Ken Morrison

CEO of the Property Council of Australia

MCC SINCE 2015

It says a lot about the property sector that a key goal for its MCC group is to break up the boys’ club. But as Ken Morrison, a member of the Property MCC group, says, the Property Council of Australia has recognised for some time that the industry’s leadership is too blokey.

Started in 2015, the group is convened by Stockland director and Women’s Leadership Institute Australia founding chair Carol Schwartz and comprises 21 MCCs from top companies in the property sector, including Peter Allen (Scentre Group), Stephen Ellis (Knight Frank), Bob Johnston (The GPT Group) and Stephen McCann (Lendlease).

“The model appealed to us because it was a disruptive strategy that asked male leaders to stand up beside women – and most of the major organisations are run by men and they need to own the issue,” says Morrison. “It had a near-universal take-up.”

Now that it’s been running for just over 18 months, the group is moving its focus from the problems to action plans, with the core challenge of getting strong leadership from the top. There are six main areas being addressed: owning it (leadership action); leading on gender reporting; growing the talent pool; mainstreaming flexibility; breaking the boys’ club; and enabling workers to be carers.

There’s no doubt the industry is taking it seriously, Morrison says. Insights from discussions and work being done are having an impact: more female applicants for jobs at members’ companies after recruitment practices were examined; and the steady erosion of those clubby enclaves with historical under-representation of women.

The MCCs are often asked why the Property MCC is all-male (like the original MCC, the property group has a female member as special adviser, Carmel Hourigan from AMP Capital). “It does create an environment for those male leaders to ask dumb questions and explore questions that add a great contribution,” says Morrison. “The industry leaders are predominantly male – and unless they do something, nothing will happen.”

The Property Council is putting the theory into practice, having taken the Panel Pledge with all the other MCCs. “We run 500 events a year,” says Morrison. “For every event, there’s now diversity on stage and in the audience.”

The MCCs are at different stages of awareness and progress, he says, but the group plays a key role in shaking up the status quo. “Once you’re aware of [gender imbalance], it’s hard to ignore. Unless you grab the issue and do something about it, nothing will change. The view was that once we had more women going through university, it would sort itself out – but it didn’t. You have to be disruptive.”