Keeping gender in its place

By JULIE MIDDLETON

There is only one thing top accountant Jan Dawson regrets - mildly - about being a woman in a male-dominated profession.

She can't eavesdrop in that secret bastion of top-level professional networking, the men's bathroom.

No matter.

"There's hasn't been a glass ceiling for me," says the energetic and bright-eyed Dawson, a cousin by marriage to starlet Charlotte.

Not a fan of women's business networks - "I think they're sexist, we don't have men's business groups" - KPMG's 40-something Auckland managing partner sees herself as a "human professional".

"I don't come to work thinking, I'm a woman, what have I got to do today?" says Dawson, her neatly nailed hands clasped as she sits at a circular meeting table in her surprisingly modest office.

"I think, I'm one of 20 partners, what do I have to do today? You've just got to be professional."

Being a woman in business is about "not making a fuss about anything [to do with gender issues] - you're there because you're good at what you do, not because you're a woman".

Don't play on gender, she says: don't even think about it. Look at telco queens Rosemary Howard and Theresa Gattung.

"They act like professionals, they don't talk like they are women in a man's business."

Even so, Dawson notes the shortfalls in attitudes towards women in top jobs.

"If a woman is focused and direct, she tends to be labelled aggressive, but if a man is, there are nicer adjectives used."

But she shrugs this off with a wry smile.

She says she is supportive of women and tells of some of her senior managers, all working mums, whose working day is 9 to 3, with flexibility during school holidays.

The way Dawson sees it, working women will always confront some conflict.

"No matter how supportive your husband, when the kids are sick they want their mum."

Dawson, one of five children, worked fulltime while raising Campbell, now 19, and Alexandra, 15, with husband Peter, so she knows all about career-mum guilt.

According to a recent article in the business magazine Unlimited, three weeks after getting the top KPMG job Dawson took a week off so she could watch Alexandra compete in a rowing championship.

Between races she sat huddled in her car, cellphone clamped to ear.

Dawson is Auckland-born.

She met her husband while at Auckland University doing her bachelor of commerce degree, and they live on the North Shore.

But after graduating they lived in England and Canada, and Dawson joined KPMG in Vancouver in 1981.

But she admits that until her late 30s, she wasn't sure where her career was going.

"I'd gone through life bouncing from one thing to another thing. I never really sat down and planned what I wanted to do."

She had some idea of the big picture, but it was an image fuzzy around the edges.

But Dawson then had what she calls "one of those defining moments".

She won't elaborate on what caused her epiphany 10 years ago, but says it was "personal".

And it came at a time she was also asked to take on responsibility at work she didn't want to accept.

"I said, Right, do I want to be an audit partner for the rest of my life?"

Introspection ensued, kicked off by two questions: Where and how do I want to retire? and Do I still want to be doing this sort of job at the time I retire?

The answer was no.

The key to planning, Dawson felt, was to work backwards from retirement.

The goals she set included gaining a management position in the company.

It was an ambition reached early this year when she became the managing partner of KPMG's Auckland office, working in an executive made up of her counterpart in Wellington and CEO Alan Isaac.

The role makes her easily New Zealand's top woman accountant; the only others who sail close are fellow KPMG partner Joanna Perry and former Ernst & Young partner Liz Hickey, both on the Securities Commission, and Ernst &Young partner Carol Campbell.

Dawson also decided she would like to spend the latter years of her career contributing to boards.

So another goal was to gain board experience within the constraints of her job, which precludes accepting listed company directorships.

The vice-president of the troubled-but-surviving Auckland Club, she is on some of its committees and also on a Rotary Club of Auckland committee.

She is a national councillor with the Institute of Directors and a trustee for the General Trust Board, part of the Anglican Church.

You wonder when she finds the time to breathe.

Dawson admits that she is competitive, but has to ponder her definition of success.

"It's recognition, isn't it? And achieving goals - that's a very good way of saying getting what I want." She laughs at her own bluntness.

But she believes that what constitutes success is a personal thing.

Balance between work and home is important, but Dawson admits that since starting her new role, there's been more work than goofing off.

But that is "a short-term issue", and she's not impressed if she spots KPMG's "young guys" working 12 or 13 hours a day. She expects them to have a life outside work, building networks outside the office.

"Look at the number of people who have started to have heart attacks and get cancer and drop dead," she says. "You realise that you could work yourself silly."

Her personal goals are not as well-defined but include developing match-racing skills on her yacht.

* Jan Dawson is among speakers at the Corporate and Business Women's Forum, Developing Your Own Resilient Leadership Style, this Thursday and Friday at Auckland's Heritage Hotel.

Dawson, former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, businesswoman Sharon Hunter and CallPlus director Annette Presley are on a panel which will look at issues such as personality traits that influenced their success, and what led to their decision to take on more responsibility.

Details on Institute for International Research

Dawson's guide to getting ahead

* Think about where you want to be in 10 years. But if you're still between 25 and 30, "don't be too narrow in what you do over the next five years, as long as you're heading in the general direction of the 10.

"You need to be flexible - there are so many changes (in one's life) in that period.

"You need to be more focused between 30 and 40 - you don't have the luxury of time.

"Strategy and focus should be the two boundary fences you can move between - but you don't have to go up the middle, and if you think the boundaries are wrong, change them."

* Enjoy what you are doing. The sign that something is wrong is when "it's a pain to come to work and do what you do. There's no point in working with people you hate, or working for people you hate".

* Be flexible. "Flexibility is one of the strong points for New Zealanders when you go overseas."

* Share your knowledge. "You reach a point when it is your turn to be the responsible one.

"People have mentored you to this point, now you have to turn around and do the same for others. It's why players turn into coaches."