COPYRIGHT

Fourth Estate

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First published in paperback 1998

Copyright © Sally Garratt 1998

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Source ISBN: 9780006386773

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2016 ISBN: 9780007483068

Version: 2016-04-27

DEDICATION

To all those women managers who;

in the past, have paved the way for the rest of us;

in the present, are reaping the benefits of that pioneering

work and taking it forward;

and, in the future, will recognize the contribution of

previous generations and be able to realize for

themselves our dreams and hopes for fulfilling,

challenging and balanced lives.

And to:

All the men who are working for a world where diversity

is valued and where each individual’s skills and talents

are used and appreciated.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

PART ONE: HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Women at Work: The Way in, the Way up and the Way Forward

Management Barriers

Attitudes of organizations and managers

Lack of career guidance and career goals

Family pressures and expectations

Personal limitations

Help is at Hand

Colleagues

Family

Role models, coaches and mentors

Friends and networks

Books and articles

Courses and outside activities

Embracing Change

The nature of learning

Finding the right training

Women-only programmes

Criteria for Success

How do we measure success?

Keeping the Balance

PART TWO: MANAGING FOR THE MILLENNIUM

The 21st-Century Manager: The Shape of Things to Come

Looking Forward

How could training and development for women managers be improved?

Do women need to compromise to succeed in a male-dominated corporate world?

A seat on the board?

And, finally …

Keep Reading

Appendix I: The Case Studies

Appendix II: The Scope of the Questionnaire

Further Reading

Useful Addresses

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The role of women in the world of work, and the consequent impact it will have on corporate cultures, is at a crucial transitional point as we approach the Millennium. How organizations respond will determine to a large extent the future of business and the economic success of the nation.

The world of work is undergoing a significant transformation and is learning, through necessity, to manage that change. Organizations of all sizes are rethinking not only how they are structured but, above all, how they are run and what types of directing and managing styles are appropriate.

Growing recognition and acceptance that women bring different and unique talents to the workplace has resulted in women making remarkable headway in organizations during the latter years of this century. That awareness must now be taken a step further – by fully integrating men and women within corporate cultures – so that organizations may reap the benefit of the combination of both sexes’ abilities and qualities.

First, the statistics: all indicators point to significant changes in the future composition of the working population of the United Kingdom. Social Trends 27 – the 1997 edition of the annual survey of life in the UK published by the Office for National Statistics – reports that, by 2006, the number of full-time jobs is not expected to show any significant increase or decrease, but that the existing trend for more part-time and self-employed workers is likely to be reinforced.

It is anticipated that, by 2006, women will account for 46% of the entire workforce; and of the additional 1.4 million people expected in the workforce, 1 million will be women. The number of part-time workers is set to rise by 10% and those in self-employment by 25%. Traditionally, women are more likely to be in part-time work, but that trend, too, is changing. Between 1986 and 1996, the numbers of women in part-time work rose by 17% to 5.3 million, but the number of men doubled to 1.2 million. Social Trends 27 also reports that, in 1995, the UK had a higher proportion of people working from home than any other EU country, with 30% of males and 25% of females working at home for at least part of the year.

If these statistics are borne out, then the number of women within all spheres of the workplace will increase dramatically and the nature of organizations will undoubtedly change. As modern companies recognize the need to be people-oriented and family-friendly in order to move forward and succeed, they will need to build on the ‘feminine’ characteristics which complement the ‘masculine’ traits that have traditionally typified corporate cultures. The workplace would then not drive women away, but become much more attractive to them.

As society re-evaluates the way it conducts itself, and as businesses search for healthier ways of organizing themselves, the old ways are being called into question. Characteristics of traditional, male-dominated organizations – where women have been judged by masculine yardsticks – are no longer accepted as the norm. The competitive, controlling, hierarchical, dictatorial, critical approaches epitomized by the Army, the Church and the State, and practised by many business organizations, are being strongly challenged by supporters of the more intuitive feminine qualities of co-operation, facilitation, coaching and an ability to listen to and encourage other people.

Already, a great number of highly successful women have paved the way to a point where their influence is beginning to be felt and appreciated. Marjorie Scardino, Chairman of the Pearson Group, has become the first female chairman of a FT-SE 100 company. By example, such women have highlighted alternative approaches to the traditional managerial styles of the past, and are teaching organizations to react positively in their attitudes to employing women. In turn, organizations are accepting that women’s capabilities provide a useful, complementary and necessary foil to the skills and qualities of their male employees. This is why there is such a strong and determined move towards establishing equality of opportunity in the workplace.

In the aftermath of the publication of GCSE and A level results in 1994, there were several articles remarking on the fact that girls’ schools had ‘forged ahead’ in the league tables. In an article featured in The Times of 3 September 1994, a professor of education was quoted as saying ‘Ten years of equal opportunities has focused on raising the standards achieved by girls, and has proved brilliantly successful.’

This trend has continued to the point where girls in all types of school have been outperforming the boys at GCSE and are now beginning to do so at A level, too. In the spring of 1996, the Chief Inspector of Schools described the under-achieving of boys as one of the most disturbing problems facing the education system. Schools are now having to turn their attention to raising the standards of boys’ work, but understand that they will have to tackle the problem in a fresh way – taking into account the specific needs and culture of boys’ groups, whilst maintaining girls’ progress – thereby allowing the two groups to work together naturally and to the benefit of both.

We are reminded that this is undoubtedly a period of dramatic change, time and time again, through the reactions of the media, the presence of ever-successful management gurus and the constant demand for training courses. The result of this turbulence is that the majority of us have experienced the consequences, either stimulating or depressing, of those changes and, if we have not been affected directly, we know someone who has.

The shape and structures of organizations are altering rapidly as we move towards the twenty-first century. This may manifest itself in the transformation from public to corporatized or privatized companies, from strict hierarchies to flatter structures, or from centralized to de-centralized businesses.

As this trend continues, organizations increasingly have to look at new ways of working; of how to react continuously to the turbulence around them, internally and externally, and, above all, how to learn from all these experiences.

Directors, senior managers and executives are facing difficult questions and dilemmas about the best way to meet these challenges. This is especially true as employees are beginning to reel from the effects of too much change and are instead looking forward to a period of consolidation where new ways of working and operating are given a chance to succeed.

Organizations suffer when their workforce begins to feel jaded and worn down by continuous upheaval. It becomes difficult to judge the relative success or failure of different initiatives if they have not been subjected to rigorous benchmarking before more changes occur, if they are not given time to work, or if insufficient thought to their introduction means they are not properly implemented.

Newspapers, journals, TV and radio, and the professional associations which deal primarily with the management and direction of organizations are looking carefully at how the art of managing will evolve over the next few years. Management Development to the Millennium (1996), published by the Institute of Management, says that ‘he (The Boss) is just as likely to be a she, because female ways of managing will be more appropriate in the millennium’.

One of the key features of change already in place is the implosion of middle management, which indicates that the emphasis of the managerial role is being altered. Many traditional roles, such as personnel, administration and accounting, have been devolved to line managers who consequently find that their jobs now include extra tasks for which they may be ill-equipped. The combination of an increased sphere of responsibility and often only a superficial knowledge of their new tasks can result in feelings of professional anxiety and insecurity unless they adapt their management style from coercing and telling to co-operating and encouraging. This is where women will come into their own.

Yet, at a time 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 want to assess the changes that have affected women in management so that they may:

 learn from the past and present and so approach the future confidently, with full knowledge of the challenges they will have to face

 clarify how they may contribute fully to managing their organizations, businesses and communities as they strive to survive and flourish in the next century.

There is a feeling of optimism about the future for women in business. This revolves around an increasing compatibility between the sexes in the workplace, rather than the unrealistic expectation that male and female managers will ever be equal in numbers. The domestic factor of female employees with families is the main reason for this, although ‘family-friendly’ employment policies are gaining some ground. It is also significant that more and more women are either setting up their own small businesses, or becoming self-employed, as an alternative to having to fit into a corporate culture which is, for many, an alien way of working.

Demographic pressures and trends, education, male views of sharing family responsibilities, among other issues, are all building towards a peak that suggests we are on the brink of a fundamental change in the role women will play in the world of management. Women must prepare themselves to make full use of these changes and the consequent opportunities to take their appropriate places as directors and managers. They will introduce female perspectives and behaviours to complement those currently held in traditional, male-dominated organizations and bring a much-needed balance to the corporate world, thus enabling it to be more successful in its competitive environment.

Women are now in a position to excel as they grow in confidence and begin to understand the benefits of diversity in the workplace. As one manager says, ‘All successful women need to share their experiences – tips on success, motivation and confidence, as well as revealing failures – so all women will see it is not an easy ladder to climb’. They will, however, see that it is possible to climb that ladder.

Networking and the need for coaches and mentors have also been mentioned time and time again as an important way of building up a store of experiences which may be used to increase confidence in two ways: first, that to employ behaviours with which you feel comfortable is the best approach and, second, that you have learned and absorbed all the skills and knowledge required to do the job.

What I hope will prove interesting and helpful are the comments and opinions of women who have found themselves in a variety of situations and how they have dealt with them. They are typical of the many thousands of women managers throughout the country who have a strong feeling of their worth and who are beginning to make their presence felt.

Through the examples of case studies and interviews, through long discussions with friends and work colleagues, through articles in various publications and from my own experiences as an employee, manager, teacher, developer, trainer, and consultant to organizations, my aim in this book is threefold:

1 to look at what has happened to women managers in the past so that we may learn from their experiences

2 to set the benchmarks of where women managers are now and where they would like/expect to be as we approach the next century (because only if we do that will we know later if any change has actually taken place)

3 to suggest ways in which women may prepare themselves for the different environments of the next century

It is crucial that women

 become aware of the major challenges facing management

 understand what qualities and skills managers will need to deal with those challenges

 discuss what women, in particular, will bring to the different organizational structures and cultures

 work with men to achieve the balance and strength that diversity brings

Having learned from the past and present, women can approach the future confidently knowing what challenges they will have to face, and how they can contribute fully to managing their organizations, businesses and communities in the next century.

PART ONE How did we get here?

WOMEN AT WORK: THE WAY IN, THE WAY UP AND THE WAY FORWARD

The career paths of a great many of today’s women managers often seem to have their beginnings rooted in a haphazard past. In the early 1960s, when I sat my A levels and wondered what I was going to do next, the career counsellors at my grammar school concluded that I was not university material and suggested I went to secretarial college. The choice was that or teacher training college or becoming a nurse. I believed the counsellors when they said I wasn’t clever enough to go to university, and having no idea of what the future might hold and feeling relieved to have got that far anyway, I went along with the idea of doing a one-year secretarial course in London.

For me the secretarial route proved to be an excellent way of moving into junior management and large numbers of my contemporaries (many of whom are now public figures) followed the same path. Today many parents actively dissuade their daughters from taking a secretarial course, primarily because they still perceive the role of secretary as the demeaning stereotype, or because they believe it has no prospects for a ‘proper’ job. Perhaps with more people learning keyboard skills within a job, good secretarial training – and the accompanying self-organization skills – are not seen to be as important in the workplace as they once were.

Another traditional way into management was via personnel and training and, until recently, many senior women in the private sector represented the human resources field. Some took the secretarial administration route, while others began as graduate trainees, choosing personnel as their preferred specialism. While personnel was somehow understood to be less ‘difficult’ than other areas of a company, and the ‘sharing and caring’ skills of personnel were always seen to be the preserve of women, it is now quite usual to find women managers in all other aspects of business, such as engineering, finance, law and marketing.

In the public sector, the health service has a markedly different male/female ratio among its managers from that of the private sector. This does not automatically mean that women have an easier time moving up the career structure, but it does indicate that they are probably more experienced at working with male colleagues who are, in turn, more used to working with women. ‘One of the reasons I have enjoyed working in the NHS is because I have always felt that equal recognition is given to good managers, regardless of their sex. There are excellent managers of both sexes in the NHS – it is very much up to the individuals to create their own opportunities.’

Many of the women managers I have met from the NHS, or local authorities, have spent the greater part of their working lives within the same organization, but have regularly changed jobs within it. They have gained invaluable experience from this, especially in learning how to keep an eye open for appropriate openings and in seizing any available opportunity for advancement and personal development.

As I mentioned in the introduction, there are increasing numbers of women who will no longer tolerate a strictly male management environment. But, having challenged the ‘jobs for the boys’ culture and moved up the corporate ladder, then many women, halfway through their careers, opt out.

Why do so many women having made it to middle management fail to take their careers and their management skills any further up the corporate ladder? The explanations for this include: lack of confidence and not pushing themselves forward; career breaks; the glass ceiling; not going on courses; being late developers (recognizing their abilities at a later stage than their male contemporaries); and being unwilling to play internal politics or ‘men’s games’.

The main points characterizing women’s current positions as managers, particularly those over 35, seem to be:

 career counselling, coaching and mentoring were not nearly as sophisticated in the early 1960s–70s as they are now

 the range of available jobs has broadened out immeasurably due to change in society’s attitudes generally, self-confidence and aspirations of individuals

 for many managers in their late thirties/forties/fifties, the career path to management is haphazard/snakes and ladders, with the necessary skills being picked up along the way

 nowadays, careers are and have to be better planned, with the emphasis on an open mind. This means focusing on acquiring skills through experience and training rather than aiming for a particular job level in one particular industry

MANAGEMENT BARRIERS

Women managers identify four main reasons for late entry into managerial roles, or for slow progress in achieving their career goals:

 Attitudes of organizations and managers (male and female)

 Lack of career guidance/career goals

 Family pressures and expectations

 Personal limitations

Attitudes of organizations and managers

Not surprisingly, women have found it particularly hard to progress within traditionally male-dominated cultures and organizational structures. They talk of ‘men and their perceptions of who and what is needed and the way to do things’. One human resources specialist spoke of ‘a company culture which is particularly hierarchical, conservative and control-oriented. This has made life difficult for me, given that my career has been about valuing human resources as a strategic and developmental activity.’

Women may come up against male prejudices at work in all manner of guises. Organizations which operate graduate traineeships and management schemes for ‘high fliers’ often tend to favour male Oxbridge graduates. One woman who was employed by such a company realized that being female and coming from an ex-polytechnic was so abhorrent to one of the male managers that he consequently successfully obstructed her progress within the company.

During my research, I heard numerous examples whereby male managers had deliberately excluded women colleagues from management team meetings, or had discussed important issues away from formal meetings so that women were not involved. Such feelings of discomfort and threat or fear of the unknown are experienced by many men when they face working closely with women – possibly for the first time – and they may employ tactics such as using their stronger, louder voices to drown out female colleagues in an attempt to halt their contributions. It is not unusual for the credit of a woman’s work to be taken by her male boss or colleague, but it is becoming less acceptable to excuse such behaviour on the grounds of male feelings of jealousy or vulnerability, or because men are assumed to be following their instincts to dominate, protect and provide.

One woman’s experience was:

‘There were two male managers who were in competition with each other over my work and resources and over who wanted to use my achievements to advance themselves. They always managed to keep themselves promoted ahead of me so my work could keep pushing them forward.’

A chilling example of some male managers’ attitudes is given by a woman working in the NHS:

‘I was aware there were helpful females in my own organization, but I was actively prevented by male managers from gaining legitimate access to them.’

One common experience shared by women managers is the failure to secure a deserved promotion or a higher level job, knowing that, in spite of the official reasons given, it came down to the fact that they were not male. Specific examples of this emerged from an ambitious local government officer who felt strongly that she would have reached the position of Chief Executive by now if she were a man, and another manager who was told: ‘On the face of it you have everything the job needs, but, you see, it wouldn’t do to have a woman. We’re not ready for that yet’. That was in 1986.

In spite of legislation, these practices still exist, albeit covertly, because employees in less enlightened and open organizations are aware that they could be subjected to charges of sexual discrimination, harassment and so on.

One of this book’s case study interviewees, Carol, had always said that she had rarely come across discrimination, probably because she never expected it, but she does have one personal example which she relates: ‘When the children were younger, I employed a nanny and one day, when she was ill, I grabbed some work and told my boss I had to collect the children. I did the work at home, but when I went back into the office the next day he said, “This is a problem. How do I know that this isn’t going to happen again?” I said, “How dare you. You gave one of the men in the department a week off work because his wife had hurt her back. You were all sympathy for him. The person who was looking after the children was ill – it’s the same situation”. He then saw my point and no more was said.’

Another interviewee, Judy, qualified as a barrister in the late 1970s but found that, in addition to there being too many barristers on the market, there were problems in being a woman in the law. She did not fit in with the stereotype set by the men – nor did she want to. Most of all she disliked the lack of sensitivity towards clients – what she called the ‘legal equivalent of a bedside manner’. When she tried to change the attitudes of those she worked with, she was totally ignored and moved from the legal department of her organization into a management training role. In spite of her many successes, ‘I was starting to experience problems with a boss who was finding my innovative approach both disconcerting and a threat. He realized that women’s issues was a topical subject that he should address but, although I was the only woman in my team with relevant experience of these, I was never asked to contribute’.

At the top of organizations, the unwillingness to appoint women to the board is commonplace. The experience of one director who was not promoted to her board despite seven years on the Group Executive Committee is not unusual. Private sector organizations, in particular, are seen as traditionally conservative, with chairmen appointing fellow board members in their own image – same background, same sex, same education, same professional training, same age. This lack of diversity, however, is now becoming subject to scrutiny and criticism, especially following publications such as the Cadbury Committee report which recommends the widespread use of non-executive, or independent, directors on boards. Growing numbers of experienced, professional women are proving valuable additions to boards across a wide range of business activities.

Yet it is not just the male managers who prove obstructive. Those women who, in the past, felt they could progress within their organizations only by becoming ‘honorary men’ affected other women in two ways. First, as many of them adopted the ‘I reached this position through my own efforts. Why should I help you?’ attitude, they positively impeded their junior colleagues’ progress. Second, this approach deterred many other women from moving forward as it was not seen as an acceptable way of behaving. The role model presented by these power-dressing, aggressive female managers was not perceived as a positive one and other women did not, therefore, feel inclined to apply for more senior jobs.

I was interested to hear one fifty-year-old executive, who is the only woman at her level in the organization, say that she feels she has little in common with other, much younger, female managers and that there are none anywhere near her age or experience. Because of her position she naturally has more contact with her male peers on a day-to-day basis, but she feels she is missing out by not working with other women. One disadvantage of the recent fashion for ‘down-sizing’ and ‘right-sizing’ is that there are signs of a small, but significant, counter-trend where some women have been forced out of top-level posts and those who remain may well find themselves in a similar situation of becoming isolated and lonely. Other women say that in such cases it is the duty of the older female manager to act as a mentor or coach to others as a way of helping them through the organization, as well as keeping in touch with the issues that affect the younger women – such as, how to communicate their opinions and needs in a positive, assertive manner, while maintaining their womenliness; combining home and work; influencing the corporate culture so that men and women value what they each bring to the workplace.

Very few companies provide adequate if any childcare arrangements for their employees. This has a considerable effect on working mothers, who wish to pursue their career but who are not prepared to settle for unsatisfactory childcare facilities in order to continue working. Susan Hay, who founded her own workplace nursery consultancy because she could not find suitable childcare for her own children, has ten years’ experience in this field and knows that the position of working women has been hindered because of the lack of investment in childcare by organizations. ‘Access to childcare, as well as the cost and varying quality of it, has been a major influence on the development and expansion of part-time work for women. This often means that women are working below their abilities because the better jobs are full-time jobs. There is also a tendency for higher-level jobs to be in the key cities and this is not always compatible with acceptable childcare provision.’

The growing importance of childcare issues was underlined in November 1997, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced the establishment over the next five years of 300,000 ‘After School Clubs’, which will offer places to up to one million children.

Case study – Alison

Alison, 41, is married with no children. She trained as a nurse and worked as a medical secretary, before moving into the field of management education and training. She was the founding director of a medical charity; set up a management consultancy; founded her own charity, Action on Depression; and is Director of the British Vascular Foundation. She was a former Chairman of City Women’s Network, and has served on the Women’s Advisory Panel of Opportunity 2000 and on the board of Fair Play for Women. She is a trained counsellor; Fellow of the RSA; a member of the National Association of Chief Executives of National Voluntary Organizations; and also sits on the board of The International Alliance (a global organization of senior women’s networks).

‘My girls’ public school had few expectations for its pupils and after leaving I became a nurse. I wanted to live in London and to be self-supporting after all the financial sacrifices my parents had made to pay my school fees, but I couldn’t stand the rigid hierarchy at the hospital where I worked and felt totally unstretched intellectually. I realized that I should have read medicine, not nursing, but financially it was not possible to give up work to take the necessary A levels, nor did I have the confidence to make the switch. After qualifying, I became a staff nurse at Guy’s, but at the back of my mind was always the niggling thought – “Is the rest of my life going to be like this?”

‘I decided to give myself a year away from hospitals to see what was happening in the outside world and thought again about studying medicine. I have always regretted not doing it. With the misguided idea that becoming a secretary would be a clear route into management, I enrolled for a six-week typing course and invented my own shorthand. I boldly put myself forward as a medical secretary and went to work in a hospital where I was tucked away in a back office with only the occasional consultant for company. This was not at all exciting – there wasn’t even the patient contact that I had so enjoyed as a nurse. So, making yet another mistake, I joined a firm of accountants because I thought it would be fun in the City. It was very jolly there, but my boss fell in love with me and, as I wasn’t interested and three years of accountants was ample, I left to help set up a private medical screening facility. It was the first of its kind and I soon realized that I actually possessed some entrepreneurial talents and obviously enjoyed starting new projects. However, once it was up and running successfully, I thought, “Where do we go from here? All this experience, no clear career path, no way to use the experience, so what should I do next?”

‘I was twenty-seven, had spent ten years in London and was bored, footloose and fancy free. I had the urge to go abroad again (as the daughter of a naval officer, I travelled a great deal), so I stuck a pin in a map and hit Hong Kong. I had no job planned, nowhere to live and not much money, but six weeks later I was on a plane. Hong Kong is a sink-or-swim place and there is nothing so motivating as having no money. The most useful thing that happened was being introduced to a residential club for business-women, the Helena May, where a group of us shared experiences, jobs, contacts and so on. I nursed for a short while, but felt even more exploited than I had done in the UK, so was soon looking for something else. Through the Helena May network, I went to a cocktail party and met a businessman who ran training courses and who had been badly let down by one of his tutors – who should have been running a programme in China, but had been taken ill. After talking for a while, he asked if I would like to take the tutor’s place – “Can you be on the 8.30 flight tomorrow morning?” Having agreed, I found myself in what felt like the middle of nowhere with sixty hand-picked Chinese executives who were there to learn about Western management methods. It was exciting, frustrating and I loved it. I developed a great love of China, in spite of developing malnutrition, surviving banquets of three-snake casserole and sea cucumber, and went on to learn Mandarin at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Later, I was headhunted to set up the Asian arm of an American computer company and my boss delegated everything so I ran the whole show.

‘Between contracts working in China and return trips to Hong Kong for much needed R&R, I went to a tea party and met my husband. We were married in England while still living in Hong Kong – so don’t ever complain about organizing a big wedding, unless you’ve arranged it from a distance of 8000 miles! I was thirty-three and keen to stay in Hong Kong, but my husband wanted to come home. I had been away for five or six years and felt very out of touch – the sort of things I had been doing were not to be found in the UK. My first mistake was to work with a bunch of cowboys who were establishing a rehabilitation centre. When I realized what they were up to, the matron and I left on the same day.

‘When I later became founding director of a medical charity, the entrepreneurial side of me enjoyed that very much, but the experience was marred by the macho power games always going on. There was only one woman on the board, and there were many conflicts of interests. It is a myth that charity trustees are driven only by altruism. Aware of a crying need for specialists who understand the voluntary sector, two colleagues and I set up a consultancy which offers advice to charities on strategic planning, marketing, trustee selection, training and forth. I did this for three years and am still actively involved, but I missed the hands-on operational side of work and decided to return to being a charity director. In 1995 I was recruited to head up the British Vascular Foundation. Raising funds, launching appeals and so forth – all these involve my skills as a businesswoman and marketing professional.’

Lack of career guidance and career goals

What goals? All too often, at the beginning of their working lives, women have not set themselves clear goals; or, in the case of many women over the past three decades, ‘did not recognize I was setting out on a career’. Although the situation has improved over the last ten years, I still hear many women talking about their schools and the expectations (or lack of them) for the female pupils. The family environment and the school careers advice often reinforced the idea that some kind of professional training (nursing, secretarial, teaching), or perhaps university, would be followed by marriage, homemaking and motherhood as sure as night follows day. What was rare was the chance to look beyond that scenario and consider the different options, including following a life-long career, of not necessarily getting married, of possibly not having children, of changing track if the first choice didn’t work out, or of pursuing several different types of employment.

The paradox here is that in the 1960s and 1970s, when this attitude was still prevalent, there were plenty of jobs for everyone. As Beverley points out, ‘One of the most significant changes from when I was at school and the present day is that we knew we could get a job. That doesn’t happen now.’

Theresa went to ‘a wonderful girls’ school where everyone assumed you would all do very well – which usually meant working for a few years, marrying and having children. If you were outrageously clever, you might carry on doing something as long as the children didn’t suffer. I knew of only one woman who went out to work. She was something in the Treasury and this was much derided. It probably meant that the children didn’t have puddings during the week!’ Theresa also talks about the conflicting assumptions made by the school and the outside world. ‘Until I was sixteen I was under the delusion that you set your sights on Cambridge or somewhere like that, but I was told that Cambridge was not the sort of place that girls went to. It was full of boys and not right for girls. That was the prevailing wisdom and before I heard that it had never crossed my mind that boys and girls were treated differently’.

Julia was privately educated in the 1970s at a school which assumed that women would have a career, and university was both expected and encouraged. Paradoxically, it was Oxford which let her down. She found the University and the Career advisers to be of virtually no help in offering her guidance about what she should do after her degree.

Alison, on the other hand, also privately educated, fared differently again. She found that her school had few expectations for its pupils beyond working as a secretary, teacher or nurse and waiting for Mr Right to come along.

Women who went to mixed-sex schools reported on different experiences. One woman mentioned that she was fortunate enough to be one of seven particularly bright girls in her year and they were encouraged to perform well in class and in exams. She is not so sure that the same would have happened if she had been the only girl with academic aspirations in her form.

Another talked of being very competitive and sporty when at a mixed school and about how she was more likely to be found playing hockey with the boys than netball with the girls. This was frowned upon by the staff and she had to work extra hard to be allowed to enjoy the things she wanted to do as opposed to the things that others thought she ought to do.

Nearly all the women I spoke to mentioned the lack of a range of possibilities offered to them by careers advisers. Sarah who, against great difficulties, did well in her O and A levels, looks back with disappointment at the advice she was given. ‘No one ever mentioned PR to me. I also wish that someone had suggested being a magazine editor – I would have loved to have aimed for that.’

The lack of appropriate career guidance at school is still cited as one of the most common obstacles to making the most appropriate job choice for the future, although the service does seem to be improving in some schools. The Institute of Management’s 1997 report (A Question of Balance – see here) found that 25% of the managers in the survey felt that their careers had been hindered in some way by a lack of appropriate guidance. When young people are faced with making important, life-shaping decisions about their futures, the range of choices must seem overwhelming. Well-known and recognized job titles, professions, trades and industries are joined by a whole host of other options which are not so familiar and about which little information is given. But, with the increasing use of computer-based questionnaires to help students find out more about their strengths and weaknesses and to point them in the direction of possible careers and, with easy access to databases, it is now comparatively simple to discover which subjects they need to study to follow a particular interest.

It is not difficult to find out which universities and colleges have the best reputations for specific subjects, or how the relevant courses and their faculties differ from one another. Inevitably, however, there is a limit to the depth of available information and students are often unaware of the entire range of possibilities offered by their preferred subjects. Because of this they are not always able to choose the most appropriate courses, or the ones which would suit them best. It seems to me that the present, rather limited approach to careers guidance is not helpful, particularly now when the possibilities of pursuing a job for life are not high.

The world of work is changing very quickly – much more rapidly than most adults from the conventional world of the professions and nine to five jobs realize. The traditional concept of a ‘career’ is disappearing and many representatives of the present and future student generations are more than likely to change direction several times during their working lives. The idea of a portfolio career – not relying on one single area of work or skill to generate income – is growing in popularity: especially when employees no longer feel they can rely on a company to provide them with the security that used to be seen as an employer’s duty to the workforce. Changes in companies’ policies which lead to redundancies or redeployment of resources mean that people are becoming used to the idea of additional training or re-training in order to fill another position within the organization or to find work elsewhere. This will become quite normal and the people who will fare best in an unstable job market are those who learn to be flexible and who develop a range of skills, knowledge and experience.

To this end, career consultants are beginning to emerge who offer a complementary service which can be used alongside the more traditional mechanical approach and which begins the process of thinking about the world of work in a new and exciting way. This approach looks at what kind of organizations the students want to work with, what kind of lifestyle they aspire to, and how they will measure personal success. It concentrates less on a specific area of work or profession and more on what the individual student hopes to give to and receive from his or her working life. Students can then begin to clarify the direction they wish to follow and also take the chance to research and explore the various possibilities that open up to them.

If young people were offered an improved careers guidance service, then I’m sure that it would not be so common to hear adults making dissatisfied comments, such as:

‘My career has tended to follow the path of opportunity rather than any clearly defined strategy’, or

‘… late discovery of what I wanted to do and late discovery of my talents.’

It is interesting to look at the two apparently conflicting meanings of the word ‘career’. As a noun, it implies the existence of a systematic path through your working life. As a verb, it expresses rushing about without any apparent focus. Which definition do you follow? Do you see a case for changing from one to the other? It would seem from these two definitions that each of us can make a considered choice about the next step in our lives – at whatever point it occurs.

This is not to say that everyone needs, or is suited to a clearly defined career path, but it does seem obvious to me that some of the wasted time and talent evident in many women’s early lives could be avoided with a more thorough and knowledgeable approach to career counselling from the outset.

The same principle applies later on. For example, one manager talked of:

‘Not having clear goals in the sense of promotion, failing to recognize opportunities for advancement, not reading how the system worked.’

Traditionally, the idea of designing your future in terms of work was more likely to be found among the boys than the girls and this is recognized by women managers:

‘I was probably less focused upon my career goals than my male counterparts. I was more concerned with job achievement than job progression.’

Having a limited academic education, or not being educated to degree level, are the two main reasons given by women, who describe themselves as late developers or for lacking confidence in themselves and their professional capabilities.

Case study – Judy

Judy, 43, is married with two young children and is the head of a central support team in a local authority. She has a degree in business studies and also trained as a barrister. She is a non-executive director of an NHS Trust.

‘No one in my family had been to university before – they had not even thought about it – but when I realized that university was a prospect for me I was encouraged by an uncle. Money was a problem, so I was driven to aim for a university degree with sponsorship funding. My father had been a shop manager, so business was seen as highly respectable and going into business was seen as a good idea. As I was female and good with people, Personnel seemed to be the obvious route to everyone else. BP offered me a sponsorship and I accepted a four-year ‘thin sandwich’ course, with a salary on graduation which was more than my father’s. From then on my feet didn’t touch the ground. I moved every six months, including a stint working in Scotland on the North Sea operation.

‘I obtained a good degree and specialized in Industrial Relations and Employment Law. I thought about professional qualifications and, because I had done well at law, the lecturer suggested I went for the Bar which I had never even contemplated. “Why not?” I needed to try. My father advised me, “Never regret anything”, so I applied and got in – but most of my family thought I was crazy. My husband liked to show off about my aspirations to become a barrister, but he didn’t like my studying. After graduating, I moved to UK Oil to work in personnel-related research, and Industrial Relations which I really enjoyed. Around the same time, I was called to the Bar. The respect I found I was being shown at work served to reinforce what I was beginning to feel about myself – which was counter to what was happening at home. I left the house and my marriage and never looked back. In 1980, when I was twenty-six, my first case was my own divorce.

‘After I qualified, I soon realized that there were too many barristers on the market and, anyway, I knew I wanted the chance to apply my legal knowledge on a practical level and decided to remain in industry. The opportunity arose to apply for the job of Personnel Officer at the company’s research centre and later as the Training Officer for the whole site, comprising 2000 people. I now had to put into practice what I had learned in theory and I found myself in one of the most satisfying jobs I have ever had. I consolidated my own life, bought my own flat and became financially independent. Simultaneously, my relationship with an ex-colleague had become particularly special and in 1984 we decided to make it official. We had both been through divorces and the stress of this had opened up for me a sideline interest in complementary medicine, starting with reflexology.

‘“Where next?” As a lawyer, my obvious choice should have been the legal department. I enquired about the possibility of getting a commercial pupillage, but that didn’t materialize and I took the commercial lawyer’s post. Experience quickly showed that, while I was capable of doing the job, I did not fit in with the stereotype. When I tried to make changes, I was totally ignored and concluded that this job was not for me when one of my previous managers asked me directly why I was there – and I couldn’t answer. He asked me to join him in management training.

‘The two years had not been fulfilling as a job, but we had a lot to sort out on the personal side. My husband, David, moved first to Hampshire and then to Kent, so I was commuting long distance and managing three homes! By now I was expecting our first child and suddenly, in 1986, everything was starting to come together. A group of us devised the Integrated MBA and teamed up with Warwick Business School as our academic partner. We also formed a Business School Network with British Airways and offered back critique to the business schools.

‘I was beginning to experience problems with a boss who was finding my innovative approach both disconcerting and a threat. I realized that I had found the glass ceiling in this organization and decided to move on. The choice was either to take up a senior post with my local county council, or to go out on my own. I decided I needed more experience before I became a consultant, so I applied for the education job. I knew that financially it could be a major problem, but also that I would never be given the same level of responsibility in the old job. It would mean a huge drop in salary, loss of an interest-free loan, car and so on. Coincidentally, the Economist had been writing reports on MBAs and asked me to be their adviser. They also required an author for their report, Guide to Executive Programmes in Europe and the USA and I offered to do it. The payment was exactly the sum I needed to make up the shortfall in salary so I resigned – BP was stunned that I should leave after seventeen years. They made a counter offer, but I knew I had to go to the new job where I would be in charge of many more people and have greater responsibility. I also felt that BP’s professional standards had declined and that, if I did not act, they would compromise my own standards.

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