In 1985, the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin recorded a hit song together: Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves. Nearly 40 years later this declaration may have finally come to fruition in insurance: Melbourne-based Adica Insurance has an all-female leadership team.
Brandy and cigars still dominate company boards: statistics from the Australian Institute of Company Directors show that only 10% of companies have a female chairperson. However, at the top executive level, including in the insurance industry, women are now represented in increasing numbers.
When CEO Dean Cullen (yes, he’s a man) selected Adica’s leadership team based on skills and experience it was probably a foregone conclusion. Lelani Jayasinghe (pictured), Cullen’s choice for CFO, said together with her four colleagues, there are 130 years of combined industry experience.
Jayasinghe said, these days, industry colleagues are completely accepting that Adica’s top executives are all women.
“I think it is par for the course now,” she said. “My experience has been so positive and that just shows how the landscape is changing when it comes to diversity and inclusion.”
Jayasinghe is also confident that boardrooms are on the cusp of change.
“The more female executives there are, the chances are there’ll be more females on boards,” she said. “That’s happening now.”
However, while firmly a career woman, the Adica CFO said one of her most difficult issues is dividing herself between family and work.
“One of the biggest challenges for me - and I’m sure this is something that most working mothers do appreciate - is actually reconciling myself to being a fulltime working mum and getting over the guilt associated with that,” she said.
She said her guilt eases knowing that she’s setting a good example for her three daughters and breaking barriers for other women.
“But the guilt is still there, underlying, bubbling all the time,” she said.
Jayasinghe said while society’s attitude to working mothers is changing, and there’s now greater work flexibility, it will take a long time before women stop feeling guilty about it.
Jayasinghe was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Australia at the age of 14. Another challenge that occasionally crops up: the culture clash between norms in her former homeland and what’s expected in Australia.
“One of the things that really, really impacted me was the challenging of authority in Australia,” she said. “It’s something that I had to get used to when I first came here. In Sri Lanka, respect is the norm, and that’s what I was brought up with. You respect your elders, the school principal and all that.’’
Even today she can experience a form of shutdown in confrontational situations and has to force herself to push back.
“Here you expect to challenge authority, right? If you don’t challenge it, you’re like a yes-man,” she said.
As Australia’s COVID pandemic continues, Jayasinghe said at least one positive has come out of months of lockdowns. Much of the workforce has demonstrated that it is possible to work effectively from home.
“But, of course, it does need to be carefully balanced with managing employees’ well-being,” she added. “Something that we’ve all become very familiar with in the last 18 months.”
