cut CEOs' pay if women miss out on top jobs Seeking equality at the top level: Meredith Hellicar. Chief executives of Australia's largest companies should have their reputations - and their pay packets - on the line if they fail to radically improve the representation of women at senior levels of their organisations, a report adopted by the Business Council of Australia has found. The BCA, which represents the heads of 100 of Australia's top companies, has adopted wide-ranging guidelines to boost the chances of talented women joining the ""C-suite"" , or mahogany row, as top executives" corridors were once known. The guidelines arose from a decision by council members in July to adopt a target of 50 per cent more women in senior roles over the next decade. To back that decision, the BCA commissioned a report from former James Hardie chairwoman Meredith Hellicar which probes the gender bias prevalent in corporate Australia. ""There is a high probability that at least half of a talented workforce will be women, so to take 90 per cent of company leadership from just 50 per cent of the talent pool - the males - simply does not make sense,"" Ms Hellicar said. She said companies should set and then make public targets and outcomes for promoting women, and that achieving those goals should become a ""significant component"" of the scorecard - and ""monetary award"" - for top executives. Companies needed to train all managers in ""awareness of gendered values and behaviours and of stereotyped and outmoded views"" she said, adding that years of male-dominated leadership had resulted in many companies having ""existing masculine norms and culture"" deeply embedded in their recruitment and promotion practices. To overcome this, talented women should be identified early, given strong mentoring, and be encouraged in career planning which took account of the need for some periods of employment flexibility. Ms Hellicar said research showed that women were just as ambitious as men but less deliberate about how they advanced their careers. ""It is recommended that companies consider accelerating women's early development to get them further along their career paths before they might have children, given that the more senior a women is when she has children, the more likely she will return to work"," the report said. Ms Hellicar also urged external assessment of executives for promotion or recruitment. ""Given the tendency of women to underrate or realistically rate themselves and men to overrate themselves, particularly when criteria are ambiguous, it is recommend that companies avoid ... [applicants] ... presenting their self -assessed scores,"" she said. Deputy BCA chief Maria Tarrant said the guidelines were a ""tool kit"" for companies to ""see where they might want to improve and change things"." Senator Michaelia Cash, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women, welcomed the report as a way of promoting ""discussion of initiatives within the business community that can be taken to ensure the necessary cultural change." But she would not comment on whether the Coalition should adopt gender targets of its own, given that Julie Bishop remains the sole female member of cabinet. Senator Cash said targets, not quotas, were the best way to promote ""true cultural change" in the business sector. Shadow Minister for Women Senator Claire Moore welcomed the BCA's acknowledgment of unconscious gender-bias within business and echoed the Minister's endorsement of target-driven cultural change.