London - From time to time a high-powered man in a suit opines that women can’t cut it in the boardroom. And we educated women smile pityingly.
How quaint. What a ridiculously late-Seventies opinion. Has nobody pointed out the shards of the broken class ceiling lying around his executive walnut desk?
Just a few months back, Simon Murray, chairman of Glencore, the world’s largest commodities trader, remarked that women “have a tendency not to be so involved quite often, and they’re not so ambitious in business as men because they’ve got better things to do”.
Yes, Mr Murray, we’re so pre-occupied with painting our toenails that we can’t get excited about those financial derivatives. You deal with those nasty futures markets and we’ll remember to switch off the hair straighteners.
There are - we scoff - plenty of women on the top rung of the corporate ladder. There’s Pearson CEO Dame Marjorie Scardino, investment fund manager Nicola Horlick and Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts and, er...Wait a minute. Where have all the high-powered women gone?
Murray thinks he knows: “Quite often they like bringing up their children and all sorts of other things.”
Now we’re not scoffing quite so much. Well, yes, juggling children and a career certainly isn’t easy.
There’s your explanation then. Simon Murray could quite easily be a Sarah or a Susan were it not for the fact that Sarah and Susan are stuck on the school run.
But a new study of university-educated Generation X women (those born between 1965 and 1978) reveals that 43 percent are not mothers. It means almost half of these women are putting their all into their careers. They’re just not doing as well as the men.
So, if children aren’t the stumbling block, then what is?
Katie Small, 34, managing director of Mercury West Associates, one the UK’s leading insurance companies for high net-worth individuals (and mother of three children aged between two and six) believes a lot of women are simply scared of the “male” personality traits needed to cut it in business.
“I rapidly learned that to achieve in the boardroom, you have to be as assertive as any man, which for most women is just not comfortable or even possible. I am thick-skinned and opinionated. To be a successful MD or CEO, you have to be prepared to work long hours and to have these personality traits, whichever sex you are.”
Dianne Sharp, 39, mother of two teenage children and MD of SCM Pharma, a leading pharmaceutical business, agrees: “I’ve always loved being a woman in a man’s world. I like the challenge, the energy. I think you still have to be that little bit better to succeed.
“You have to walk into the boardroom, and be in charge. I can be quite intimidating and I am strong-willed and opinionated.”
It’s unsettling stuff for a generation brought up to believe that in this day and age women can behave like women in the boardroom - and be successful. But more and more experts think this might not be the case.
A new study published by linguistics expert Dr Judith Bradbury into the speech habits of men and women in seven major companies has revealed that women are four times more likely to be self-deprecating and speak apologetically when dealing with difficult subjects, thus making their position seem weak.
Helen McNallen, 44, was formerly a high-powered trader for Goldman Sachs until her mid-30s when the strain of competing in a man’s world became too much.
“When I left university it was the tail end of the ‘yuppie era’, with City traders swilling champagne and frequenting nightclubs,” she says. “I was thrilled to be accepted into this testosterone-fuelled world. At the time, I became the only female trader in my department and felt that I had to work and play like one of the boys.
“We worked crazy hours and then be out partying with colleagues or clients well into the early hours.
“I was on a six-figure salary and had a house in the City and a renovated barn in Hampshire. But I was so exhausted I spent nearly all of the weekend in bed. I felt tremendously pressurised, and couldn’t think about having children.”
By her mid-30s, Helen was suffering from severe stress, which she refused to deal with properly for a long time on the grounds that it might make her appear weak.
“I eventually realised I couldn’t cope any longer,” she says. “The pressure of being a woman in a man’s world was just too much.”
She says she feels cheated by being sold the myth of the female businesswoman who can work like a man. And she adds: “I am both too old and too set in my ways to start a family, even if it was physically possible.”
So if they aren’t competing in business and nearly half of them aren’t mothers, what are these Generation X women up to?
Despite former trade minister Lord Davies urging top companies to aim for one in four female board members by 2015, in the UK just 12.5 per cent of FTSE 100 company directors are women.
“Anecdotally we’re seeing them moving into more flexible roles,” says Dr Angela Carter, a research fellow at the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. “They’re setting out on their own or moving into consultancy roles.
“There has been a popular conception that flexible working appeals to women because they want children, but that’s not the whole story. Generation X women have been brought up with the expectation of ‘having it all’ and when they’ve found the corporate world is, in fact, often very restrictive and won’t allow this, they’ve gone looking for that freedom elsewhere.”
Clare Schofield, 34, left her corporate PR job for just these reasons. “I’d begun to feel that if you weren’t the first one in the office, or the last man standing at the end of the day, you weren’t taken seriously,” she says.
“I wanted much more than sitting behind a desk. I’m now director of communications for my own business, Unique Creative Communications. Consulting appealed to me, because you have far more flexibility and control, which is what a lot of women want, even if they don’t have children.
“Women get the job done - but we don’t see why we should buy into the macho culture of 14-hour days in the office.”
Which is all fine - although possibly worth remembering next time we’re complaining about (male) corporate fat cats who brought the world economy to its knees.
Because if we’re not prepared to take those high-flying, money-controlling jobs ourselves, then presumably we’re happy for men to take them.
I’m not entirely convinced we’ve thought that one through. - Daily Mail