Gail Kelly

TGIF, right? The weekend, of course, plays a huge role in our collective consciousness.

Rebecca Black doesn’t feel any need to get down on Tuesday. Rappers don’t name their Rollerskating Jams ‘Thursdays’.

Yet, recently we’re being lectured by those at the top of society’s payroll that we should start treating weekends just like any other days of the week. Suddenly, it seems like everyone who’s ever looked out a high-rise office window with a scotch in hand is against paying workers more on Saturdays and Sundays.

Continue reading "While you’re on poncy dates, we deserve higher rates" »

What’s it really take to make the Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women? All work and no play? Tonnes of money to pay for a nanny if you dare to want a hugely successful career and children?

The Forbes list of powerful women has been running for six years but it has a long way to go before it serves as inspiration for young women looking to go to the very top and have a life – especially one that includes having children.

Yes, Gail Kelly - Westpac CEO and mother of four – is ranked at number eight but scroll down the full “top 25” list and you’ll find that more than half of the power women are over 40 years of age and childless. Oprah is there ranked number three, German Chancellor Angela Merkel too ranked at number four, Ellen DeGeneres is number ten, US Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is number 19 and the list goes on.

Continue reading "To get on the Forbes power list, skip kids or marry rich" »

So banking is like bananas.  And facing a storm like the tragic one in Queensland a few years back that hit banana growers hard.  Or so says the following Westpac video.

Some people think it was silly.  Condescending, even.  Maybe they think a disaster caused by banks isn’t the same as one caused by nature.
Me, I don’t think it’s silly. Like Forrest Gump said, life is like a box of chocolates.  Except now it’s like a banana smoothie.

Continue reading "Westpac: Yes, we have no bananas" »

Over the past few years Westpac CEO Gail Kelly has been the lucky beneficiary of some of the mushiest anti-journalism in the land.

Going back through the clipping files is, to use a cliché, a veritable orgy of cliché. Kelly has been hailed as the supermum, the platinum-haired beauty, a woman of steely resolve, who is always immaculately turned-out, a passionate advocate of work-life balance, someone who is quietly reinventing the way business is done with a more compassionate, family-minded approach to corporate conduct.

When she was appointed as CEO in August 2007, one female journalist shouted excitedly at the press conference: “There’s hope for us yet!”. There is hope you yet, girls, if your idea of equality is seeing female chief executives demonstrate that they can be every bit as foolish and as flint-hearted as their overwhelmingly male equivalents.

Continue reading "So much for Gail Kelly’s innate feminine compassion" »