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Thousands of women ‘missing’ from top British posts

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Summary of story from The Guardian, August 17, 2011

More than 5,400 women are missing from the 26,000 most powerful job roles in Britain a report has found.

The study carried out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that advancement towards equality was “tortuously slow” and “regularly stalls or even reverses”.

The Sex and Power 2011 report measures how many women are in positions of power across 27 job categories.

The report also found that although there were more women in top posts in 17 out of 27 categories compared with 2007-2008, the increases were small.

Even though there were more female senior police officers, trade union general secretaries and members of the senior judiciary, in other areas women accounted for just one per cent of top posts.

There were significant drops across ten sectors including editors of national newspapers, cabinet members, local authority council leaders, public appointments and health service chief executives.

The number of female cabinet ministers has dropped to 17.4 per cent or four women and the female editors of newspapers has dropped from four to two.

Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, Anna Bird, says that the persistence of the glass ceiling is a result of many forms of discrimination.

She says that “we can’t afford to wait but need to introduce some form of positive action” and called the report a “call to arms”.

However Heather McGregor, the leader of the 30% Club, a group which lobbies for at least three out of ten directors of British companies to be female, said the glass ceiling is a “myth” (see WVoN story).

“It’s not a glass ceiling stopping women getting to the top but the fact that they are less likely to build networks, focus on their career priorities, and spend a substantial proportion of their time on their own PR.

“How will you ever be picked for a good job if no one knows about you?”

  1. 80% of female prisoners, homeless, and war dead are also missing but I don’t see a campaign to ensure that quotas in these areas, or am I missing something?

    Ok sarcasm aside we have imbalances across public and private sectors with male and female stereotyped jobs. Sorting these or actually determining if it is choice or pressure that moves people into certain jobs would help however at the end of the day legislating around social pressure tends to be a bad plan because people will find ways round it. At the end of the day is it more important that 25,000 elites who are unrepresentative of society are balanced or that we balance primary and secondary education teaching to ensure kids have role models and mentors so they are happy to follow their dreams.

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