose to challenge social and economic norms that exist around gender, we’re alert and we're creating an environment for change. I'm delighted to be joined today by two very special guests. Kathy Mac Dermott, Chief Operating Officer at the Property Council of Australia, and Diana Mousina, Senior Economist at AMP Capital.
Today we're going to explore how COVID-19’s regressive effect on gender equality. We will be covering some of the social and economic impacts and the shifts that have occurred over the past year that can help accelerate positive change, for a more gender equal future. Kathy and Diana, it's wonderful to have you in the discussion and thank you for joining us.
DM:
Thank you for having us.
KMD:
Thanks for having us Phil.
PR:
Well before we get started it’s very important to note that the impact of the pandemic and its effects have been widespread and certainly span well beyond gender. Everyone in our communities has felt the weight of the past year. COVID-19 has really wreaked havoc affecting lives and livelihoods of millions of people globally. And look, it's been indiscriminate around race and gender and socioeconomic groups and our discussion today, it's not meant to make light of this widespread impact on society. But in light of International Women's Day, it is pertinent for us to explore how COVID- 19 has impacted women both negatively and positively.
So, it's always good to get started with a little bit of myth busting, and the most common being that COVID-19 has affected both men and women equally but the facts are that the pandemic has had a regressive impact on gender equality, with women more vulnerable to job losses than men and women taking the bulk of childcare responsibilities.
So, Diana perhaps we can start with you. You've spent much of the past year analysing and predicting the impacts of COVID-19 on the Australian economy, and one of your focus areas is centred around how the pandemic has impacted gender equality from both the economic and social perspective. So, from your research has COVID-19 exasperated some of the pre-existing challenges around gender equality?
DM:
At the height of the pandemic it definitely did in Australia and also across advanced economies and the reason for that is because women tend to take a larger share of employment in industries that the government chose to shut down because they had to. There's a larger proportion of women who worked in the retail space to work in the accommodation and food services space or in things like personal services and personal care. That's just a general trend that you see around the advanced world. So, what we know from the employment data is that in March, April, May last year, the height of the uncertainty in the pandemic, more women lost their job than men and there's less women who are totally employed in the Australian labour force. So, it meant that the impact to female employment was much larger than it was for men. The good news is that because Australia has done so well in managing COVID that actually the job gains that have now been recovered over the past…close to a year they've actually been very equal for men and women. So there was still a decent chunk of men who lost their job, of course, during the pandemic, and now we can see that both men and women have regained about 90% of those job losses, perhaps even a little bit more than that. So that's great news. But I think that the outcomes for Australia and for other advanced economies that have had the ability to have social welfare to have the redistribution impacts from the government that fiscal stimulus that's not available to a lot of other countries and the impact to women in an employment sense in a lot of developing and emerging nations where they might work in industries that are less regulated, their impact to employment will be much longer felt and unfortunately, the data for that is just not available. But we know that women in those developing and emerging nations do take a larger share of that informal work sector. So, until you see a complete normalisation in activity around the world from COVID, those women in those industries across developing and emerging nations will continue to be negatively impacted more than their male counterparts.
PR:
Yeah, and you, particularly those industries with such high employment rates for woman, just an extension of that one Diana, just around sort of part time work force. It's often a woman play a big contribution in that sector of the employment economy. What's your view on the impacts for part time workers and is that coming back?
DM:
Again, Australia is a bit of an interesting case because our employment growth and part time employment has actually been stronger than it has been for full time employment, and we can see that the labour force is actually becoming the unemployment rate is still above where it was before COVID. So the unemployment rate across the nation is still at about 6.5% or so before COVID, it was closer to 5% but those part time job gains have been completely recouped, which means that the Labour force is still it's in a pretty good position. I think this goes back to all the fiscal stimulus that the government has put in place here. So things like Job Keeper, Job Keeper Wage Subsidy programme, Job Seeker, unemployment benefits, the increase in those and also some of the other measures that have been put in place into the economy to support economic activity so things like tax cuts or being able to draw down on your Superannuation or not having to pay your mortgage for a few months. All these factors have really helped to get economic activity back up here.
PR:
Diana, just one final question for you, and then Kathy it would be great to get some of your perspectives. What about some of the more social impacts Diana? Have you been able to explore any of those in the impact on women, particularly around childcare responsibilities?
DM:
Yeah, the examples from overseas are quite different home compared to Australia, which again goes this point about how lucky we are here and how the government stimulus has really helped to impact our recovery. I mean, usually during recessions gender equality tends to become better in recessions, and that's because in cyclical industries like manufacturing or construction, those types of industries don't tend to perform as well in recessions because it's a cyclical industry and they get hit first during that downturn. Obviously, this recession that we've had during COVID has been completely different because of the shutdown in different sectors. So, this time around, you’ve actually seen a worsening in gender imbalances around the world. But the overseas experience from a more social perspective has been that we know in parts of Europe, before any changes to mobility restrictions happened or any government changes, mobility for men and women was running at pretty similar levels in terms of, you can track mobility now on Google and Apple, they give you really good data signals as to how people moving about and once the school closures happened in Europe you can see that female mobility took a much larger hit in areas like Italy, which gives you the signal that females are probably taking a larger share of childcare responsibilities because their Children weren't able to go to school. I felt that here, too, but I have a very supportive husband so he was very much helping may with the childcare responsibilities but obviously there's not too many lucky people around the world and then also I thought one of the other really interesting stats was that academic journal publications by females actually went down more in developed countries then they did four males during the worst part of the pandemic earlier last year, which again shows some productivity dents for women, maybe because they were having to care for children, that's generally what some of the researchers think.
PR:
Yeah, that's certainly a burden, Kathy. Perhaps we could turn to you for a moment in your role at the Property Council Australia. You've been heavily involved in spearheading general quality and particularly play a very prominent role in the Champions of Change coalition. So, from your perspective, has the disruption caused by COVID made any of these programmes more difficult to prosper.
KMD:
Thanks, Phil and thanks for your role in our gender equality initiatives. You and CBRE and across your teams are very involved. So thank you very much for your work in this in the past, we're coming up to six years that we've been very focused and we've formed the what we’re seeing the property industry male Champions of Change in 2015 and after 10 years of the coalition, the name changed to Champions of Change to reflect the women leaders coming into the groups and the evolution of the strategy. So we think that's pretty exciting. It's something our group wanted for a long time as you know, Phil.
So what happened is, you know, I think we all face is that when COVID started, there was so much confusion. There were so many challenges, but I think we sort of realised quickly was there is so much opportunity in it. So what we thought was, let's come together and look at our strategies and make sure we're offering our members every opportunity to connect, whether that's virtual or as soon as we could go safely face to face back into face to face and in our diversity work what we really wanted to make sure was we were safeguarding the wins that we had done in our diversity and inclusion work and to safeguard against any slippage and there was this new sort of areas to watch out for. We talked, and you know this because you've been in the discussions Phil in our Champions Change meetings last year we really focused on applying a gender lens when we're doing our COVID initiatives. So that was workforce planning, it was about rent reviews last year, this year, we've got to apply that rigour to make sure there's not accidental pay gaps emerging in these unusual circumstances. We've been talking about the caring by women but also I think a lot of women talked about home schooling, they became teachers as well and the extra pressures of that. So it was really organisations saying, how do we best support our people? And how do we make sure we're not accidentally losing ground on our diversity work? And I think we did that through our champions of change very effectively. I'd be interested in your views on that.
PR:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think we made significant progress, but I think the risk that you highlight around everyone had to mobilise pretty significantly around a lot of business imperatives and the risk around losing that gender lens was very present through last year and something we're going to maintain through this year with that I think there was an opportunity, Kathy and maybe I could share with you, I suppose, the opportunity that presented us and perhaps you, can share whether you've seen that elsewhere. But you know what we found anyway is that COVID presented an opportunity to accelerate some of our programmes around flexibility because during the period last year, just being connected and close to our people and ensuring that they were supported through that period of disruption it did give us an opportunity to advance our flexibility programme that was particularly centred around providing choices and support for women. But when you look across the property industry, Kathy, have you seen, I suppose, progress in that regard, or seen the opportunity, that kind of presents to accelerate things?
KMD:
I think you our group addressed flex very earlier in its formation, and I think our leaders really believed in flex and we're offering it to our people. But what we're hearing was sometimes in the permafrost of some management levels people weren't getting the same opportunity for Flex and what happened last year was every single myth about the ability to work flexibly was just totally debunked and so that does open some opportunity but there's also now people are really looking at training their manages to make sure that when they're running hybrid teams, that the people working flexible or dialling in are not disadvantage. So a lot of women have said they feel that they have a much greater voice when it's a virtual meeting. So there's been a lot of talk about visibility, and that's really increased during COVID but you also want to make sure that if you've got a hybrid team that once the meeting ends and then someone walks out the door and has a coffee chat in the kitchen, that the people at home aren't missing any of that information or ability to be a part of those decisions. So it's about really being aware of it and alert and then I think training and we've seen some of our people and organisations in our group actively doing that training.
PR:
Yeah, I think that digital inclusivity is such an important way we all need to work now. Okay, Well, thank you Kathy. Maybe we'll just switch gears a little bit and pose some questions around the theme of International Women's Day this year, which, as I mentioned, is choose to challenge, which really talks to the importance of actively challenging the status quo around gender to bring about change. And so, Diana, maybe I can just come back to you, from your perspective, what do you see as an opportunity for positive change and that that could be as result of COVID or just more broadly?
DM:
The working from home is really important, I mean, that is often one of the key things that females say is quite challenging for them because of the child care perspective and also the fact that for a lot of parents, both have now been working from home and perhaps fathers who have Children can see, you know the amount of work that is involved in caring for children at home. You know, if they have a partner with the stays at home or works part time and takes the share of the childcare responsibilities. I think the most important thing to get women into the labour force to get the participation rates up to get more equality around pay, which we know is a big issue is to get paid parental leave for both parents. I think that's extremely important for all organisations to consider from my personal experience, I’m about to have my second child and the first time around, I took six months off, my husband took six months off for the second time around we're going to do the same thing again and when I tell people that a lot of people say “what are they going to do about his job ?”and I say “what they're going to do about my job, Isn't it the same thing?” So there's still a stigma attached to father's not being able to take that time off where they feel like they can't ask for it and that really needs to change if we want to reduce the wage gap and to get females superannuation back up to male superannuation levels when they're retired and that's just not going to happen if females aren't in the workforce.
PR:
Absolutely, Kathy what is your perspective on that?
KMD:
I was just going to jump in there because we found a couple of years ago when we started doing some work in this area as the Champions of Change group we found in some organisations there was the policy for paid parental leave for men. They weren't taking it, so the whole strategy is based around - listen, learn, lead. So, we always start our work with asking our people in the organisation what's happening, why they're not taking it. So, we did some focus groups and some organisations and what the CEO's found was the men weren't taking it because they thought it would be a career killer and it wasn't there was all the policy and protection but in the history of some of these organisations, very few men had taken parental leave. So, then it became like many things, a leadership issue for the leader to talk about it, to encourage men and women to share the caring to take the parental leave.
I think, Diana, you're quite right. I think last year people experience what that was like in their homes and combining that work and caring and I think another thing that came out of it and this is something I know that has been really a focus of CBRE in the last few years or many years has been that idea of bringing your authentic self to work. Now, suddenly when we were all beaming in virtually we got a much better sense of our colleagues and peers because we saw kids and dogs and backgrounds, and I think people then felt very free to be who they are and I think that was a very enriching experience and something we actually wanted to protect and keep going.
PR:
I think you hit the nail on the head Kathy, that ability for us to know each other better, be comfortable and exposing our ourselves in that way and I think that by exposing that it does give us more confidence to do things that aren’t necessarily traditional to your point around men visibly adopting those types of leave allocations is going to be really, really important for us. But that progress that we've made through COVID around being more open to our personal selves, I think is going to be a great support, that initiative and those two things that you talked about, the around parental leave for men and superannuation for women whilst on maternity leave, that's two policy changes that we’ve just recently made. So our job now is to make sure that we, as men, we drive that. Well Kathy and Diana, thank you so much for joining me today for sharing your insights. It's been wonderful to stimulate a discussion today around International Woman's Day and to get your perspectives. To finish off, I did want to ask you both what International Women’s Day means to you, so maybe we can start with you Kathy.
KMD:
For me, it's a really important day of reflection. Honesty, we have to really look at what we've achieved, and if there's been any slippage and what is our priorities and then it's a day celebration. Around the country we have interesting events, podcasts and news articles and for me I love reflecting on the people who have helped and supported me in my life professionally in and personally and that's a lot of fantastic women. So, its reflection and celebration. I love it, actually, it’s one of my favourite days.
PR:
That’s fantastic and Diana, what about you. Why is International Women’s Day important to you?
DM:
Well it’s always been important because I grew up in Uzbekistan, which is a former part of the Soviet Union and lot of countries in the former Soviet Union or in Russia it’s been a day of celebration for a long time. You normally tend to get roses from males or just nice things like that or you know, my dad used to buy us gifts because he's got two daughters. So it was always about celebrating the women in your life and wishing them well and saying the good things that they've done, and more recently, for me as an economist has been around trying to participate in forums like this where you could talk about some of the issues that we're still have to challenge in Australia, in advanced economies around the world because there's obviously still a lot of progress that needs made. I think that some of the lunches that people organise for international women's, they're also really important and they get great speakers to talk about some things issues, because nothing is going to get fixed until people talk about the problems and then think about the types of solutions that need to be done for them.
PR:
Fantastic. Well, for me Kathy, if you have prompted me in a lot of ways to think about a special woman in my life, and there was my Mum. You know, when you think about a strong woman that have shaped your life and growing up seeing her a solo mom who raised five kids and you think about the constraints on her for me, International Women's Day, is very much a time for me to reflect about my Mum and sisters and all those strong women in my family unit. So and you know, when I think about it in the context of business leader, it really does for me, just reinforce the importance that me, a leader just creating an environment at CBRE, where we were socially conscious. We're respectful and inclusive and environment where women can thrive and move into a leadership position. So, for me, it's a point in which we can reflect on our progress in that regard.
DM:
Thank you to our listeners for tuning into this episode of Talking Property with CBRE.
If you like the show and want to check out some of our other conversations, head to cbre.com.au/talking-property or subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, where you can also leave a review.
Until next time.
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