Women
Lyn Lewis-Smith discusses women in leadership
THE CEO OF BESYDNEY , LYN LEWIS-SMITH , TALKS TO CMW ABOUT A RECENT REPORT COMMISSIONED BY THE BUREAU , JOINTLY WITH THE PCMA FOUNDATION AND RELEASED AT CONVENING LEADERS 2024 IN SAN DIEGO , ADVANCING WOMEN IN BUSINESS EVENTS
W hat was the objective of producing this research and what were its findings ? There has always been a focus on women in leadership . I ’ ve been a huge advocate of enabling women leaders and so I ’ ve done a lot of work in this space outside of the industry . I was curious to know , because we do a lot of work under our publicly listed companies , the ASX 100 , in terms of female leadership at the C suite , CEO and Board level and Board Chairs . And when I started to look for data on tourism , hospitality and business events , I found two pieces of very reliable data . One is the Australian Bureau of Statistics , and the other is a Workplace Gender equality agenda , which is a federal government set-up and independent . It ’ s a first in the world and uses the ABS stats . When we looked at the data for the upper echelon of C suite , there were fewer than 20 % females leading organisations or being chairs or on Boards within the tourism , hospitality and leisure sector . When we then stripped that data back to look at business events , it was exactly the same . But what ’ s glaringly obvious in our industry globally is that we are made up of more than 50 % of women in the business events industry , and in tourism and leisure as well – in fact in the US it is 86 % – but when you get to the CEO and C suite level it dives below 20 %. Is that acceptable ? There ’ s a fundamental issue in our industry that women are at a glass ceiling and cannot break through . The figure should be 30 % or 40 %. So that was the moonshot . We had a partnership with PCMA , we looked at a big piece of work that was done by Korn Ferry , the big executive search company , and PwC in the UK , on tourism , hospitality and leisure . We thought we ’ d get PCMA to work with the foundation and BESydney and focus on the business events industry and gain insights in terms of recommendations to move forward to try to close the gap .
What was the timescale involved in that ? We started doing facilitated workshops in March 2023 . We did one in Washington , DC , one in San Francisco , then PwC went out to the PCMA database and close to 600 replies came back from that set of questions , and then we did one-on-one interviews as well . We would have liked to have more than 600-plus respondents , but it gave us a baseline .
Was it mainly a US response ? It was heavily skewed towards the US because of the nature of the PCMA membership , but we had UK , Europe , Asia / Pacific involved all giving very different responses from each cultural region and continent .
Why is there a disproportionate lack of woman at C-Suite level in our industry ? Has the research illuminated reasons for this ? It comes in under three headings . The
“ Women make up more than 50 % of the business events industry , but when you get to CEO and C suite level it dives below 20 %” first is Individual . So , within the report , it ’ s about women backing themselves and getting out of the way of each other and allowing themselves to be ambitious and pursue the opportunity . The second was the Organisational Level , where there were two glaringly obvious areas . Organisations and leaders aren ’ t investing in the pathways and professional development of their women , to get them to the C-Suite , there were a very small percentage that were actually allocated a budget . The next was around Mentoring – with little structure around an organisation seeking mentoring opportunities . Also , there are so many things out of our control , such as childcare , pay parity , affordable housing , but they have an impact on why women don ’ t pursue or move through the ranks into senior leadership positions . And when I say ‘ senior leadership ’, I mean , CEO and boards and chairs . There are plenty of us at the two IC level , we ’ re just not getting to that higher level .
What are the critical steps that need to be taken to address this ? First off , we need to talk about it . And you are actually one of only two media people that are keen to highlight this . Not a lot have shown interest in this since we launched it with PCMA . The final report hopefully will get some traction . I think Carina Bauer from IMEX will do something at IMEX Frankfurt this year . So , it ’ s awareness ; the final report will have recommendations , then it ’ s for my team and PCMA to lead this . I ’ d love to see from an industry level that we have , say , 20 diverse leaders that will come forward and say they ’ re going to mentor a person within their organisation , and create a pathway for that person to aspire . Because you can ’ t just appoint someone to the role and not everyone ’ s cut out for that work . We understand that , but we can identify young women
38 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 130