Appearing at a House economics committee on Thursday, Aware CIO Damian Graham said that though the fund boasts 40 per cent females in its investment team, it is “really difficult” to achieve gender diversity in the investment market.
“Investing’s a really tough area… it’s one that we’ve really struggled to get really great gender diversity and broader diversity is potentially a little bit better but I do think that gender balance is really difficult in investment market,” Mr Graham said.
“We monitor that, we think about the strategies we need to put in place and develop to really drive a flexibility that supports people to come back to work and really provide that development pathways to ensure that we can attract young females, and also broader backgrounds, but particularly on the gender issue, young females to stay with us for their career and to also have great development opportunities…”
However, Aware chief executive Deanne Stewart noted that diversity and inclusion “really matters” to the fund.
“It’s certainly something that I’d say we’ve been very strong on and very focused on for a manner of years,” Ms Stewart said.
“When you look at it at a board level, I think it really does start there, but board is essentially 50//50 from a female/male split. When you look at it from my executive team, it’s the same and in most areas, really the split is fairly well 50/50.”
In regard to possible gender pay gaps, Ms Stewart said: “We’ve also had an independent assessment of that on a regular basis and I’m really pleased to say that we have not, as Aware Super, had a gender pay issue both at each level and the different business units.
“I’m really proud as an ambassador of the workplace gender equality to really make sure that that gender pay gap is not there in our organisation. So, it’s a real focus for us.”
Mr Graham concluded by suggesting that Aware members also benefit from working towards a more diverse and inclusive environment.
“The more diversity we have, it’s proven that there’s better decision making,” he said.
“So from an investment perspective, we feel that’s a really strong and aligned outcome. We need to be able to create that support for people – females and also diverse backgrounds – to be with us for the longer term because we know stability of team and investment managers really matters as well.”
