One of the enjoyable things about being in London when the European Parliament isn’t sitting (we don’t call it “recess” though that’s as good a term as any) is being able to catch up with must listen programmes like Woman’s Hour.
I was particularly interested in this item today, trailed on the BBC website:
“We know that women can struggle to “get on” at work if they have kids. And it seems that even at the very top, women with children are at a disadvantage in competing for jobs. The number of women in the most senior executive positions is actually decreasing, and nearly half the biggest companies have no women at all on their boards. The government says it wants to increase the number of women reaching the boards of public companies – but how can women break through the glass ceiling into the boardroom?”
I have, in fact, blogged myself on this very subject, a matter dear to my heart. It’s one of those very difficult issues where progress seems almost impossible, a fact borne out by a recent study from Cranfield University.
However, there are occasional rays of hope. Jane Garvey on Woman’s Hour discussed a new flexible working scheme recently introduced by the law firm Allen and Overy with their spokeswoman Melissa Samuel.
It’s good to see a firm such as Allen and Overy taking the initiative, not, I should say, for purely altruistic reasons. As a sound commercial undertaking, they recognise that when women leave to have children, the company loses considerable experience and expertise. Allen and Overy therefore wants to keep their top employees and is therefore willing to look at ways of accommodating women with children.
Other firms sadly put prejudice before business sense.
24 percent of FTSE 100 companies have no women on their boards and more than half of the FTSE 200 companies have no women in the boardroom.
Norway has made it mandatory for 40 percent of company boards to ne made up of women. There have, of course, been no detrimental effects.
Spain and Italy are looking at introducing comply or explain measures to get more women into their company boardrooms.
It’s high time we in the UK followed these European examples and introduced statutory measures to ensure women take up their fair share of top table positions. The last Labour government made great strides. Lynne Featherstone, Coalition Women’s Minister, should now be building on what has already been achieved.
Will the Coalition be up to it? Watch this space.
I have no opinion as to whether there “should” be more women in boardrooms. I do, however, heartily wish that gravy-train politicians would refrain from interfering in the decisions that are properly made by private companies.
If you cannot offer something useful for business, best to stay quiet.
Discriminatory laws will not advance the cause of equality, but hold it back. How can people be equal if some people are getting extra protection/consideration based on their gender?
Consider this; If a board, has to replace one of its members, in order to keep it’s 40% woman board members or face the wrath of the law. Assume the best candidate for the job is male they will be compelled, by law, to reject him based SOLELY on his gender. That is sexism pure and simple and worse, it’s state mandated sexism.
Is the glass ceiling real? Possibly but I think it’s fading. As the top positions start being handed over from the baby-boomer to Generation X so sexism in the workplace will fade. The board members will be made up of as many women who were best suited for the job and not because it allows the company to meet some conjured up government quota.
I’m curous though. Is it your opinion that there aren’t as many woman in these top jobs mainly because of discrimination?
Has the possibility occured that there really aren’t that many women competing for them? I doubt you care about the answer, but I wonder if you removed discrimination completely from the equation whether we’d get close to boards naturally being comprised 40% of woman.
M Lakshmi
I think business would be more effective if it considered 100% of the population for posts, far too many have excluded women and there’s abundant evidence of this. using the best talent makes business more effective, keeping things “private” allows discrimination to continue.
RTS
“Discrimnatory laws will not advance the cause of equality, but hold it back”
For hundreds of years there were no “disciminatory laws” as you describe them and racism and sexism were endemic.
Since Labour has introduced laws on equal pay and against racism it is clear that equality has improved, even David Cameron acknowledges that. I’d prefer to not return to the Victorian values you suggest, they’ve failed before and I see no reason why they wouldn’t fail again.
The Labour Party falls short of the Norwegian quota of 40% when appointing women. In its leadership contest there is only a 20% quota for the fifth candidate Dianne Abbott.
It is a great pity in my view that she is trailing so badly; unlike the others she is definitely a ‘human’ with the human characteristics of humour, self-deprecation, etc.
This is so unlike the others who appear to be just mechanical clones of Tony Blair. I find it difficult to discriminate between them, except perhaps in that David Milliband indulges far more than the others in affecting the glottal stop.
An excellent interview of Diane Abbott by Polly Toynbee can be seen on the Guardian web site at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2010/jul/29/diane-abbott-labour-leadership . Her comments about Labour’s record on human rights issues were wide-ranging and included the detention of children, compulsory ID cards, ninety days detention of terror suspects and torture.