oles as CEO and company directors in major retailers. There are many successful female retail entrepreneurs with innovative concepts but the chains and major retailers have been slow to recognise the value and importance of promoting women to leadership positions. The real breakthrough for women in the retail industry is arguably the recent appointments of Olivia Wirth to the top executive role at Myer and Amanda Bardwell as CEO at Woolworths. Australia’s three most iconic retail companies will now be led by women with Wirth and Bardwell joining Leah Weckert who took up the top job at Coles last year. There have been other women trailblazers in major retail companies such as Dawn Robertson as Myer managing director, Clare Peters as Woolworths supermarkets MD and Launa Inman as Target MD, but never three in headline roles at the same time. The retail industry accounts for 9.8 per cent of the total Australian workforce with around 1.5 million employees. The industry provides work opportunities for more than a quarter of all female employees in the 15 to 24 age group while women make up at least 54 per cent of the total retail workforce. A 2016 survey by the National Retail Association found 40 per cent of full-time managers in the industry across Australia were female with around 1700 in CEO or managing director roles. Those figures capture store management roles in retail chains and independent retail businesses and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on small businesses and women is likely to have seen a decline in those numbers. However, recent assessments by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency indicate gains on the NRA’s survey results with women outpacing men in managerial levels appointments in subsequent years. There is still clearly a lag between the advancement of women in store management and regional or head office support roles compared to key leadership positions in retail chains and corporations. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency expects the proportion of men and women in management roles to be relative within two decades but doesn’t anticipate an equal share of women and men CEOs for up to 80 years. The same lack of equal representation in boardrooms might well take a similar period. The push for diversity on company boards is a key issue across government and the private sector, and is breaking down but not yet completely breaking down the boys club. Notwithstanding the defined skill sets that company boards are keen to tick off, it is not possible for an individual to be an effective director on more than three major companies. The skill sets of individual directors in finance, technology and marketing, etc, are valuable but a director also must understand the business. Too many companies are relying entirely on data to inform their decisions because they don’t actually know or understand the business itself. Data is obviously important but in many instances, it is like looking in the rear vision mirror rather than at what is ahead. There are arguably too few directors on retail boards, let alone women directors, who have actual hands-on retail experience, and often they duplicate the expertise of executive teams. The appointment of Olivia Wirth as executive chair of Myer department stores is an interesting one that indicates a new strategic focus following the business turnaround under John King. Wirth joined the Myer board in October last year after 15 years at Qantas, including six years as CEO of Qantas Loyalty. Wirth was touted as a contender for CEO position at Qantas when Alan Joyce resigned but the job went to another woman, Vanessa Hudson. Despite just six months of involvement with Myer, Wirth has been appointed as chair of the board of directors and CEO of the management team. In announcing her appointment, Myer credited Wirth with transforming Qantas Loyalty into one of Australia’s most successful customer engagement and omni-retail businesses. It is doubtful Qantas customers would agree that the Qantas Loyalty programs improved in the six years of Wirth’s stewardship with customer satisfaction levels plunging. Qantas Loyalty has effectively been transformed from a frequent flyer program to an online retail business and that is clearly where Myer sees its future opportunities for profitable growth. In any event, Myer has faced significant challenges in recent years and there will be a lot of scrutiny of Wirth’s performance given the dual board and executive leadership roles and her lack of experience in bricks-and-mortar retailing. In contrast to Wirth’s brief engagement with Myer, Amanda Bardwell has worked with Woolworths Group for 23 years, including as head of marketing. However, like Wirth, Bardwell comes to the CEO role at Australia’s largest retailer with experience as MD in the company’s digital arm, WooliesX, which includes the Everyday Rewards program. It will be no easy ride for any of the three women leading Australia’s three flagship retail companies. Wirth takes over a Myer that is no longer a basket case thanks to her predecessor John King but clearly still fragile. Bardwell and Leah Weckert, who replaced Steven Cain as CEO for Coles Group in May last year, both have more robust and dominant businesses. However, Bardwell and Weckert face some significant headwinds with heightened political scrutiny and the prospect of constraints on future operations. The retail industry needs these three trailblazing women to succeed and certainly needs more women to follow them into executive and board leadership roles.