The same or different: how women have become included in corporate leadership in Australia

Corporate boards are gendered spaces where norms of masculine leadership approaches prevail. Using publicly available data, this chapter analyses and compares the commentary about profiles and career pathways of newly appointed female and male directors. Our analysis finds much similarity in the human capital of men and women included on boards of ASX 200 companies, in the context of a public discourse that dwells on the novelty of female directors in Australia, and does not equally recognize their business skills, networks and qualifications. Such similarity suggests little change in either the public discourse or board dynamics at a macro-level. Nevertheless, our study finds a glimmer of light in terms of change as we see references in our analysis regarding the contribution that women can potentially make to board dynamics.