In 2015, the Victorian Government  in Australia made a decision that would ripple through the public sector for a decade: all public bodies were required to achieve 50:50 gender representation on boards. In the water sector, this wasn’t a gentle nudge. Boards were effectively spilled and reappointed, almost overnight, with gender balance mandated rather than encouraged.

It was controversial. It created anxiety. And it forced change.

A recent conversation with Lucia Cade, https://www.linkedin.com/in/luciacade/  an experienced board director who lived through this moment from the inside, raises a question that still divides leaders today:

Is sustainable change better led — or is it sometimes only possible when it’s mandated?

When Mandates Arrive, Leadership Is Tested

At the time of the change, Lucia who was already an experienced board Chair, was allocated a new board Chair role at a larger water utility. She was also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and had chaired 3 boards prior to this change.

In many cases, entire boards shifted from being largely male to genuinely mixed, almost overnight. Some appointees were highly experienced; others were new to board roles altogether and had to learn quickly.

This was not incremental change. It was bold, disruptive and, for many, deeply uncomfortable.

Yet within months, something had happened that years of advocacy had failed to achieve: gender-balanced boards were no longer aspirational, they were the norm. Maybe a proof point to note might also be that when you go looking, purposefully and with a broad view of capability and experience, it is amazing what talent you find, often in plain sight!

Mandates have that power. They remove debate, compress timelines, and force decisions that would otherwise be endlessly deferred.

But they also expose a deeper truth: mandates create movement, not maturity.

What Mandates Can Achieve Quickly

The most obvious impact of the 2015 decision was representation. Boards changed fast and visibly. That visibility mattered. For a sector long characterised by homogenous leadership, it sent a clear signal: this is what leadership looks like now.

Less obvious, but more powerful, were the downstream effects.

Historically, across Victoria’s 18 water corporations, there had only been one female Managing Director. Today, that figure sits closer to 44%. That shift did not happen by chance.

As Lucia observed, boards led by female chairs were more likely to appoint female MDs. Gender-balanced boards brought different perspectives to recruitment, to capability assessment, to what “ready” and “credible” leadership looked like. They also shaped expectations around culture, targets, and reporting.

The boardroom changed the organisation.

The latest Water Industry Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Performance Report produced by VicWater.org reinforces this pattern: where leadership accountability is embedded, progress accelerates. Strong policies and commitments matter — but it is leadership behaviour that determines whether inclusion becomes operational reality. Equity-Diversity-and-Inclusion-Annual-Performance-Repor-2025.pdf

What Mandates Can’t Do

And yet, cracks remain.

While representation at the top has improved, progression below executive levels is slower and harder. The same report highlights a consistent gap: employees largely feel safe to speak up, but far fewer believe they have an equal chance of promotion.

This mirrors what many sectors experience. You can mandate who sits around the table but you cannot mandate trust, fairness, or belonging.

Lucia reflected candidly on this. Structural change at board level was a catalyst, but it did not magically fix capability pipelines, workforce composition, or ingrained assumptions in technical and field roles. The water sector still faces a heavily male-dominated operational workforce, driven by long-standing pipeline issues in STEM education and career pathways.

Mandates opened doors. They did not walk people through them.

From Equality to Equity: Where Leadership Really Matters

One of the most powerful insights from Lucia’s experience was how often leaders confuse equality with equity.

Policies alone are insufficient if they ignore lived reality. For example, shifting from maternity-focused leave to paid parental leave for all genders is not symbolic, it is structural. It enables men to take caring responsibility and women to return to work without penalty. That is equity in action.

Similarly, Lucia deliberately challenged language around flexibility. “Only” was removed from the conversation often heard when referencing people who worked, only part-time. As in her mind, it diminished the contribution people working fewer than full time hours were making. Flexibility was reframed as something everyone might need at different life stages, for different reasons.

This matters because when flexibility is seen as a concession for women, it becomes a career limiter. When it is normalised for all, it becomes a performance enabler.

The EDI report echoes this: the most successful initiatives are those that design work around real people, not idealised employees. Equity is not about treating everyone the same; it is about creating fair access to opportunity.

The Hidden Risk of Fast Change

Was spilling the boards the “right” thing to do?

Lucia is pragmatic. The move undeniably placed some inexperienced people into senior governance roles very quickly. They had to learn fast, under pressure, in public view. That was uncomfortable and, at times, risky, albeit still a right and bold move at the time.

But there was structures and initiatives put in place to enable success from the mandate.

Support networks and buddy systems for new directors and new directors to the water sector we set up. The Victorian Government department established training programs for directors new to the water sector to fast track their knowledge of the legislation, regulation, customer and environmental impact. As well as the VicWAter annual conference, which is another great example

It also required great leadership too. As chair of a larger water company, Lucia was leading a board of 8 people where 6 were new to the organisation. Treating building the team muscle of the board, and the relationship with the executive team using many of the tools she applied in large scale multi-party contracting – for example focusing on clarity of purpose, goals, roles, behaviour and success measures.

Without the mandate, the pace of change would almost certainly have remained glacial. And this tension is central to the leadership question. Waiting for cultural readiness often becomes an excuse for inaction. Mandates remove that excuse but they increase the responsibility on leaders to support, develop and stabilise the change that follows.

The EDI maturity model introduced in the sector is instructive here. It shows that policy maturity typically advances faster than lived experience. Leaders often rate progress more positively than practitioners.

Bridging that gap is where leadership effort must now focus.

If boards had changed but leadership behaviours had not, the impact would have been superficial. Conversely, waiting for every leader to be convinced before acting would have delayed progress indefinitely.

Mandates forced the door open. Leadership determined whether anyone stayed in the room.

Hayley Monks, WUN Co-Founder & Director & MD Echo.