The vast majority of leading UK firms still have no female executive directors. Camilla Berens, news editor, Financial Management, finds that there are more complex forces behind the continuing lack of women in board-level jobs than old-fashioned sex discrimination. This is the first in a series of two articles on women in the board room.
Less than a century ago the idea that a woman could become an MP, let alone PM, was inconceivable. Women may have come a long way in their fight for equal standing since achieving full suffrage in 1928, but it’s surprising to see how few are attaining positions of power. Today they make up only 20% of MPs in the Commons and less than a quarter of the Cabinet.
At the upper echelons of the business world, progress is even slower. Just under 15% of non-executive directors on FTSE 100 boards are women – and the proportion of female executive directors in these companies is a paltry 3%.
So why, more than 30 years after the Sex Discrimination Act created the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), are so many women still failing to make it to the top of the corporate ladder? Is sex discrimination more prevalent in the boardroom than it is in Westminster’s corridors of power? If the stories emerging from the recent spate of employment tribunals are anything to go by, sexism in the City is still very much part of daily life.
Such cases have revealed that female high-flyers in the Square Mile still receive smaller bonuses than those awarded to their male colleagues; that senior male executives still openly refer to their female colleagues as ‘totty’; and that certain City grandees still classify women as ‘nannies, grannies or fannies’, as former Tory MP Teresa Gorman so indelicately put it.
Although more significant progress has been made in the public sector following several government initiatives to support women’s careers, it seems that the private sector is failing to recognise their specific needs as they rise through the ranks.
Bleak future
The EOC’s annual ‘Sex and power’ index paints a bleak picture of the future for working women across the board. The report concludes by suggesting that, unless certain barriers are removed, it will take 20 more years to achieve sexual equality in the upper grades of the civil service and twice that time for the same balance to be reached in FTSE 100 boardrooms.
Even the UK’s more progressive bluechip companies are failing to provide an environment that allows women to thrive. A recent internal investigation by BT into why female employees were leaving the company revealed a clear frustration with its male-dominated culture.
‘Those women who do succeed here seem to do so on very male terms,’ one former employee was quoted as saying. ‘I believe that women quite often sacrifice who they really are at work, which can be very tiring. We quite often work and think in a different way from men. This is not valued, even though it’s equally valuable.’
The demands on a senior executive in any organisation, large or small, can be exacting – even more so if that individual has young children. Today’s female executives are still struggling to balance their career aspirations with their natural inclination to raise a family. As long as most working women continue to accept the job of chief operations officer at home, is it really possible for them to get to board level without having an element of Superwoman in their genes?
Finance is a good pathway
CIMA past president Claire Ighodaro brought up three children while progressing to the role of finance director at BT’s broadband division. But in an interview with Financial Management in 2003 (‘Precedent setter’, July/August) she admitted that she regularly went without sleep to get everything done.
Even Nicola Horlick, who juggled a job as a City fund manager with raising a family of six, couldn’t have it all. Despite gaining acres of press coverage about her perfectly managed lifestyle, she was eventually forced out of her job at Morgan Grenfell and her marriage collapsed.
The good news for ambitious female accountants is that the finance profession appears to offer one of the best pathways into the boardroom. There are now nine female finance directors in the FTSE 250. According to Val Singh, senior research fellow in organisational behaviour at Cranfield School of Management, a growing number of women are taking this path because it’s more structured than most.
‘A lot of the job is based on an objective assessment of a qualification and not so much on a judgment of the person’s character,’ she said. ‘Finance is also a specialist role with a direct career path, which makes promotion much simpler than it would be for someone in general management.’
One of those nine FTSE 250 finance directors, MarieLouise Clayton, insists that she has no special powers. ‘People expect me to be extraordinary in some way,’ she said. ‘I’m just an ordinary person in an unusual position.’
Superhuman
But the 45-yearold mother of three does concede that she’s blessed with almost super human energy levels. ‘My children tell me I’m not normal,’ she admitted. ‘They say that most mums want to sit down and watch television in the evening, but I’m not like that. I like to be on the go.’
Clayton has worked her way up via Exxon, Alcatel, GEC and Alstom, and her career includes a period as a lone parent. For the past year she has been group FD at oil and gas firm Venture Production. The qualities that she said helped her to get there include persistence; flexibility in terms of location, role and sector; and a ‘clear sense of self and what I want to achieve’.
Another key ingredient, apart from her energy and ability to fit her work and home lives together seamlessly, is a thick skin. ‘You’ve got to be very, very demanding of yourself,’ Clayton warned. ‘There’s no room for self pity.’
Despite the deadline-driven nature of accounting, Clayton believes that this discipline is no harder to master than any other corporate function. ‘My life revolves around deadlines,’ she said. ‘What’s really important is that I can rely on all those around me, both at work and at home, to help me meet them.’
Clayton has little time for emotive concepts such as the glass ceiling, but she says she has experienced what might be described as subtle forms of sexism. She gave an example of a situation that she’s encountered many times: ‘I’ll enter a meeting accompanied by a group of colleagues and, more often than not, my hand will be the last to be shaken by our hosts because they assume that I must be the most junior member of the group.’
She said this attitude is displayed by young and old alike, but dismissed it as ‘just one of those things you have to deal with in a male-dominated culture. They don’t realise they’re doing it. It’s like being in the playground: if someone walks in who’s purple, the other kids don’t know how to deal with it. Once they realise what they’ve done, though, they’re on the back foot and I’m actually in a stronger position.’
'That showed them'
The seniority of Clayton’s role gives her the flexibility she needs to run her private and working lives efficiently. ‘My work is not about nine to five; it’s about getting the job done,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the office after 6pm, but I am happy to take my BlackBerry home. Once I’ve seen to the children, I’ll sit down at my computer with a glass of wine and put in the extra hour.’
Clearly, Clayton is highly talented and motivated, but her qualities are not unique. Part of the reason why more women aren’t emulating her success can be found lower down the career ladder.
She recalls a period in her thirties when it was hard to find challenging jobs. ‘There was an assumption by the guys at the recruitment agencies – and they were all guys then – that I’d be more interested at that age in having children than committing to a career,’ she said. ‘The next thing I did was move to Turkey as a finance director with Alcatel. That showed them.’
Next month’s article will look at how women are attempting to rewrite the rules of work in a different approach to having it all.
This article first appeared in the April edition of Financial Management.