Defence to set targets for more women

22 Aug 2012, 6:27 pm   -   Source: AAP

Defence will adopt targets to lift the numbers of women in its ranks, after a report found numerous impediments to recruitment and advancement.

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The Australian Defence Force (ADF) will adopt targets to boost numbers of women in uniform after a Human Rights Commission report found 10 years of effort had produced no substantial increase.

Sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said she wasn't confident women could or would flourish in an organisation that relied on a trickle-up approach to advance female members.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the government and Defence accepted all 21 recommendations in the report, which follows another last year that found three-quarters of women studying at Canberra's Australian Defence Force Academy had experienced sexual harassment.

These include setting gender targets and punishing leaders who fail to crack down on abuse and sexual harassment.

"We are very happy to take that positive or affirmative action," Mr Smith told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

The hard part will be implementation, with Defence now to work out how to make changes ahead of an independent panel's assessment in a year's time.

The opposition will support Defence and the minister acting to improve the prospects of women in the ADF, its defence spokesman David Johnston says.

The government accepted there were two few women being recruited, retained or in senior roles.

Currently, women form 13.8 per cent of the ADF, a one per cent increase in a decade.

Under-representation occurs at highest levels.

Out of 50 star-ranked (senior) navy officers, just one is a woman. In the army, there are four women out of 70 senior officers and one of 50 in the RAAF.

Women continue to experience inappropriate behaviour with 25.9 per cent experiencing sexual harassment.

Ms Broderick said she encountered ambivalence across Defence about the importance of increasing numbers of women, plus a lack of understanding of cultural and structural impediments to female representation.

"To be a strong force into the future and a first-class employer with a first-class reputation, the ADF must address the problem of a shrinking talent pool, the significant cost of unwanted departures, the lack of diversity among leadership and the unacceptable behaviour sometimes faced by women," she said.

Ms Broderick said the trickle-up strategy, by which female numbers naturally build up over time, would not address imbalances.

"In selected areas, targets are crucial to ensuring that women have the same opportunities as men in all aspects of ADF life," she said.

Defence force chief General David Hurley said the report revealed an organisation with a strong sense of purpose that needed to address diversity and behavioural issues limiting better performance.

He said it had been an intensely personal inquiry for service chiefs who spent a day with three or four serving or retired men and women from their service, hearing their stories of sexual, physical or mental abuse.

"The ADF senior leadership accepts all of the report's recommendations in principle and accepts the direction that the report's findings and recommendations point," he said.

General Hurley acknowledged that meeting the recommendations could be a major challenge.

He said the ADF was on the verge of an increase in the number of women in senior positions.

"We have a wave coming through but when you look behind it, there's a bit of a gap before another group comes," he said.

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