In celebration of International Women’s Day on 8 March 2020, nestegg is celebrating all things equality and the importance of recognising and realising women’s rights through a financial lens.  

As of last year, 12 CEOs in the ASX 200 were women and less than 30 per cent of board directors were women.

Results released by the University of New South Wales could help reduce the gender gap in executive roles, suggested Professor Rosalind Dixon.

“We need this type of job sharing to unlock leadership potential by allowing for a more flexible division of responsibility and working hours between professionals at different stages of their careers, and which can be used alone or in combination with other, traditional modes.”

For example, these models encourage men near the end of their careers or looking to reduce their hours to engage in job sharing not only as a means of promoting their own wellbeing, but also as a means of fostering knowledge sharing and gender equality within their own organisation and society more broadly. This can help bring more women into senior roles.

These non-traditional job-sharing arrangements are proposed as a complementary tool in the “flexible work” toolkit. The report finds non-traditional job sharing can set men and women on the pathway to career advancement without sacrifice to family responsibilities, as well as bridging the gap between the increasingly pronounced problems of underemployment and overemployment.

Report lead author and UNSW Professor Rosalind Dixon said: “We are proposing these new models after testing them in the workplace. They are not conventional job-sharing arrangements, but the results show great promise to meet the changing needs of both employers and workers of the future.”

As part of the research, UNSW Sydney conducted two trials that involved each of the three new job share models over several months in the latter half of 2019. Both trials were also subject to a formal evaluation, as part of the research for this report and for internal UNSW purposes. This evaluation concluded both trials a success, offering important benefits for both the university as employer and all participants, the study concluded.