European firms say they treat men and women exactly the same, but that is precisely the problem, say the authors of a new book about women at work

 

European firms say they treat men and women exactly the same, but that is precisely the problem, say the authors of a new book about women at work

When Cranfield Business School launched its International Centre for Women Business Leaders in 1999, more than a third of FTSE 100 companies did not have a single woman on their boards. That proportion has steadily fallen, dipping below one-quarter last year, according to the centre’s statistics.

In a report coinciding with the 100th International Women’s Day on 8 March, the centre revealed that the number of female FTSE 100 directors almost doubled from just 5.6 per cent in 2000 to 11 per cent in 2006.

But while the statistics are moving in the right direction, one seasoned observer claims that the corporate approach to gender needs a thorough rethink.

“Executives often say that they treat men and women exactly equally,” says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, founding director of the European Professional Women’s Network and co-author with former Financial Times journalist Alison Maitland of a new book, “Why Women Mean Business”.

Speaking to Ethical Corporation from her office in Paris, where she runs a consulting firm, Wittenberg-Cox says equal treatment for both sexes is “half the problem”. She explains: “Men and women are different, and failing to understand these differences leaves room for unconscious, systemic bias which leaves women at a disadvantage.”

While companies may recruit a similar number of male and female graduates, figures from the UK’s Equal Opportunities Commission show that women get a progressively smaller share of promotions to senior jobs during their 30s and 40s.

Women still drop off the career ladder in large numbers when starting families, according to commission data, which shows that 20 per cent of private sector workers and 7 per cent of those in the public sector leave their jobs at this point.

Wheat and chaff

Wittenberg-Cox argues that companies allow their best female staff to seep out of the talent pipeline during their 30s, leaving too few qualified applicants for the most senior positions. She highlights as one cause the process used by many firms to stream high-potential staff into senior jobs.

“Particularly in large multinationals, there’s a pretty formal system of high-potential identification, which is often defined by the HR department to operate in an age bracket of 28 to 35,” Wittenberg-Cox says.

With many women deciding to start a family at this time, surveys by the Equal Opportunities Commission show that women start to lag behind in the promotion stakes at this point. “These policies are fair and equal, in that no-one is formally discriminated against,” Wittenberg-Cox says. “But no single policy does more to eliminate women from leadership.”

She also highlights an experience common to many members of the European Professional Women’s Network, who find that the definition of success changes at this level, particularly in elite industries such as consulting and banking, where women typically have very successful careers in their 20s but reach partner or manager grade less often.

Women generally fail to make the move from analyst-type roles, where the onus is on contributing intellectual heft, to managerial roles, which hinge on selling the firm’s services, according to Wittenberg-Cox.

Highly valued as mid-level workers, women can find themselves sidelined from promotions that depend on wielding a “network of influence”, she says. Domestic responsibilities or simple male clubiness can exclude them from work-related conversations in social environments where deals are struck and contacts made, she adds.

Another factor could be the vocabulary used by senior executives to communicate with staff, which often emphasises a tough, unforgiving approach to business. “Business rhetoric still has an unbelievably military flavour,” Wittenberg-Cox says. She cites a wide range of corporate communications, including magazines, strategy documents and speeches, which abound in the language of warfare and conquest.

“A good alternative is to emphasise a conception of leadership as an obligation to serve others,” she says. “It’s better to speak about a responsibility to serve, and not about having to crush everybody else on the way up the ladder.”

Better all round

The authors of “Why Women Mean Business” argue that the male-designed architecture of most large firms results in influences that make it harder for women to climb the career ladder, or discourage them from trying.

But the traditional tools of “diversity” programmes fail to do justice to the scale of the problem, they argue, since they focus narrowly on helping women to cope in a male environment. Women’s networks, assertiveness training and mentoring schemes work in some situations, the authors say, but they do not address underlying factors that mean women are discriminated against at work.

First on the agenda is to guide more women into core, line-management functions, such as running a company’s country operations or overseeing individual plants, the book says. Whereas many choose specialist jobs like human resources, communications or law, these may not be the surest path to the boardroom.

Another priority is to watch the different ways men and women apply for promotion. According to internal research at IT giant Hewlett-Packard, which the authors highlight, women apply for jobs if they feel they meet 100 per cent of the stated criteria, whereas men put themselves forward if they fit just 60 per cent.

HR departments that are sensitive to gender psychology can lift capable women into leadership roles even if they do not appear to be scrambling for positions of power, they suggest.

Companies may also benefit by raising the age limit on their talent identification schemes to accommodate women who do not put themselves forward during the so-called “turbulent 30s”. As well as a range of Scandinavian companies, the authors cite successful initiatives along these lines at French firms Air Liquide and France Telecom.

Maitland says that such an approach benefits women executives, but also makes companies ready for new patterns of working life such as later retirement ages and the spread of dual-career families.

“We see women as emerging into the best decade of their professional life in their late 40s and 50s when they are through the child-rearing stage and have managed to keep going professionally. They often seem to be raring to go at that point,” she says. “As in many cases, we find that the policies which work best for women make the company a better place to be for all staff, regardless of gender.”

Feminine ethics

The drive to get more women into boardrooms has a clear commercial rationale, with women comprising a majority of university graduates and a huge share of spending power. But Wittenberg-Cox says that companies stand to gain something else besides a better understanding of their female employees and customers: a more prudent approach to financial risk.

She cites recent discussions in which a group of European chief executives talked about what quality they most desired in a successor. The conversation centred on the idea of “hunger” for work and success.

Whereas men are more likely to see top corporate jobs as prizes in a competitive race, women often espouse a vision of leadership as a form of service to society, the book argues. It is worth considering. As well as making firms more profitable, a better gender balance might make firms less vulnerable to the type of excessive risk taken by the alpha males of the likes of Enron and WorldCom.

“Why Women Mean Business” by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland is published by John Wiley, 376pp, £16.99, ISBN: 978-0-470-72508-5.



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