‘Balance the scales’: Why we trust women to steady the ship, but not to captain it

Each year on International Women’s Day, we revisit representation at the top. This year’s Australian theme, “Balance the scales”, invites a deeper examination of how leadership is defined and rewarded inside organisations, writes Vikki Maver.

The numbers suggest we still have work to do. The 2025 Chief Executive Women (CEW) senior executive census found that around 90 per cent of ASX 300 CEOs are men. At the same time, women continue to dominate many of the functions that organisations rely on to keep people aligned. The Australian HR Institute’s 2022 HR Workforce Survey shows women make up 84 per cent of HR practitioners in Australia. Communication and change functions are also still majority female.

Through my work in communication skills training, I see this imbalance in how leadership readiness is defined.

One organisation I worked with recently was navigating a major transformation. The leadership team discussed who would manage communication with employees and stakeholders. The immediate assumption? That the head of people would absorb the load. She was trusted and could manage the tone. Everyone agreed.

But later, when the conversation shifted to who was considered “ready” for new management roles, readiness was framed around revenue ownership and external profile. I found this contrast hard to ignore: the capability to align and steady the organisation was essential – yet the advancement criteria sat elsewhere.

But a leader’s ability to align and steady their team is not peripheral. It directly influences how engaged people feel. And engagement, in turn, is a proven predictor of productivity and profitability.

The importance of leadership communication only intensifies in times of uncertainty. And in today’s workplace, constant change is the norm. Hybrid work and ongoing digital transformation have increased complexity and raised the demand for clarity in leadership.

When direction is clear, momentum and impact follow.

So, if clarity and alignment drive performance, why aren’t they weighted more heavily in promotion decisions? Revenue ownership and external profile matter. But are they enough? Not on their own.

Why then does communication remain underweighted in promotion decisions? I believe it comes down to three key reasons.

First, communication does not sit neatly in financial reporting. Revenue, margin and cost control are visible, attributable and tracked quarter by quarter. Communication impact is rarely isolated in the same way. Its effects appear indirectly – in engagement scores, retention rates and discretionary effort – outcomes that are harder to attribute to a single leader. Difficulty in measurement, however, does not diminish strategic value. High-performing organisations find ways to assess and strengthen communication capability.

Second, communication is frequently framed as a support function. It is positioned as something that enables “real” commercial work rather than constituting leadership in its own right. But in practice, the ability to align teams, manage resistance and articulate direction determines whether commercial strategy succeeds. Treating communication as auxiliary understates its influence on results.

Finally, when communication works well, it becomes invisible. Alignment feels natural. Change lands smoothly. And conflict is handled constructively. The lack of tension and friction is the hallmark of effective communication. And that’s precisely the problem: success hides the capability behind it.

After more than two decades working with clients to build communication capability, I’ve seen that the highest-performing teams treat it as a strategic executive discipline. They measure it through structured capability frameworks and observable leadership behaviours. They develop it deliberately. And the outcomes it produces get explicit recognition in promotion and performance conversations.

So, what do we mean by “Balance the scales”?

It requires organisations to examine what their leadership decisions consistently reward. Representation at the top is only part of the equation. The leadership model and pathways that determine who gets there are just as important.

Balancing the scales begins with redefining what counts.

Vikki Maver is the founder and lead trainer at Communication Skills Academy.