CBH gender equality in the workplace strong focus in Geraldton Port zone under new boss Brianna Peake

Gender equality and quotas can be treated as a token gesture by some workplaces, but not at CBH — where half of its senior leadership roles in Geraldton are filled by women — while the new boss admits the company still has a way to go. There was just one woman in an executive management role in the CBH Group in 2006, so Australia’s leading cooperative in the grain industry has certainly addressed the imbalance over the past 16 years. An experienced addition to the Geraldton crew is new Port Zone general manager, Brianna Peake, who recently transferred roles from CBH’s chief external relations officer based in Perth to Geraldton. She has been employed by CBH for 11 years. Making the move north at the start of May, Ms Peake said CBH was a female-friendly environment and was striving to bring equal representation to the company. “Like any industry, you do tend to see the numbers aren’t where they need to be in terms of equal representation,” she said. “But what I think — through being proven to me in Geraldton — is that there’s no barrier to women and conditions can be tough for males or females.” Ms Peake’s focus is to encourage female employment in all industry roles. She said CBH still had some way to go as the company was yet to hit its gender diversity target of 30 per cent throughout all levels of the business. “The challenge area can be in operations, where potentially, the role can be remote or more physical,” she said. “Our plant operators are at 20 per cent female participation, our receival point operators are at 8 per cent. “I would really like to see those numbers go up, and I’ll be encouraging that.” Ms Peake said it was heartening to see the jump in female roles appointed to the Geraldton Port zone already in play and she only hoped to improve that in her new role. “It’s probably been traditionally a pretty blokey industry — agriculture — and a somewhat blokey environment, which it doesn’t need to be,” Ms Peake said. “I think we’re really seeing that evolve.” Recent Workplace Gender Equality data shows that 27 per cent of industries are dominated by males, 26 per cent are dominated by females and 47 per cent of industries are mixed between 41-59 per cent. Ms Peake said having more women in the workforce brought a different diversity of thought and operation, including planning and organisation. “Women just bring a really different element to that workforce, like anywhere,” she said. Ms Peake said she was proud of the number of women employed at CBH in Geraldton and increasing those numbers was big on her agenda. “We would really love more women to join us, we really welcome that and we’ll be pushing heavily to make that happen,” she said.