Ms Jean O'Sullivan:

On Australia, the interesting point was that it had parity with 50% male entrepreneurs and 50% female entrepreneurs. It is the only country in the world that has parity. One cannot compare it directly because it is a large economy and many of those companies were domestically focused in the service industry, whereas the male sectors typically were mining and engineering. Nevertheless, Australia still had parity and the research carried out to date on that parity suggested that while Australia did not have quotas for people on boards, etc., it did have quotas in political life. There is a strong correlation between women in political life and female entrepreneurship because the policies that were brought about at that point were positive within the media in encouraging women to have full participation in the workplace, whether it was in entrepreneurial life, in politics or on boards. It then became the accepted norm and while this goes back to role models again, it was more about profiling from a newspaper perspective. Interestingly, I note the correlation between women in politics and women in business.