Needed now in Australian Higher Education? Leaders helping other leaders
WATTLE Co-Chairs: Linda Adnyana, Curtin University and Professor Helana Scheepers, Swinburne University of Technology
In an effort to provide a home-grown response to help address the persistent gender inequity in senior leadership of the Australian Higher Education sector, a small group of women leaders from Swinburne and Curtin Universities developed the WATTLE – Women Attaining Leadership – program.
Gee’d on by their own leaders who challenged them to ‘go bigger’, this group took a small idea, leant on and learned from the highly successful (and very generous) Te Manahua NZ Universities Women in Leadership (NZUWiL)program, and launched WATTLE in 2018.
WATTLE brings together women identified as potential leaders in an intensive leadership and networking program that is designed, and run, by and for senior academic and professional staff in the university sector.
With the backing of leaders such as Professor Duncan Bentley, Professor Pascale Quester, Professor John Dewar and Professor Jill Downie, WATTLE commenced with 8 member universities and 14 Academic participants, at Deakin’s Waurn Ponds Estate in Geelong.
Rather than a program to ‘fix’ women, WATTLE is a supportive place for women leaders to learn
from and about other successful leaders; to take this knowledge and reflect on their own experiences and aspirations; and, most importantly, to build relationships and networks with leaders across the sector. Participants take away invaluable insights about the sector and about what leadership looks like – the good, the bad and the ugly! We hear nuggets of wisdom learnt through the hardest of lessons; what the biggest challenges have been from those who have gone before and how they find joy in their days. We have been shown many ‘days in the life of’ and have laughed, cried and been sworn to secrecy!
Our speakers are usually, but not always, from within the sector and, apart from a session title and a time limit, the only brief they are given is to be as open and candid as they are comfortable with. They all volunteer their time, including those from outside the sector, supporting our small women-led not for profit venture. The generosity of our speakers – with their time, expertise and warts and all look at their career journeys – has been overwhelming and continues to garner very positive feedback from our participants. We also regularly receive the warmest feedback from our speakers on how much they get out of the experience. This is the value of leaders helping other leaders.
Perhaps most important is that participants leave with well-established relationships, from first introductions in our online induction session, further cemented after spending five intensive days together.
Member universities select their participants in different ways, according to their particular priorities and contexts.
Why WATTLE?
Universities Australia 2019 Inter-Institutional Gender Equity Statistics show that, in more than half of Australian Universities, less than 50% of staff at HEW 10 and above were women, with the lowest being 36%. In a third of universities this rate worsened from 2015 to 2019. At a sector-level average, only 34.9% of academic staff at level D and above were women. At level E and above, the proportion decreased to just 30.3%. Only five universities had more than 50% women at academic level D. And the highest level of representation of women at level E was only 44%.
In 2022, a Universities Australia Women funded research project found that:
only 24% of Vice-Chancellors were women (9), a decrease from 2016; and
men continued to heavily outnumber women in Deputy Vice-Chancellor and senior executive professional roles.
We now have 18 member universities and an alum of over 300 women, in almost all Australian states and territories and in most Universities. ‘Accountability groups’ still actively meet after several years, and mentoring relationships and many new work-related conversations happen across the country. At a time of such complexity in our sector, this collaboration can only be good – leaders helping other leaders.
WATTLE: Continuous improvement and paying it forward
We have honed the programming over six years now, pouring over feedback, and working with highly skilled executive coaches to ensure the WATTLE experience continues to meet the needs of our member Universities and participants. We were delighted that 87% of participants in our most recent program rated their overall experience as excellent, and 13% very good. We have now engaged Professor Christina Hughes of WomenSpace UK to undertake an independent evaluation and look forward to sharing those results soon.
Volunteer-led, we are hosted by Swinburne University of Technology, with 1.6FTE (superstar) employees and our executive coach facilitator (Rita Cincotta). Our Founders are joined by energetic alum who serve as committee members, steering and planning the programs. An expectation of participation is that you contribute to the best of your capacity to the ongoing success of the program – paying it forward in a virtuous cycle of support.
For now, we just completed our latest program (run in Brisbane last week), where we brought together academic and professional women for the first time. Please get in touch and/or join our LinkedIn community!
Linda Adnyana, Director Student Life and Community, Curtin University; WATTLE Co-Chair
Professor Helana Scheepers, Chair of Business Technology and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology; WATTLE Co-Chair