Women shunned by Australian School of Business

The debate about the lack of women in corporate life which flared again last week just got new life yesterday. Check out page 9 of yesterday’s Australian Financial Review and the full-page announcement by the Australian School of Business of its new advisory council.

There are 43 smiling profiles – and nearly all are men. Only four of the advisory council are women and only one of those, Catherine Harris, is a female entrepreneur.

SmartCompany put in calls to the Australian School of Business to speak to the dean, Professor Alec Cameron, and seek some explanation, but we were told he is a busy man.

Today in the AFR, management guru Tom Peters says that Australian companies that fail to promote a substantial number of women to top management were guilty of economic stupidity.

“It’s what I would call sheer unadulterated stupidity,” he told an Australian Institute of Management 2007 convention in Sydney.

Businesses were losing huge market and revenue opportunities by failing to match the extensive changes in their consumer markets with diversity in management, he says.

Management should be at least 30% of women to make a difference, he says.