10 Questions for Jane Thomson OAM on the 10th Birthday of Australian Women in Wine
On the eve of the 10th birthday celebrations for Australian Women in Wine (AWIW) in 2025, revered wine writer and long serving AWIW Advisory Board member, Jeni Port, interviewed AWIW founder Jane Thomson OAM and asked her 10 key questions.
by Jeni Port
Question 1
You famously tell of sitting on your couch one day and the idea for Australian Women In Wine just came to you. Was there something that led you to that moment, that day back in 2015?
It was through running The Fabulous Ladies’ Wine Society that I really became aware of the depth and breadth of the gender problem in wine. Until then, like a lot of interested consumers, I just didn’t know how bad it was and even now when I continue to run wine dinners or have conversations with female wine consumers, most of them are shocked when I tell them how bad the gender equality situation is in the Australian wine industry. It’s really a hidden and a well-hidden thing, and so I only became consciously aware of this through working in my Fab Ladies Wine business. I was very shocked by it because I had worked in a couple of industries at that point and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and witnessing with my own eyes and hearing about directly.
Question 2
Why did you settle on an awards program?
I thought an awards program is a good attention grabber. A celebration of women in wine was a topic that not many people in the wine industry were recognising at the time or wanting to talk about. I thought an awards program is something that people aren’t going to ignore because everyone loves a winner – male or female – and so it was going to give us a showcase and platform to tell the story of these amazing women in the industry. Hopefully, it would contribute to making the conversation more urgent and louder, and that’s kind of why I got excited about the idea.
Question 3
Early on there was criticism of the award from some sections of the wine industry. Did you expect it?
I was not surprised by this actually because I had already been ridiculed by many people in the industry for my business, The Fabulous Ladies’ Wine Society. It was considered a chick thing, and anything considered a chick thing is always minimised, or seen as less important or less critical. What did surprise me was how quickly that got turned around. It didn’t take long for that to change.
The important thing for me was to win the majority argument, so suddenly we got more support than we did pushback. We got more conversations that were positive instead of negative, we got more positive press, we got more excitement in the industry. We got more natural flow of our stories and press releases and everything just became easier and easier year after year.
Question 4
Looking back over 10 years of AWIW what worked?
The awards and championing women and showcasing what they were doing in a way that people could understand. We weren’t just writing articles about them and saying aren’t they great? We weren’t just creating a group which was about supporting women – those things are all great – but it what was different about the awards that worked.
The competitive nature of the awards appealed to male employers. It brought their attention in a way that I hoped it would. I know there were quite a few male bosses who pushed their employees to enter. They did our work for us because they wanted the attention on their brand and their business that was coming when somebody became a finalist or a winner. That was to our advantage. Our industry is built on competition – take the Australian wine show system!
Question 5
Looking back on those early days how did you manage to reach out to women right across the country?
The big thing that worked was holding them on-line. We were holding the awards on-line before holding awards on-line was a thing, and that was a game changer.
It was an absolute key success factor because suddenly we were able to get people together anywhere across the country. They were not restricted in geography, so they were able to get together wherever they were and celebrate and also meet each other. There was a feeling that we were all in this together, we were making waves here, we were doing something.
Question 6
Then there was a transition from an awards program to something much bigger, something much wider in scope, educating women about their rights, discussing important issues in AWIW national symposiums in Sydney and Hobart. Did anything change as a result?
We don’t get the pushback anymore. This is now a mainstream conversation in the Australian wine industry, it’s not a fringe one anymore. That’s a good thing. It’s only taken a whole decade to get here, but that is a good thing.
Question 7
Highlighting the need for equal opportunity, equal pay, an end to sexism/bullying in the workplace and for better structures in place to assist young parents and more is central to the work of AWIW. But the need is still there, isn’t it?
We still don’t have equal pay even though it is legislated by law that you are supposed to have it. It’s not about having the right laws in place, they have all been in place for decades. So, it’s a culture thing, isn’t it?
My observation is that the Australian wine industry is very slow to change on anything and is very resistant to new ways of doing things.
Question 8
What of initiatives such as the industry Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Charter and the gender equality industry tool kit being developed by Wine Australia with Charles Sturt University?
Well, the Charter didn’t work and hasn’t worked because it was voluntary. Voluntary schemes aren’t affective because unless you force the people who make decisions to make different decisions, they are just going to make the same decisions. They are not going to change. Because there is no accountability. There are no consequences, there are no repercussions for not doing it.
Businesses who are not focused on diversity are actually doing worse, their bottom lines are lower, they are not achieving the level they could be if they had a diverse decision-making team in place.
They are suffering in the long term but not immediately and not visibly, and so because there is no accountability or no consequence for not signing up to this new Charter the application of it has been lower than we would have liked.
Wine Australia has been working with Charles Sturt University over the last year to do a study into gender equality and to develop a toolkit for the Australian wine industry. I think it’s a good step forward that the industry is starting to do these things.
Question 9
When will you recognise change in the Australian wine industry?
Was it Madeleine Albright the former secretary of state under the Clinton administration who said: “We will know when we have reached gender parity when we have just as many average women in positions in power as we have average men.”
That’s when I’ll know.
Question 10
And what of the next 10 years?
There is so much more work to be done. Up until now AWIW has been a not-for-profit activity of The Fabulous Ladies’ Wine Society, so my business has underwritten all of the everyday costs of running Australian Women in Wine.
Now we are setting AWIW up as its own independent structure allowing me to step away and give what we have created to the next group of people to run. That is happening now.
We are in the process of appointing a board to run that organisation and what we have left them with is a nice starting budget, something I wish we had had back in our day.
Hopefully they have the drive, the passion, the energy and the vision to take that and create something even better than what we have been able to do during my decade at the helm.
