Women across corporate Australia are calling for an end to the ridiculous excuses they hear as to why they should not be promoted or paid the same as men.

To mark International Women's Day 2021, ABC News asked leading women — many of whom have been struggling for gender equality since they entered the workforce in the 1980s — to recount some of the most ridiculous reasons they have been given.

The excuses included:

"There's no point promoting you. You're just going to run off and get pregnant."

"Women in our organisation just don't have the same ambition as the men."

"I'm not paying you as much as I pay him because you didn't ask for as much as he did."

"You don't need to be paid the same as your male colleague because you have a working husband."

Lendlease non-executive director Nicola Wakefield Evans says there's still an imbalance in power and pay in corporate Australia.

Ms Wakefield Evans leads the 30 Per Cent Club in Australia, which has been campaigning for 30 per cent female representation on ASX 300 boards.

She says there's a "more deep-rooted cultural issue" about how we treat women in leadership.

"The most recent one being the way that Christine Holgate was treated as CEO of Australia Post. I don't think the Prime Minister and his team wouldn't have treated a man in that role her the same way they treated Christine."

'No respect' for women in the workplace

Former political staffer Brittany Higgins' rape allegation has shocked Australia, but particularly corporate Australia, which has had to face its own reckoning over the past year in the wake of the AMP sexual harassment case.

But corporate women fear the gender diversity issue is fading into the sidelines, even as repeated cases of alleged sexual harassment — both in politics and corporate life — dominate media headlines.

While the nation's top 50 companies are powering ahead on promoting women to senior roles, as you move lower down the listed company ranks, progress wanes.

Even within the nation's 200 largest listed companies, there are still 82 boards that have not reached a minimum of 30 per cent female directors, and there's only 21 female chairs. And in the entire ASX 200 there's only 10 female CEOs.

Ms Wakefield Evans says organisations need to have zero tolerance towards sexual harassment, as well as leadership that sends the right messages.

For Diane Smith-Gander, the current state of political discourse in Australia shows little will to address the deep-rooted gender imbalance.

"That's going to be very hard to achieve in the current climate, and so I think it will be up to business, and up to the bureaucracy, to continue to show the way and give women a fair go at leadership jobs," says the recently-appointed chairman of Zip.

"In Australia, I think we generally think were egalitarian. And that we give people a fair go.

Do diversity targets matter when there's sexual harassment?

There are some who argue that until organisations rid their workplaces of sexual harassment, gender diversity targets won't matter.

"It's so endemic; so common, and it puts women in terrible position of disadvantage," says Louise Davidson, the chief executive of $1 trillion investor group, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI).

Ms Davidson has been key among investor groups calling for greater accountability by company directors.

At times they have agitated so successfully — not solely on their own, but in sync with other big investors — that these calls eventually led to the resignation of leading corporate men.

AMP, for example, faced heat for initially promoting the man at the centre of the financial services giant's recent sexual harassment controversy, Boe Pahari.

The company kept Mr Pahari in a top-paying role (after docking his pay) despite an internal investigation of a sexual harassment complaint by his subordinate at the time, Julia Szlakowski.

Mr Pahari has since stepped down from that role but remains with the company. Still, the promotion didn't go unnoticed. In August, after much investor agitation against the financial services firm, AMP's then chairman David Murray exited alongside co-director and former Treasury boss John Fraser.

"Women will not be able to progress within organisations for as long as men get rewarded or do not have detriment to their career if they sexually harass women and women leave the organisation," Ms Davidson says.

ACSI is now asking company directors questions about what sort of oversight they currently have about sexual harassment.

"What data do they get and what do they need to get?" Ms Davidson says, adding that she thinks often boards are left out of the discussion when sexual harassment cases come to light in an organisation, and especially when there's non-disclosure agreements relating to the case.

Ms Smith-Gander says mostly the issue comes down to whether there is an inclusive culture and respect.

She says despite women making up more than half of the working population, "we haven't come to a place where there is respect for women that will drive out these harassment cases in the workplace and in every other aspect of community life."

Creating a pipeline of women

Ms Wakefield Evans believes that, in such a context, gender targets are crucial because they help create a pipeline of women at the top, who she believes will have zero tolerance for such behaviour.

"I don't believe CEOs who tell me that there's no pipeline," she says.

"I would ask the CEOs — and I've done this on a couple of occasions — is to look at their HR function — to talk to the people in their business about why they don't have women or why they think there's a pipeline problem."

She says when she was on another board in a male-dominated industry, they set targets to have even female and male candidates below the CEO and executive team. She said eventually this changed the top three layers of the company.

She adds that sponsorship of women is also crucial.

"It's somebody senior in an organisation, who is looking out for opportunities for one or more people in their team," she says.

Sally Bruce is the chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Culture Amp. She says becoming CFO opened her eyes to how diverse finance teams are, but that the people who populate them are barely ever promoted.

"The finance function is the most diverse part of an organisation typically – both in terms of cultural and gender diversity," she says.

"We should be pulling a lot of them into line roles and through the CFO function and we're just not doing it. The talent is there, going to waste."

Investing in social infrastructure

UN Special Rapporteur and independent expert on discrimination against women, Elizabeth Broderick, argues the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened gender inequality across the world, including in Australia.

"COVID has seen women lose jobs at higher rate than men and caring of kids is falling disproportionately on women, [and there's] a rise in domestic violence."

Ms Broderick says when countries rebuild after a period of austerity, social services and aged care becomes less well funded and that work generally shifts back onto women.

She argues governments need to invest in social infrastructure — areas such as early childhood education and aged care — to the same extent that that they do in physical infrastructure.

"Now is our opportunity to redesign these systems so that they work better for women and men, and so they have a positive impact on women's workforce participation," she urges.

RBA board member Carol Schwartz says diversity is a crucial issue because we need women to contribute to the economy and wellbeing of Australia.

She believes a big part of fixing the gender pay gap is reminding people about the economic imperative.

"But we need to keep talking about it very loudly — very loudly — because until that dial is shifted, there's inequity."

Fixing the gender pay gap

The inability to create a pipeline of women often leads to a gender pay gap.

A Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) analysis last year looking at almost 5,000 reports from employers, covering more than 4 million employees, found that women on average earn more than $25,500 less than men every year.

It found more than 45 per cent of employers who undertook a pay gap analysis took no action to address it.

Minter Ellison chief executive Annette Kimmitt says when she arrived at the law firm at the end of 2018 she closed the gender pay gap for like-for-like roles.

"There was some minor tweaking that we needed to do — we fixed that immediately," she says.

"The other thing we uncovered, though, is what WGEA calls the organisational pay gap. That's the average pay rate in the firm of men versus women, and there was a material difference.

Ms Kimmitt says they are working on that now, but it involves "rebalancing roles" by hiring more women to fill positions at the top of the organisation and more men to fil clerical and administrative positions at the bottom.

"That's a much harder gap to close," Ms Kimmitt says.

Aurecon chief executive Louise Adams says another problem is that often companies carry over gender pay gaps from other organisations, when they should rectify them on the spot.

"Women contend when they apply for interviews to perhaps not be as brave as men are in demanding higher salaries or demanding what they want," she observes.

"And so organisations can fall into the trap of saying, 'well let's see what's the minimum can we get her in for'.

"She might have been underpaid relative to men at her prior organisation and all you're doing is carrying that gender pay gap across into your organisation."

Linking gender targets with financial incentives

Ms Bruce says she was able to fix the gender pay gap at the last organisation she worked for by linking recruitment with targets and incentives.

The priority was to address the gap like for like within two pay cycles, and then move to address pay gaps across the organisation on average within two years.

"The most common question I would get is, 'did you have extra budget? It must have been very expensive'," she says.

"The answer is no."

Diversity Council of Australia deputy chair Ming Long says one way some companies are getting more diverse teams is by linking diversity targets with financial outcomes, such as CEO pay and bonuses.

"It ensures people have targets as part of their short term and long-term incentives — and if they don't meet it there is a monetary consequence, as well as a potential career progression consequence."

There are other ways companies are being made to pay when they lack diverse teams, and investors are the ones pushing for the change.

Investors are forcing companies to act

Big investor groups who hold trillions of dollars of investment in the nation's top listed companies, are backing corporate women in their calls.

It was more than five years ago when ACSI — whose members oversee more than $1 trillion in assets — together with its super fund members, including Australian Super and HESTA, put ASX 200 companies on notice.

They wrote to company directors telling them that if they didn't achieve 30 per cent women on their boards, their investors would cast votes against the re-election of the company's main men.

It, on its own, is not enough to result in the male director being turfed out of his position. But no company director likes to see protest votes cast against them, and when investors act, companies listen.

"It was really only when our members started to actually vote against the directors on boards that had no women — that those companies … started to say, 'OK, we better do something about this because our shareholders are expressing significant displeasure with the current situation'.

"They are really concerned some of these issues are bad business and are going to lead to detrimental impact on the returns for their beneficiaries — for super fund members — so they're really not interested in excuses anymore."

Australian Super chief executive Ian Silk says the power of institutional investors, led by ACSI, has brought a lot of positive change on the gender diversity front.

Mr Silk notes that throughout the economy there is a power imbalance where men have dominant positions in leadership and in terms of renumeration.

"We think diverse boards, diverse management, will deliver superior economic performance," Mr Silk says.

Early last year ACSI, Australian Super and HESTA were among investors that again wrote to the 37 companies in the ASX 200 who had no women or only one woman on their board, saying, "we want to see a minimum of two women on those boards".

"Less than two months later, more than half those companies had [at least] two women on their boards," Mr Silk says.

HESTA chief executive Debby Blakey says, "there is a bit of a club mentality to director appointments" and investors are successfully challenging that.

"And so, the reason that we're focusing on this is not just because it's the right thing to do, but very much because we're focusing on delivering great returns to our members over the long-term."

The next phase could be quotas

Ms Long says she doesn't think Australia will accept mandated quotas so, in the meantime, companies should keep setting their own targets and hitting them.

But she thinks the target should not just be about having gender diverse teams.

"Incorporating things like cultural diversity, people with a disability, indigenous Australians — they must be part of leadership in our organisations."

However, others argue the time for quotas is fast approaching.

ACSI is now looking for listed companies to set a new target for the gender make-up of ASX 300 boards: 40 per cent men, 40 per cent women, 20 per cent either.

The organisation has asked companies to tell them how they are going to get to that target by 2025, and if they don't, ACSI will start campaigning for quotas.

"Thirty per cent is not gender diversity and the aim should be for parity," Ms Davidson says.

"There's always going to be people who are not ready for quotas. But if we can't get to a position where we have a really good number of men and women on boards then we have to think about how we move the dial, and if that's quotas so be it."

Mr Silk says he supports moving to quotas by 2025.

"Most senior management in Australia have a variable pay component as part of their total remuneration. Make delivery of gender diversity a material part of that and you will see action."

Ms Broderick also agrees that, if by 2025 no further progress has been made, it is time to introduce quotas.

"Below the ASX 200 there's still very few women on boards," she laments.

"So, I think, yes, unless we do a shift, in the future maybe we should be looking at quotas.