On International Women’s Day every year, the voices and stories of women across the world are celebrated, as we address the issues that cause gender inequality and diversity. But despite these issues remaining, such voices and stories take a backseat once the day is done.
We think it’s worth doing the opposite and actively challenging the issues that create these gaps in our industry. So, we’ve launched this weekly series, Wednesday Women, where we’ll profile the stories of the inspiring women in this great and wide industry.
Today we speak with Jane Thomson OAM, Founder of Australian Women in Wine, an initiative that she launched in 2015 to champion the work of women and advocate for gender equality in Australia’s wine industry.
At the time of launching Australian Women in Wine, Thomson’s ambitions were to make enough of an impact that after five years a movement like this would no longer be needed.
“We thought that in five years something that was pushing for gender equality and diversity wouldn’t be needed in Australian wine anymore – that it had just been overlooked accidentally until now, and that a bit of a push and solid piece of action would move the dial quite significantly. How wrong we were,” Thomson told The Shout.
“What we found within the first year or two of getting going was that actually the dial was not budging, and there was a lot of resistance. We had quite significant pushback, surprisingly, from key members of the industry who thought that everything was already okay.
“That changed after a few years when we began to highlight, more succinctly, the gap that was existent in Australian wine. Those critics tended to be silenced, and we found after three or four years that everybody realised the situation was worse than they had thought, and the work we were doing was more important than we thought.”
Over the course of a decade, the movement and its role in the industry have evolved. What started as a way of bringing attention to the issue of gender equality in wine, has evolved into a powerful advocacy group that forces the industry to take note.
“To start with, we needed to highlight the successes and achievements of women in wine and the actual data and research demonstrating that women were being left behind in the Australian wine industry, then making a lot of noise to actually demand action be taken.
“It’s still very much needed today. Whilst there’s some improvement in numbers in terms of women’s participation in different roles in the industry, the issue is that women moving into leadership and senior positions remains woefully low. We still don’t have key women in decision making and power positions in the Australian wine industry in the numbers that we should have,” Thomson added.
Making space for women
Prior to launching Australian Women in Wine, Thomson founded The Fabulous Ladies’ Wine Society in 2012 as a way of connecting women who love wine and the women who produce it.
“Today, the society stands for pretty much the same thing it did when we started it, 13 years ago this year. We want to introduce women who love wine to women who produce wine and allow that relationship to flourish,” says Thomson.
“We want to create a safe, fun, informative and educative space for women wine lovers to meet together and be introduced to women who actually produce wine, hear their story, develop a relationship, and support that female producer directly.
“We do that through a series of events where all the guests are women and the producer is a woman, and also through our wine tours, both here and abroad, where we introduce female wine lovers to women in wine on their home turf,” she continued.
While Thomson is incredibly positive about the wine industry and its innovative spirit, the nature of these two movements highlights just how much of a shakeup is still needed to achieve equality.
“There’s a lot of fatigue around people like me bringing [diversity] up all the time, people are tired of hearing about it, and yet we should not be in any way fatigued by this. We should be more determined than ever to try and rectify it. Without diverse opinions and diverse approaches, we’re still going to do the same thing over and over, and wonder why we’re still in the same situation,” she added.
Prioritising diversity
In June 2023, recognised for her outstanding services to women in wine, Thomson was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, which she describes as one of the biggest achievements of her career.
Through her career Thomson has made a lasting impact on the wine industry, and although the awareness of gender inequality has increased significantly, she highlights several ongoing challenges for women in wine, including the need for better representation in leadership roles.
“Wine Australia has recently collaborated with Charles Sturt University to finally undertake some research about what the key issues are for gender in Australian wine, because until we can understand and define the problem, where do you start throwing money to solve it? After many, many years of calling for that research, it is now underway.
“Part of that research is finding out why women are leaving [the industry] and what we need to do as an industry to address those issues. Until we have that defining research it’s hard to suggest what the solutions should be, but we can learn from other industries and there’s plenty of tools and practical guidance out there for businesses who are serious about diversity to ensure they’re recruiting and assisting their people to be more gender diverse, and diverse in all ways.”
While Thomson recognises the work many of the industry’s businesses are doing to promote diversity, she says one of the major challenges is the lack of resources in small- and medium-sized businesses to implement solutions.
“When the vast majority of the industry is made up of small businesses who are already struggling quite a lot at the moment, the last thing they’re prioritising is gender and diversity, when in fact, a lot of the solutions to the problems that Australian wine is facing can be solved if we actually provide diverse outlooks, and put diverse people in positions of power to find diverse solutions to these problems.
“[In a small business] there is no HR department, there is no policy or program in place to address lots of these human resources issues, and very often diversity and inclusion, in particular gender, just gets lost in the everyday doing of business and making of wine,” Thomson concluded.