Women in leadership: what needs to change?

We still have a long way to go before we are fairly represented in positions of power and leadership.

The Women in Leadership talk at St Paul’s last week concluded that we have come far but have not yet arrived at gender equality.

It was an imposing venue to discuss an imposing problem.

The Women in Leadership: what needs to change? discussion held at St Paul’s Cathedral last week featured four female speakers from differing sectors and disciplines and was set up to highlight the challenges and successes of women in leadership.

The event, organised by the St Paul’s Institute, began by looking at the events of the last few weeks, including the vote to allow women to be ordained as bishops and David Cameron’s cabinet ‘reshuffle’ to include a handful more women.

But the speakers emphasised that we still have a long way to go before women will be fairly represented in positions of power and leadership.

Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a Jamaican-born Anglican vicar in Hackney and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, spoke eloquently of the struggles faced by women and ethnic minorities in accessing positions of power, respect and value.

She said she believed this was fundamentally a problem of empathy rooted in historical ways of seeing women and ethnic minorities as commodities first, which breeds a feeling that they are somehow less than human and their feelings, ideas, and contributions are therefore devalued.

This, she argued, is why wider society is often so uncomfortable with women or people from ethnic minorities holding positions of power – because the contributions of these people are not seen as valuable.

We can see evidence of this in the excuses made for why women and ethnic minorities are not already in positions of leadership – that there is a need for ‘qualified’ people in these positions, implying that intrinsically women and minorities are not qualified.

She aslo highlighted that there is a moral imperative to tackle the societal messages causing this entrenched belief and encourage instead a stance of empathy, where everyone is seen as possessing equal humanity and their contributions are valued, otherwise we will see not enough women and ethnic minorities in positions of leadership.

If we fail, she said, the persistent inequality will only lead to discontent and conflict in our societies.

We may have had a good few weeks, she said, but we have not arrived at equality while women in the UK – and all over the world – are still suffering discriminatory practices.

Long-held prejudices will not change overnight, but she urged us to take positive action to get women and minorities sitting at the table and contributing in all organisations.

We need to teach girls, she argued, that there are no ceilings “be they glass or ecclesiastical” to prevent them from reaching where they want to go.

And we can do this by giving them positive role models which reflect the diverse society they live in.

Liz Bingham, managing partner for Talent at Ernst and Young, began her talk by noting that in thirty years of working in London very little had changed – today still less than 6 per cent of the FTSE 250 executive directors are women, and only a fifth of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons are female.

Given that the coverage of the cabinet reshuffle last week focused on gender and not skillsets and that it will take decades still before women receive equal pay, she also thought it was too soon to claim victory in the fight for equality.

She then explained the strong business case for equality, based on research by Credit Suisse and her own organisation.

After analysing thousands of cases, they have found that gender-balanced teams deliver better and more profitable projects and that on average it is more profitable to invest in companies with women on the managing board.

But if the business case is so strong and clear, why are we still talking about women being held back in business?

Firstly, she believes we are being held back by the protectionism of those in power: predominantly straight, white men, who struggle to share that power.

Secondly, she believes something is going wrong in our education and parenting of girls which causes them to self-limit their career ambitions in comparison to boys as they grow up.

Thirdly, she argued that we teach girls that good girls don’t ask, which translates into the workplace where women tend to work hard and hope someone will notice, while their male counterparts tend to work less but make sure their work gets noticed by asking for promotion.

Bingham’s refrain was that we need to lift as we climb – create role models for young women, teach our girls to be ambitious, and hold the media to account when they tear down positive female role models.

She also advocated focusing on the interventions which work because what gets measured gets done.

These included setting targets and consequences for not meeting them, implementing clever interventions to help women balance work and family and living the values we want to see in business.

Frances O’Grady, the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), spoke passionately about the progress and challenges faced by women in the Trade Union movement.

She highlighted the fact that nearly one third of leaders in the movement are women and that for the first time the membership is now 50/50 split between the genders.

However the list of challenges faced by female workers is still a daunting one – with high unemployment, low living standards, massive inequality, the majority of people living below the living wage being women, a persistent gender pay gap – and job ghettoisation still keeping women in dead end, low paid jobs.

Women, she said, are often the ones who work to support children unable to move out in the current housing market and elderly parents without adequate pensions.

And women are also predominently the ones to take time out of careers to raise children.

But we have yet to value that contribution in our society, she argued, through positive action such as promoting more carer pay, more flexible working, better maternal and paternal pay, and more focus on reasonable working hours rather than ‘presenteeism’ where mere presence in an office is enough.

O’Grady acknowledged that many people do not support quotas in the work place; for many, it does not affect them if a few rich men at the top are swapped for a few rich women.

However, she countered, quotas are important because they challenge the idea that women have to ‘get there on merit’.

Did all the men on company boards really get there on merit? she asked: Were those jobs ever advertised?

Are we really saying if someone earns 150 times more than someone else that they both merit that pay gap?

At the Trade Union Congress, O’Grady concluded, they fight for a culture of dignity and respect for all workers, who should be treated as human beings not just human resources.

Ceri Goddard, Director of Gender at the Young Foundation, then stood up to speak about the role of campaigning and changing legislation in promoting female empowerment.

She explained that the Young Foundation aims to harness the power of social innovation to tackle the root causes of inequality.

She believes that innovation is key for female empowerment as it allows us to think outside the box which prescribes a patriarchal model of leadership.

This allows us to envisage leadership in different forms and overcome the myth that there is only one type of leadership that can garner respect.

Innovation has been behind many successes for equality, she pointed out, from the contraceptive pill to the Open University allowing people, especially women, to retrain in their own time.

Innovation also disrupts the status quo, be that in politics, the church or the economy, but has to be managed well to harness its full potential.

But legislation also has a role to play – especially in that it can support change and force discussion.

In that sense, legal quotas for women in positions of leadership work because they precede equality and force a discussion on it.

In that vein, we need to change the status quo that says a woman leader cannot value herself or be valued if she didn’t get to her position on traditionally defined ‘merit’.

However there are some women who dislike the idea of quotas, who want to feel that they got to positions of leadership on their own merit and in the face of adversity.

But why do we need either or? Goddard asked.

Change takes time and needs different approaches.

We need to be disruptive of old ideas, envisage a plurality of ways to lead and develop a broader understanding of merit that is inclusive.

Overall the event at St Paul’s was well-attended and inspiring, though it could have perhaps benefitted from a venue with better acoustics.

It was refreshing to hear a plurality of voices from across sectors and disciplines realising what they all can contribute to the fight for equality.

This sort of interdisciplinary event is important because, as the director of St Paul’s Institute, Barbara Ridpath, said in her opening comments, “what unites us is infinitely more important than what divides us.”

It might however have been beneficial to have a male or female speaker talk about the steps that men must take to check their own assumptions and privilege in these sectors and support women to fill leadership positions.

Many of the speakers referred to getting men ‘on board’ but none adequately addressed the positive actions men could take to be involved.

As it was, the only male voice we heard was that of the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, David Ison, who was somewhat ironically chosen to chair and preside over the whole event.

If this event is repeated next year, as it should be, that aspect may be what needs to change.