when women are increasingly seen to be treated on an equal footing with their male counterparts, there are rumblings of discontent among the ranks of women managers about the world of work within which they are expected to operate. Many successful women managers are beginning to realize that achieving high corporate status is not as rewarding as they anticipated and they are baulking at the idea of giving up their entire lives to an organization.
In 1997, it was reported in the press on both sides of the Atlantic that the President and Chief Executive of PepsiCo, Brenda Barnes, had decided to stand down from her highly prestigious job in order to spend time watching her sons play football. She is only one of a series of established and successful career women who have decided that they cannot, or do not want to, ‘have it all’ – the concept championed by Nicola Horlick, the City financier who claims that women can combine a high-flying career with a strong marriage and successful motherhood.
The question, as far as many women are concerned, is not ‘can we have it all?’ but ‘do we want to have it all?’
What has caused this transitional stage? Why should women be discontented just as they are beginning to achieve what they have been aiming for over so many years? And, if this trend continues, where will it leave women’s position within the workplace?
But, while it is true that many women managers are fighting a daily battle for recognition and equality of opportunity at work, it is also clear that others are increasingly able to grow and develop. Progress is being made as attitudes, together with company structures, change in women’s favour. We have, at least, moved away from the situation which existed up until the late 1950s and early 1960s when guides for graduates clearly indicated which companies did not employ females. Men are becoming more family conscious. Women have mentioned the increasing number of male bosses who, with families of their own, are more sympathetic to their female colleagues’ attempts to achieve a tenable balance between work, home and leisure. I hope this book gives heart and shows what is possible. Perhaps for those who are unable to change the status quo of where they work now, merely knowing that more enlightened people and organizations do exist will be encouragement enough for those who are unhappy with their current situation to look for jobs elsewhere. This, and the need to re-educate and re-train men, is now seen as urgent if equality of opportunities is to become a reality.
As the attitudes of society and employers towards childcare provision and parenting also develop and improve, more choices will be open to employees to begin to achieve the desired balance of home, leisure and work that is one of the major causes of stress among women today. Susan Hay, a leading provider of workplace nurseries, has seen many changes over the past ten years and suggests that women have become more successful at making their jobs work for them. ‘I suppose the fact is that people who are in work do work very hard. They have become more valuable and companies want to keep them. You get the feeling that there is not nearly as much deadwood as there was, so the people who are in work are in a strong position to make sense of their working lives and, provided they can demonstrate that the employer is gaining rather than losing from an arrangement, they do at least receive a warm hearing. The facts are that women are becoming more tenacious and there is a change in approach by HR people. I think these two trends have come together quite well.’
Part and parcel of an important drive towards building an effective workforce – with the consequent positive effect on the bottom line – is an initiative launched in October 1991 to advance the causes of women at work, Opportunity 2000. This campaign, chaired by Lady Howe, has one clear objective: to increase the quality and quantity of women’s employment opportunities in both private and public sector organizations. There are currently 293 members representing over 25% of the UK workforce. As an example of what the campaign has achieved, listed below are some figures relating to women at work, taken from the 1994/95 review of members’ progress:
1 the percentage of women directors in member organizations has doubled in one year from 8% to 16%
2 women now account for 32% of all managers – up from 25% last year
3 the percentage of women in senior management is up from 12% to 17%, and middle managers from 24% to 28%
4 45% of all graduate entrants are women
Opportunity 2000 also makes positive steps towards recognizing and publicizing the achievement of organizations in increasing the participation of women in the workforce by giving awards to businesses which show demonstrable progress in this field. In 1997, for example, they awarded Yorkshire Bank an award for ‘dismantling the glass ceiling’. When a new chief executive arrived at the bank, he was shocked by the bank’s poor record on promoting women. He and the equal opportunities manager introduced a scheme whereby female employees were encouraged to seek promotion and this has increased the number of women moving into the first level of management by 29% in a year. The chief executive points out that this scheme is rooted in straightforward business sense and that, if 70% of the people in the bank were women, then the bank would not be able to achieve its objectives if it drew its management only from the other 30% of the workforce.
A report, A Question of Balance? A survey of managers’ changing professional and personal values, discusses the gap between managers and their organizations in terms of the cultural values which impact on performance. Modern managers are seen to hold positive attitudes which do not sit comfortably alongside the less enlightened cultures still found in many businesses.
Even though the business environment is changing to enable ‘female ways of managing’ to develop, I suspect that we lost a whole generation of women managers during the 1980s – probably because many of the women who reached the top during that self-centred, brittle decade did not help and support other women and may have, on occasions, actively impeded their progress. This has also resulted in many of the surviving fifty-plus year-olds saying that they have little in common with the younger women and either feel more in tune with their male peers, or feel completely isolated. Now, however, there is a strong feeling that this attitude is disappearing and that successful women are increasingly aware of the need to broadcast their achievements and act as role models, coaches and mentors for the up and coming generation.
We should also bear in mind that, as long as women tend not to measure success solely in terms of status, money and celebrity, there will not be equal numbers of men and women at senior management level. We need to think in terms of equal satisfaction in what women managers are achieving. An example of women’s broader approach is, ‘Although I was in a very senior, prestigious position, I have recently taken a (slightly) downwards step to another post in order to improve the quality of my private life and to maximize the time available for it. That was probably the hardest career decision I have ever taken’. I suspect that women would score higher on this criterion than the men, although it is true that the men are beginning to realize the issues and change their behaviours.
I feel, however, that the real differences will become clear as the current generation of teenagers moves into the world of work. I recently spent some time with the sixth formers at a co-ed public school and was impressed with the attitudes of the boys and girls towards the concept of working together. One of the issues we discussed at length was the occasional pitfalls of men and women working together in business and I was heartened by the positive and sensitive attitudes of both boys and girls to the subject. In fact they almost dismissed it, as it seemed obvious to them that working together on an equal footing was the natural and sensible way of doing things.
I sincerely hope that, as they encounter the current prejudices in organizational cultures, they will have the courage to hold on to the partnership idea and carry it through their lives at work, at home and at play. I trust that the boys won’t be persuaded to adopt the superior, ‘macho’ views of their male colleagues and managers and that the girls will not lose their self-confidence and begin to believe that they are the passive, second-class sex.
If our hopes for the future lie with these young people, then we have to do all we can to pass on what we have learned so that they, too, may learn and take that learning forward to the benefit of everyone.
I have been working with young people and feel strongly about the need to equip them to deal with the changing world of work. I now