The first woman to head an Australian intelligence agency said on Friday the glass ceiling for women's career advancement was more like a "concrete block", revealing even as a spy chief she had been asked to bring men coffee.
Director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, Rachel Noble, traced the history of women in the intelligence service, from code breakers who intercepted Japanese flight plans during World War Two, working on cypher machines in a garage outside the main building, in an address to the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
"I don't think there is a glass ceiling – it's actually still a concrete block – today it is coated in advanced cloaking technology and I couldn't see it until I got senior enough to reach out and touch it," she said, noting she had only recently become a feminist.
