A Blessing of Unicorns
Address to the Asian Australia Lawyers Association Lunar New Year Dinner 2022 By The Honourable Justice Jenni Hill Supreme Court of Western Australia 18 February 2022
The Honourable Justice Jenni Hill at the Australia Lawyers Association Lunar New Year Dinner 2022
T
hank you for the very kind invitation to speak at the AALA Lunar New Year dinner on a topic very close to my heart – the importance of diversity and inclusion. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather tonight and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.
Diversity is the mix of people in your organisation. This includes all the differences between people in how they identify in relation to their social identity, including their cultural background, disability, faith, gender, and sexual orientation, and their professional identity including their profession, education, and organisational role. Inclusion is getting the mix of people in your team to work. It occurs when diverse people feel respected, connected and have the ability to progress in and contribute to their organisation.
As has been observed by two of my judicial brothers at their recent welcome ceremonies, this acknowledgement of country is important because words, and the language that we use, matter. This is particularly the case when it comes to issues of diversity and the often unintended impact of the words we choose.
Diversity and inclusion are seen as having two primary benefits. First, there is a strong business case for diversity and inclusion due to its correlation with stronger financial performance. Second, it recognises the value of differences in people and positively embraces these differences.
In speaking tonight, I make the same acknowledgement that I did at my welcome ceremony, namely that gender is the only aspect of diversity that I have brought to my workplaces, including the Supreme Court, and is but only one measure of diversity.
Since 2015, McKinsey and Co have undertaken global research on diversity and inclusion and published a series of reports on diversity,2 which I recommend to you. There are a few points from these reports that I want to specifically comment on.
Over the last 10 years, much has been written about the importance of not only diversity, but true inclusion for workplaces. So, what do these terms mean, and why are they important? Like every good lawyer, it is important to start with a definition. In defining ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’, I have used the definitions of the Diversity Council of Australia, which are:1
First, there is now longitudinal data showing that companies in the top quartile for gender, racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above the median for their industry sector and outperform the bottom quartile by 25%. Ethnic diversity had a particularly strong impact on financial performance, with companies in the top quartile of ethnic diversity performing on average 33-35%
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above those companies in the bottom quartile.3 A possible explanation as to why ethnic diversity is having a greater impact is that companies have been focussed on gender diversity for a longer period and some gains have been made, although there remains much work to be done on that front. While it is important to recognise that correlation does not equate to causation, it does show the benefit and impact that where commitment to diversity occurs, a business is likely to be more successful. Several reasons have been advanced for this proposition: diverse workplaces are more likely to win the war on talent, they have higher employee satisfaction and diversity within a team leads to better decision making and less risk of group think. Second, the reports stress the continuing lack of diversity in executive teams, particularly when it comes to ethnic and cultural diversity and women of colour who suffer from what they term ‘the double burden of bias’. Put another way, it has been the subject of growing commentary that the primary beneficiaries of the increasing focus on diversity are people like myself: white, private school educated, middle or upper class, heterosexual females. In their most recent paper, the authors looked at five factors:4 the representation in executive teams; leadership accountability for diversity and inclusion (both of which are evidence of a systematic approach); equality; openness; and belonging. All of these factors are core components of inclusion. Notably, while overall sentiment
