‘You’ve got to have chutzpah: go up and talk to the chair after the meeting’

Business leader Jillian Segal was one of many who spoke bluntly at Sunday’s Social Justice Summit about the challenges for women to be heard in the workplace and beyond.

Prominent business figure and women’s advocate Jillian Segal issued a challenge to Jewish communal bodies to do more to include women in senior leadership positions, the Social Justice Summit heard on Sunday at Sydney's Emanuel Synagogue.

In a conversation on Women in Leadership, Segal noted that bodies such as the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies had never had a female president. “We want to see women everywhere,” Segal said in a conversation with Anna Green, Managing Director and Senior Partner at the Boston Consulting Group.

Segal was frank about her personal views and standards to achieve this outcome. “I will not appear on a panel without a woman; “I won’t appear in photos without a woman in the shot,” said Segal, whose list of corporate roles includes chairing public foundations and authorities, and directorships on the ASX and the University of NSW. She is also currently President of ECAJ.

Their exchange was one in a day of frank, robust discussion and calls to action at the fourth annual Summit, which was titled Leading the change to gender equity in Jewish leadership.

The summit featured a keynote address from actor and gender and climate advocate Yael Stone, who gave a powerful keynote address that touched on her public comments in the Geoffrey Rush sexual harassment affair, her rejection of a career in the US and her journey to “do something” back in Australia to bring about a low-carbon future.

“I spoke for two reasons,” Stone said, referring to Geoffrey Rush. “Number one, it was the truth. And number two, I suspected that power would protect power. And I'm sad to say that is exactly how it played out.”