From recent events, you might think my timing is awry. Â But we need more women in business.
Because more women means fewer Rebekah Brooks.
This week, the European Parliament voted in support of quotas for women in business and if voluntary measures do not work, for EU legislation to be used.
Currently, women make up 10% of directors and only 3% of CEOs at the largest listed EU companies. Â Progress is painfully slow, only half a percent per year. Â At this rate, the European Parliament predicted that it would take another fifty years for women to have at least 40% of seats in the biggest boardrooms.
Scotland is no better. Â A recent survey for the Herald found that there are only 29 female directors in the 30 largest listed companies in Scotland. Â Ten have no women directors at all, including major companies like A G Barr (Irn Bru manufacturers), Robert Wiseman dairies, Aggreko, Scottish Investment Trust and the Wood Group.
It is truly depressing stuff, but not nearly as depressing as the views of women who have made it to the top. Â Progress has been made in recent years, you need to look at other sectors too, there are more women there in equivalent positions, merit must always come first, and the hoariest chestnut of them all. Â That old faithful – women are too busy juggling careers, children and partners (!) to find time for extras like non-executive positions.
But let’s not rehearse the old arguments – and invite the usual comments – of equality and opportunity.  Except briefly to allow the EU Vice President  Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, (Christian Democrat MEP from Greece) whose resolution on the report on Women and Business Leadership was adopted by the European Parliament, to comment:
“Europe cannot afford to leave talent untapped! Empowering the role of women on management boards of companies is not only about ethics and equality, it is also essential for economic growth and a competitive internal market. With the adoption of the report on Women and Business Leadership, the European Parliament has sent a strong message to governments, social partners and enterprises in Europe”.
The resolution urges the European Commission to “propose legislation including quotas by 2012 for increasing female representation in corporate management bodies of enterprises to 30% by 2015 and to 40% by 2020”, if voluntary measures do not manage to increase the proportion of women. Â The report and debate pointed to the success of similar quota legislation in Norway and welcomed the threshholds already set in France, the Netherlands and Spain.
In the UK too, there have been moves to increase women’s representation in leadership roles voluntarily, through the establishment of the 30% club and in Scotland, the current and soon-to-be chairs of CBI Scotland are women. Â Indeed, Â the new CBI chief, Nosheena Mobarik OBE, has already called for women to be given more senior roles in Scottish boardrooms.
It’s all good but it’s not enough. Â So let’s encourage business to meet these potential quotas voluntarily by focusing on the only arguments that matter to them, the ones that affect the bottom line.
Studies have shown that companies with a higher percentage of women tend to perform better commercially and financially. Â Women have just as many skills and as much experience to offer as men. Â Indeed, their different experiences and perspectives could help create a much needed cultural shift in the way in which business is approached and conducted. Â And there is evidence – cited by David Watt, Director of the Institute of Directors in Scotland – that shows that companies with a diverse and gender balanced boardroom make better progress and have better returns than all-male boards.
So more women directors and in senior leadership positions, more moolah. Â For us all. Â And if that doesn’t appeal, then I don’t know what might.
Oh this. Â More women, fewer Rebekah Brooks. Â Because we’ll get more women of better quality, whose morals and ethics are more sound, and with a shift in culture, there will simply be no room for the likes of Brooks who got to the top by playing men at their own game.
#1 by Aidan Skinner on July 9, 2011 - 11:43 am
I’m all for quotas in this area, but I wonder if we need to look at the mechanisms around suspending and reentering the work force when people have children to allow men to take on more caring work and reduce the harm having kids does to a womans career. It’s not that every woman clearly wants to have them, but it does significantly reduce the pool of mid and senior level women from which to recruit. Closing the pay gap so it’s more feasible for men to take more time off is also important.
I think it’s notable that the countries that have the highest female board representation are those with the lowest overall indicators of gender discrimination in the work place.
#2 by Angus McLellan on July 9, 2011 - 3:18 pm
I’m opposed to quotas and positive discrimination in all forms, but perhaps we should look at how things are going before we judge. The Guardian (1 July, “Number of women appointed to FTSE 100 boards doubles”) tells us that:
“FTSE 100 companies have recruited 23 women to their boards this year – representing about 30% of total board appointments – after Davies said they should sign up to a voluntary target of 25% board representation by 2015.”
This is substantially higher than the 13.9% of FTSE 100 board directorships already held by women, so the trend is positive. As might be expected, smaller companies (FTSE 250 and 350) lag behind their larger cousins, but multiple directorships and a more diverse pool of non-execs from which to recruit will presumably change these too in time.
But complacency is never justified. There’s a way to go yet even to catch up with the US, where S&P 500 companies are a couple of points ahead. But as the original post noted, companies which arbitrarily restrict their choice of senior managers and directors will be worse led and worse performing than more enlightened competitors. For example there are recent studies which suggest that groupthink is reduced by reduced by diversity. When it comes to an open-minded recruitment and promotion policy, if seems like virtue is rewarded.
Colour me very unimpressed by the personalization in the original post though.
#3 by Allan on July 9, 2011 - 1:22 pm
here we go again with more quota’s.
Sorry for the cynisism but quota’s won’t work. I think that Aidan has a point about looking more at working conditions & looking at more favourable benefits in relation to Women leaving their jobs on Maternity leave. It can’t be a coincidence that the example you pick out, Mrs Brooks, is childless.
An awful lot more needs to be done than quotas, which smacks as a quick elasta plast over the problem.
#4 by Aidan Skinner on July 9, 2011 - 6:01 pm
I think we need to address the structural issues as well – this is such a complicated issue with deep, insidious roots that doing either alone is likely to be ineffective or very slow.
#5 by Angus McLellan on July 9, 2011 - 9:18 pm
As I already said, I think there are reasons for cautious optimism here.
The very large corporation in whose giant machine I am a tiny cog has a roughly 2:1 male:female split on the board and about the same at senior executive level. The even larger customer (turnover approximately equal to total govt spending in Scotland) that I am most familiar with has a roughly 1:1 split at board level. But both of these companies are based in the US where programmes to help women and minorities to help themselves up the corporate greasy pole have been around much longer in big companies.
It would be unreasonable to expect Scottish companies to be doing as well right now, given the later start. But the mental environment today is radically changed. We had a female prime minister (love her or loathe her), we’ve a female deputy FM and I would guess that most people who work in a large organisation will have had at least one female boss by the time they reach middle age. There can’t be many people left whose preconceptions would be challenged by the existence of female or minority managers or directors.
Less well run companies may still have a glass ceiling firmly in place, by accident or by design, but that’s their shareholders’ loss. I’m more concerned about public bodies being badly run, which they are if they don’t seek to remove biases from their promotion and recruitment processes.
#6 by Gryff on July 9, 2011 - 1:30 pm
Is action at this level a distraction, worthwhile etc, but a distraction, from the real problem, which is that the vast majority of women in normal jobs are disadvantaged. Solve this, and eventually, the problems at the top will follow. I am not sure a quota at the top level will drag the rest of an organisation, or an economy into equality.
#7 by CassiusClaymore on July 9, 2011 - 6:22 pm
Quotas amount to discrimination against men. Why should individual male job applicants be discriminated against, when they themselves are patently not to blame for the inequality in question?
There should be only one way to get a job – at director level or otherwise. On merit, and regardless of gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc. It’s just morally wrong to discriminate on any of these bases.
Most successful women I know would be appalled at the suggestion that a person from an under-represented group might be ‘given’ a job they don’t deserve. Worse, successful women would be forced to operate in an environment where their peers don’t know whether they got their job on merit, or not. That would be intolerable.
Quotas mean a departure from merit-based selection. This, in turn, lowers the quality of the organisation in question. Not really a change for the better.
CC
#8 by Indy on July 11, 2011 - 9:52 am
Oh cpme on. Are you seriously trying tp tell us that everyone in a top payibng job is there “on merit”? They are just the best people who have naturally risen to the top – who just happen to be mainly drawn from quite a narrow spectrum of society?
#9 by Alec Macph on July 9, 2011 - 11:06 pm
The European Parliament is not the best institution to accuse others of unrepresentativeness.
Quotas like this are feel-good factors. Rather than investing in training programmes and attracting more of the deserved group into study or to make applications, make an anti-meritocratic gesture and leave others to arrange the niceties.
I dare say in a couple of decades, women are going to be heavily represented if not the majority of senior medical positions. Why? Because the recent intakes to medical schools have been increasingly dominated by women, and it takes years to train-up such professionals.
How so? Brooks has had an astute head for business and the verve to rise through the corporate structure… just because you don’t like her approach doesn’t mean the women you’d pick would have the skills necessary.
~alec
#10 by Alec Macph on July 11, 2011 - 2:18 pm
Brooks and Coulson both came from unremarkable backgrounds. Murdoch is a self-made man as well.
~alec
#11 by Indy on July 11, 2011 - 6:26 pm
So what? There are exceptions to every rule. That doesn’t mean the rule is wrong.
#12 by CassiusClaymore on July 11, 2011 - 3:42 pm
Indy
I didn’t say that everyone who has a job has it on merit.
I just said that’s how it should be, and pointed out the fairly obvious fact that using quotas is inherently anti-meritocratic.
You can have quotas. You can have meritocracy. You can’t have both.
CC
#13 by Jeff on July 11, 2011 - 3:49 pm
Of course, one could argue that right now we have neither a meritocracy nor quotas. And given the former isn’t working as it should, perhaps we should try the latter…
#14 by Alec Macph on July 11, 2011 - 4:31 pm
And where do we stop with quotas? Women, BMEs, one-legged lesbian Portuguese donkeys?
I’m a bloke. I am much more disadvantaged than the Middleton girls ever were.
And, how do we distinguish between BMEs? West Indians can be worse off than West Africans (with the latter often harbouring a disdain towards the former, and the former – especially older generations, as Lenny Henry spoke of his mother’s generation – a deep sense of unease). Even within identified BMEs there can be disparities, such as between West Indian boys and girls.
~alec
#15 by Jeff on July 11, 2011 - 4:55 pm
Because there are other problems that can’t be fixed, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t fix those that can be.
#16 by Angus McLellan on July 11, 2011 - 5:45 pm
“Positive discrimination is illegal.”
[Tessa Jowell, Minister for Women, HoC debates, 21 July 2005]
#17 by Indy on July 11, 2011 - 6:34 pm
But what makes you think that informal quotas are not already used? And used to reserve jobs for people from the “right” backgrounds with the “right” connections? I think we all know that goes on.
There is another aspect to this – and that is the difference between the public and private sectors. Because of course women are disproportionately likely to work in the public sector.
I have worked in both and in my experience personal contacts are crucial in the private sector. It may be a cliche but I do think that ,many a deal is still done on the golf course or in the pub. People prefer to give work to their friends and family – there’s definitely a you scratch my back and I;ll scratch yours element to it and nepotism is not considered all that remarkable. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that – but that kind of behaviour in the public sector would be regarded as completely corrupt. Is there a level where women feel more comfortable working in the public sector because of that? Because they don’t have to deal with the old boys network?
#18 by CassiusClaymore on July 11, 2011 - 6:09 pm
Jeff
On the other hand, you can be realistic and accept that humans are flawed and some will not recognise social norms.
Some employers, for example, may be sexists – but I don’t see how that justifies a blanket law telling me and every other employer that I must discriminate against men (or women, depending on the gender profile of my workforce from time to time).
Quotas are a legal obligation upon employers to discriminate on the basis of gender. Hardly the cure for, er, employer discrimination on the basis of gender.
CC
#19 by Alec Macph on July 11, 2011 - 7:00 pm
It depends if you think one quota system would work, which I don’t. As I said, the idea that ten years ago, the Middleton girls were more disadvantaged compared to me is a non-starter.
And I still don’t know how a quota for female employees would have resulted in fewer Rebekah Brooks.
~alec
#20 by Jeff on July 11, 2011 - 9:45 pm
Specifically picking out the future Queen of (genuinely not sure what to put here) is hardly a reasonable argument when talking about the UK as a whole.
And what has the issue got to do with Rebekah Brooks? (!?)
#21 by Indy on July 12, 2011 - 9:23 am
I think the idea is that if you have a more gender balanced workforce you would change the culture. That is of course debatable but that is the theory anyway. And certainly you do have to wonder if the majority of NI employees had been women, would the culture have stayed as it was or would it have changed?
#22 by Shuggy on July 12, 2011 - 10:47 pm
I don’t think you should use utilitarian arguments to make your case – especially not ones that are by definition unverifiable, given that they refer to an imagined future with fewer Rebekah Brooks types. If you think greater female representation in companies is desirable, I assume you do so because you think it’s fairer? I’d prefer this to your more naked appeal to material self-interest…
So more women directors and in senior leadership positions, more moolah. For us all. And if that doesn’t appeal, then I don’t know what might.
Something that didn’t present hierarchies as something to be accepted is given, perhaps? On this subject, this is good… http://bit.ly/iPjN8b