Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Helena Morrissey 2018

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Helena Morrissey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008241643

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008241629

Version: 2018-12-05

Dedication

In memory of my wonderful grandmothers, Irene and Amy, who did not have the opportunities we have today.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Frontispiece

Dedication

Preface

1 A tale of two career women

2 New leadership required

3 The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power

4 Men, women, equal, different

5 Diversity of thought: welcome until anyone disagrees!

6 Why CEOs need to rethink diversity

7 Own the process

8 Camp CEO

9 Gender equality: good news for men and boys too

10 Women, money and power

11 We can write the future together

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

About the Author

About the Publisher

Preface

It’s a good time to be a girl! In all honesty, I don’t think I could have written that unequivocally before now. Of course, I’ve seen real progress for women over my fifty-year lifetime, thirty-year career in a male-dominated industry and twenty-five years of motherhood, beginning with one son and now (a final tally) nine children, six girls and three boys. It’s certainly been – increasingly – a better time to be a woman. As you read my story I hope you will see much to celebrate about the progress we’ve already made, and how you can create your own opportunities for success, whatever stage you are at in life. I recognise now that I made some ‘lucky’ choices along the way; by seeing what works and what doesn’t, my hope is that you might leave much less to chance.

But today’s opportunity is so much greater than the unfinished business of the past – and that’s why I’ve written this book now. Gender equality is a well-worn subject but it is not one we have mastered. Despite the huge body of literature, of advice, and opinion, along with very many campaigns and initiatives, the reality is that still only a small number of women have been making it to the top or feel they are fulfilling their potential. Many more tell me they feel discouraged about their prospects, unfulfilled or conflicted in their multiple roles as mothers or carers with careers. They can’t see the linkage between their own reality and gender equality efforts that often seem targeted at a narrow group of white, privileged and highly educated women, rather than at all women.

Companies, too, are frustrated by limited progress in the numbers of senior women after many years of feeling they are doing a lot to encourage their female and other ‘diverse’ talent. Sometimes, the result of all these special programmes has – inadvertently – been to do more harm than good; difference can seem difficult rather than desirable.

And yet, I am more optimistic today than ever before. I believe that we – men and women, working together – have an unprecedented opportunity to create a new, more successful, quite different approach, one that will not just create more possibilities for girls, but more choices for boys, too – a bolder approach to gender equality that’s not aimed merely at training a few women in working practices that have outlived their usefulness. Those women (and even fewer ethnic minority, gay or disabled people) who have made it to the top today are the exceptions, the ones who have mostly played by the rules of the existing game. We now have the chance to reinvent the game – not at the expense of men, but by creating new ways of working and living that fit the world of today and tomorrow, not the past. I have spent years listening and engaging with both women and men who tell me very similar things about the pressures they feel to comply with ‘norms’ that seem habitual rather than right for anyone, or relevant in a digital age.

It’s time to think bigger, to act more boldly and, with men, devise new ways of working, living and bringing up families together, as equals. But to make the most of this opportunity we need to stop leaning in to old-fashioned business practices, cultures, hierarchies and a division of roles that evolved long before technology, or before many girls had a great education.

Leaning in to the status quo is perpetuating what holds us back. Instead, we need to shape the world we want to see.

You may be dubious. How can we change a system that has been stacked up against women for so long? This book provides some practical suggestions for you now; a great example from the past lies in the true story of how the Women’s Tennis Association came about (you may have seen the movie The Battle of the Sexes). In 1970, nine courageous women led by Billie Jean King refused to ‘lean in’ to the US Tennis Association, having discovered that the winner of the US Open’s men’s tournament would receive twelve times the woman champion’s prize money. On the face of it, the men running the USTA had all the power, the financing and the media on their side.

But the women would not accept what was clearly an outrageous situation (and more extreme than we tend to encounter today, thanks in part to their trail-blazing). They established their own tour, signing on for just one dollar each. As Billie Jean put it, ‘We weren’t sure about our destiny but we knew it was in our hands for the first time.’ That destiny turned out to be just great. The new women’s tour soon attracted a sponsor and became the foundation stone of the Women’s Tennis Association, which today stages over fifty annual events, including four grand slam tournaments. In 2017, the men’s and women’s US Open champions both received US$3.7 million in prize money.

This redesigning-the-process approach is what we need today. But most gender equality efforts are far less ambitious. Too often, they are aimed at teaching women (and other ‘diverse talent’) how to play the existing system better. As a result, women are at best playing catch-up, while often feeling dissatisfied and questioning their choices. More of us are becoming lawyers, accountants and doctors, but in the meantime men are pushing onwards, upwards and outwards, taking more entrepreneurial, higher-risk routes to success. Start-ups run by women, for example, currently account for only 2% of US venture capital firms’ investments. Following in men’s footsteps, emulating the boys but trailing a few years behind them, is not the answer. As women, we have our own strengths to offer and today we have a better opportunity to demonstrate that than ever before.

What makes me so confident? – and so out of sync with many commentators, who routinely despair at everything from President Trump to gender pay gaps and the litany of revelations about sexual harassment? What about #MeToo, #TimesUp and, in the UK, the sordid revelations of sexual harassment at the notorious Presidents Club dinner? Those unsavoury behaviours had been going on for years; what’s different now is that they are being exposed and addressed. Look at what happened in the aftermath of the revelations about long-running sexual harassment in Hollywood, catalysed by the Harvey Weinstein allegations. We can understand why those who suffered did not speak up at the time; they felt alone, the ‘system’ was omnipotent – but today’s social media enabled them to join forces and change the way this issue will be seen from now onwards. Leaning in to a corrupt system may have seemed the ‘only’ option – now, together, we can transform that system.

The new opportunity I see arises from the very state of flux we find ourselves in. Today’s upheavals are unsettling and may even look like setbacks, but they also open the door to a whole new level of progress. That’s not just wishful thinking. My experiences have shown me that people become receptive to new ideas at moments of dislocation in a way that’s very unlikely in stable times. That’s a rational reaction: when the path is smooth, there is little incentive to consider a different route, but where there is turbulence, we need to explore new concepts that might show us a way through.

Today’s economic, political and societal challenges are certainly immense, driven largely by technology, which is rapidly undermining traditional power structures, changing the nature of leadership, the future of employment, and threatening our security. There is no playbook to consult. Leaders see the need for new thinking, but are grappling with what that looks like.

This book explains how gender balance is an important part of the solution, not – as so many see it – another problem to solve. If we can connect the two, the prize is very great, for each of us as individuals, for equality and for our ability to solve increasingly complex problems. The stark reality is that if we are going to resolve the big disconnects, we need to re-engineer our collective thinking, and that means involving more women. Feminine traits – empathy, collaborative behaviour, the ability to connect emotionally with those we are seeking to influence – can help us find answers.

Of course, men can have those feminine attributes too; what is important is to move on from the macho command-and-control regime that we have become used to for centuries. People will not be told what to do by leaders who don’t connect with them and they don’t trust.

So amidst the current upheavals, we have the chance to develop a new, shared understanding of what’s needed to be successful, in our family lives as well as our careers; what’s needed for men as well as women to have more freedom in how they live and for these positive changes to affect many people. Happily, in my experience many men in many countries around the world now want gender equality too – and that’s key to consigning the whole topic to the history books. Short of a revolution, people on the outside need those on the inside to help them progress. ‘He for she’ (and ‘she for he’) is the right approach.

I have seen change happen once many people start to share the desire to reach a certain outcome, and then work together towards it. A multitude of individuals taking small steps together in the same direction creates a powerful momentum.

So what happens next is very much up to all of us – and that includes you. You don’t need to choose between focusing on your own career and creating the conditions for broader progress; increasingly, those goals are linked. We can write our own story, individually and collectively. This book will show you how to make the most of today’s new opportunities, whether you are still at school, starting out in your working life, looking to progress at mid-career or already at a senior level, whether you are a daughter, son, parent, mentor, mentee, teacher, pupil, CEO or apprentice. First, you need an open mind; much of the current thinking around diversity is – ironically – encouraging the exact opposite. The diversity agenda has been hijacked by virtue signallers, with universities leading the way in shutting down freedom of expression in the name of ‘inclusion’ (sic). A diverse society needs diverse thinking, especially around how we create real inclusion, yet it has become heretical to question ineffective approaches. If we’re going to make real progress, we first need a licence to challenge what has clearly not been working.

I’m certainly not complacent. In my own lifetime I have already seen many stops and starts in the journey towards gender equality and of course there were very many years of effort long before, including the sacrifices made by women who had to fight hard for the right to vote a century ago. Even since I started writing this book a number of critical developments have occurred – and will continue to occur – because great change involves challenging episodes, lurches forward, steps back and the inevitable sense that we are faltering. But this is a necessary part of the process.

And today’s great opportunity is far from universal, with terrible atrocities against women and girls even on our own doorsteps: in England, a case of female genital mutilation (FGM) is discovered or treated every hour and child trafficking referrals (often involving girls for sexual abuse) hit a record high in 2017. Even equality for many will be a hollow victory if these crimes continue. We must also ensure that white, disadvantaged young men, who now have the lowest educational attainment levels of any group, aren’t left behind as we push on towards a world of greater opportunity for bright young women.

These are real challenges but they remind us of the need to improve the whole, not just the outcomes for a few. I am excited about exploring new ways of working that will enable more women to fulfil their potential, more men to play a greater role in their children’s lives, better thinking to solve today’s problems and broader definitions of success. A time when my six daughters not only can be but need to be themselves and when my sons have more choices than their father’s generation, too. A time when, as Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, who came out as gay after forty-one years in business, says, ‘women don’t have to be honorary men, blacks honorary whites, gays honorary straights’.

At which point, we’ll look back and wonder how we got so accustomed to anything else.

Chapter 1

A tale of two career women

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

MARK TWAIN

Consider two real-life career stories. The first involves a 26-year-old British woman who has just returned to her role as a fund manager at a prestigious City firm after five months’ maternity leave. She has worked for the company for five years, having joined its graduate training scheme straight after university. Over 1,500 applications were received for just twenty graduate places. A few days into the training programme, she was selected for a two-year apprenticeship in New York, working for one of the firm’s top global bond fund managers. A promising start to her career.

She found New York both daunting (it was the first time she had ever travelled beyond Europe) and exciting. The work was intensive and the hours long but she enjoyed learning new skills and was soon given more responsibility. As she thought about her future, she found it encouraging that two impressive American women in their forties were leading the firm’s rapid local growth.

When the young woman returned to London, she found the office environment markedly different. The pace was much slower – the daily morning meeting started at 11.45 a.m. – and she was the only woman in a team of 16. Still, the work was interesting and there was plenty of it. She was always first to arrive in the office each day, to deal with queries from Japanese clients in their time zone.

The firm made its annual promotions each April. The goal for high-flying graduates was to be promoted to manager level after five years – coinciding almost exactly with the woman’s return from her first maternity leave. Her two male contemporaries received the promotion. She did not. Disappointed, she asked where she needed to improve but the answer came back, ‘Your work is great, there’s just some doubt over your commitment with a baby.’ Shocked, she struggled to accept that her promising career had fizzled out so quickly.

Our second story concerns a woman nearly a decade older, the mother of five children. The youngest three have just celebrated their first, second and third birthdays. She also works as a fund manager in the City, for a less well known, much smaller firm. She joined seven years ago, as number two (out of two) on the bond desk, a junior role in a relatively backwater area for the company. On the face of it, a less promising situation than the younger woman’s original circumstances.

This story has a happier outcome, though, because the 35-year-old with five young children and just seven years’ service is suddenly – and quite unexpectedly – appointed chief executive officer following a takeover of the company. Over the next 15 years, the new CEO and her colleagues will grow assets under management from £20 billion to over £50 billion, develop a number of market-leading strategies and a strong reputation. She will also go on to have four more children – yes, nine in total.

One a tale of unexpected disappointment, the other of perhaps equally surprising success. Yet both stories are actually about the same woman – me.

So how did I fail to reach even the first rung on the corporate ladder at one firm, yet become chief executive in just seven years at another? Three factors created a formula for success.

The initial setback certainly taught me to do things quite differently the second time around. When I started working in 1987 I genuinely believed that hard work and aptitude determined how far anyone could progress. It simply did not occur to me then that the masculine dress code adopted by many career women at the time (big shoulder-padded suits) suggested that it was still very much a man’s world.

And of course my early experiences of working life had been unusually exciting for a graduate trainee, glamorous even, and that had made me quickly feel confident. The first Wall Street movie was released just after I moved to New York, as was Working Girl. The environment was energising. The two women I saw at the top, seemingly in control of their own destiny, distracted me from the reality that they were anomalous and had made either hard choices or sacrifices to get to the top. They travelled extensively and had limited time for their personal lives. Both married late: one was childless, the other underwent (well-publicised) fertility treatment to finally conceive her only child. While these women looked like wonderful role models in terms of career achievements, their lives certainly did not appeal to everyone.

The London office was very different to New York, yet I had no inkling of how my maternity would be perceived. I hadn’t given any indication that I was less ambitious or committed either during my pregnancy or after my return. When the list of promotions came around and my name wasn’t on it, I genuinely thought there was something I hadn’t been doing well, that I could improve for next time. When my boss made it so clear, in a way that wouldn’t happen today, I was disappointed and surprised but at least I knew where I stood. My first reaction was confusion – I simply hadn’t made the connection between being a new mother and failing to get that promotion. There was then a moment of clarity: I could not change my existing environment, so I had to find a new one.

The whole episode was a valuable career lesson. It taught me the need to be resilient, which has been so important in many situations – but not to be immutable, not to bounce back from the disappointment only to take another blow. When I started at the next firm, Newton Investment Management, I knew that I needed to take responsibility for my career. I needed to strategise more, not just wait for my contribution to be recognised.

During the recruitment process I had been interviewed by the firm’s founder, Stewart Newton. It was an encouraging sign, that someone so senior was involved in hiring someone so junior. Stewart was fascinating to talk to, he loved the bond and currency markets, was animated and probing and always on the lookout for investment talent. Towards the end of my first year, my (female) boss resigned and Stewart told me that he would hire a ‘bond guru’ to lead the area. I took a deep breath and asked if I might look after the portfolios in the meantime. Stewart agreed, with a few reasonable conditions. I would have to sit next to him and each afternoon we would meet in his office towards the end of the day to go over my trades and ideas. Effectively, and unofficially, he became my mentor, and the arrangement helped me to learn from him while he grew more confident in my abilities.

Stewart liked to move around the office, changing his seat every six weeks or so to oversee different areas of the investment team. I therefore had to move too, which seemed slightly embarrassing at the time but helped me to get to know my colleagues. The experience of speaking up and then being given the portfolios to manage encouraged me to seek other opportunities. I quickly realised that if I asked, the answer was usually ‘yes’, as long as I was making a reasonable request, had something to offer and was performing well. When interesting committees were formed and I wasn’t included, I asked for a seat at the table. I always phrased my requests constructively: ‘Oh, I wonder if I might join the economics group? Perhaps I could contribute the bond analysis and it would be useful for me to hear what else is being considered.’ There was no confrontation, no argument, and the door usually opened. Inevitably, there were setbacks, but I tried to learn and to see past them, with my recovery from that earlier disappointment encouraging me to persevere. (For the record, I have always struggled with negative feedback, finding it hard not to take criticism personally, and I’ve noticed this in other women too – although it may be that men are just better at disguising their feelings. We shall return to the subject later.) And while I sought opportunities to be heard, I stayed focused on performing well since that was the best advert for my capabilities.

I also looked to build my reputation in the marketplace. When I had been looking for that second job, it was harder than it needed to have been because I hadn’t built a network. I found that it was actually quite easy to be noticed as a young woman running bond funds. One year I was shortlisted for a ‘Fund manager of the year’ award and the other nominees were not just all men, but all called Paul. I did win, and I’d like to think it wasn’t just because I was the only one who could be easily identified, but I’ll never be quite sure. When the three Pauls and I were panellists together at investment conferences, the moderators would usually give me more airtime. There were advantages, but it was obvious that the few women who were making it through in my own industry were part of a very male-dominated club.

Two other critical factors helped me to progress so far and so quickly at Newton. I was working for a company where results were what mattered, and my husband Richard and I had developed a real partnership to care and provide for our family. Together with my newfound career awareness, this was a powerful combination, but by no means complex or mysterious.

The first company I had worked for was very traditional at the time, like most long-established City of London institutions. Founded in 1804 it was built on literally centuries-old practices that revolved around how men habitually liked to work. The atmosphere was ‘clubby’. There was a daily reminder of the hierarchy: each afternoon, a uniformed butler wheeled a trolley round the floor and served tea and biscuits to those of associate director or higher rank. Members of the asset allocation committee, the most senior group of investors, had typically served twenty years or more at the company. We would be asked to submit papers from time to time but weren’t invited to participate in their meetings. The structure was rigid and junior staff needed to fit in if they were to progress. While the New York office had its own more energetic and youthful culture, the London headquarters was the epicentre of power.

In contrast, there was a friendly, collegiate atmosphere at Newton. The very first week I joined, people asked for my opinion. If anyone had anything worthwhile to contribute, they would have the opportunity. The company didn’t really have a formal structure, more a fluid process built around the goal of delivering strong investment performance, with no one really paying much attention to status or tenure. My job interview with Stewart was not unusual; he took a great interest in hiring anyone who was going to be part of the investment team, however lowly. He made a point of frequently emphasising that the firm was a meritocracy and encouraged me to be my own character, which helped me to grow in confidence. I became increasingly bold in my investment views, but also more comfortable in being fully myself. I dressed more distinctively, and colleagues began to ask me to represent the firm to clients or at conferences. As expectations increased, even though I had inevitable moments of self-doubt, I rose to meet the next level of challenge. Partly, this was due to necessity: in this early phase of my time at Newton, Richard was made redundant and although he found another job in due course, I was spurred on by the responsibility of providing for our family. Yet persevering didn’t feel like an uphill struggle.

The qualities of the firm that enabled me to thrive weren’t the result of any diversity initiative but intrinsic to its everyday culture.

When I eventually left Newton after more than twenty years, my very first consideration when weighing up future opportunities was corporate culture. Did a potential employer welcome diverse opinions and encourage staff to express views that might differ from the consensus (or the boss); was there evidence of a meritocracy? I quickly turned down even interesting-sounding roles if it was also clear that the firm was rigidly command-and-control. By now I knew that a truly inclusive culture was essential if I was going to be able to really contribute, to be successful and happy. My new firm, Legal and General, didn’t just tick theoretical boxes; I had worked with enough people there (both senior and less so) on a variety of industry-wide projects to know we were a good fit.

Corporate culture has been in the spotlight since the 2008 financial crisis, with a number of scandals showing how poor behaviours can have disastrous consequences, destroying reputations and share prices. Culture, the social and psychological character of a firm, can seem a nebulous concept and it can be difficult to judge from the outside, especially since most mid-sized and large companies now make all the right statements about diversity and inclusion. The question is whether these statements are embedded in day-to-day behaviours.

A short while ago a woman approached me in the gym, seeking my advice. She was struggling to live up to what she felt was expected at the investment firm where she worked. I know the chief executive quite well and believe that he really wants women to thrive at the company. A few years ago he called me to ask how to attract more female graduates (at the time only10% of their applicants were women). He has been genuinely supportive of broader efforts to improve diversity in the currently very white, very middle-class and male-dominated fund management industry. Yet the woman’s experience was discouraging; the mother of two young children, she had been assured at the interviews that her role did not involve much travel. In fact, soon after joining she had been sent on four long-haul trips in quick succession. Another trip was looming the following week. The travel was taking its toll on both her family and her day-to-day work: worried that she was falling behind, she had gone into the office at the weekend to catch up, only to find many colleagues there. The family-friendly talk had proved just that.

I advised her to talk to her manager, to calmly explain that she was keen to work hard but the current situation was unsustainable – and to give specific examples. My suspicion was that no one had intentionally misled her, that they simply hadn’t joined the dots between what had been said and what was transpiring in practice (not an excuse, but often the reality). She may well have said yes to the first trip thinking it was a one-off, made a success of it and then been an obvious choice for further travel, with the interview fading from everyone’s consciousness except her own. The likelihood was that her manager would much rather adapt than see her resign.

A lack of consistency between what is said and what is done is a common but significant problem. It breeds disillusionment and distrust. Leadership teams are often very keen, almost desperate to see a better gender mix and frustrated by a lack of progress but completely oblivious to situations like my gym companion’s. If we don’t speak up – not belligerently or militantly, but to point out the inconsistencies – the gap in their understanding will persist. Of course, some jobs necessitate travel and episodes of working round-the-clock, but constant pressure should not be a role requirement: it certainly does not bring out the best in anyone, man or woman, and is unsustainable.

This example highlights a widespread problem: diversity and inclusion are usually treated as enhancements, not as core to business success. There are still many challenges to the idea that diversity does enhance results, and we will examine the evidence later, but for now let’s explore why there is such a prevalent gap between what is said by CEOs and what happens in practice.

Dame Fiona Woolf hosted a diversity conference at the Mansion House when she was Lord Mayor of the City of London in 2015 (only the second female Lord Mayor in 800 years). I was keen to speak at this particular conference because the target audience was middle managers, often thought to be the sticking point when it comes to making progress towards more inclusive workplace cultures. After my presentation one gentleman raised his hand. How, he wanted to know, did we fit diversity and inclusion into our already busy work schedules? He wondered if I recommended allocating specific time to the issue, say, an hour a week? He couldn’t see that this was like suggesting we allocate a time to say, being nice.

That may sound like an outlier but this lack of understanding is not uncommon. One of the reasons why we have made relatively slow progress is our tendency to separate ‘diversity and inclusion’ efforts into a distinct area. Instead, they should be inseparable aspects of culture. Attitudes and behaviours are hard to change, but we can shake them up by making the issue central, as part of the everyday.

If you run a business, you may think you are already approaching diversity in this integrated, seamless way. One idea to test that out: are jobs at your company flexible by default or do staff need to request permission to work in a flexible or agile way? In 2015, PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Australia took what might seem a radical step, to make all its 6,000 roles flexible, giving employees the freedom to choose their own working hours. Staff might work part-time, job-share, vary their work hours or work remotely. They didn’t need to make their case: instead, their manager was responsible for piecing together different working practices to ensure that the team was effective. For most people, it wasn’t a question of working either more or fewer hours, just differently. Significantly, the motivation behind PwC’s move was to attract high calibre talent to the firm.

At Newton, in something of an experiment soon after becoming CEO, I introduced a four-day-week option for any member of staff who wished to take it. The option was for an initial six months, and then employees could decide to stay on the four-day week or revert to full time. As many men as women took up the offer, including some of the most senior male fund managers, who then stayed with this arrangement for a decade or more. There was no stigma attached to the decision and it was not a diversity initiative but part of overall talent motivation efforts and management of the company’s resources. At the same time, the scheme certainly helped maternity returners feel confident that they would still be valued if they wanted to work a shorter week – and that they wouldn’t be perceived as getting ‘special treatment’.

In 2012, I helped devise a national survey of women’s experiences in the workplace, led by Business in the Community, one of the Prince of Wales’ charities. We wanted to hear particularly from women in the 28–40 age group since that is when women’s career paths tend to fall behind those of their male colleagues (and no, it’s not just because that’s when women have children – the data shows that women with no children also tend to be promoted less than men). A total of 25,000 people took part in Project 28–40, including women older and younger than our target group, and 2,000 men, giving useful reference points. The feedback showed that only half the women felt supported by their employer in their career aspirations. Flexible working was seen as helping with work–life balance but there was a stigma attached, undermining chances of career progression. Only 40% of respondents said that their organisation valued flexible working as a way of working efficiently.

Overwhelmingly, women said they did not want special programmes, they just wanted to be managed better.

Increasingly, in our knowledge-based economy, performance will be measurable in terms of results, rather than hours at the desk. Some jobs lend themselves more easily to this and, given that flexible working was not even a concept in the late 1980s, I made a fortunate choice of career. At the end of each quarter or year, the performance of the funds I managed stood as an objective record for anyone to see. It would have been much tougher to combine a large family with being, say, a corporate finance lawyer, where the work is transaction-based and individual contributions are often measured in billable hours. In 2016, PwC’s 25th annual Law Firms Survey revealed that newly qualified lawyers at the UK’s top ten law firms are set an average annual billing target of nearly 1,600 hours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most lawyers fall short.

The meritocracy that I benefited from at Newton can be the corporate cultural norm, not the exception. Beyond a small number of organisations, we haven’t yet really shaken up our working structures to attract more diverse talent – or taken full advantage of technology to make work more of an activity than a place. Instead, we’ve tended to add in programmes around the edges designed to encourage those who are outside the ‘norm’, but often this draws attention to the problem and may have the counterproductive effect of making difference appear troublesome. We’ll explore approaches that work better in Chapter 6.

There’s also a tendency to leave those in the diverse or under-represented groups in charge of solving the problem of their own under-representation. This is, I promise, an impossible task (even if an executive sponsor is drafted in to cheerlead). ‘Affinity groups’ or special interest networks can encourage people to feel less alone, but won’t do much for their chances of promotion and obviously do not foster inclusion. Talking to ourselves is never going to get us very far.

One evening, I arrived to give a speech at a diversity event hosted by one of the big four accountancy firms. The first problem was that I could see from a quick glance that the audience comprised only women, ethnic minorities, and one or two disabled people – where were all the white men? I was told they hadn’t been invited, which immediately seemed to limit the event’s potential impact. The few members of the leadership team who were there in a supportive role appeared downcast. I asked what the problem was: earlier that same day, the firm had the chance to pitch to an important prospect but the presentation team had been asked to leave as soon as they entered the room. Apparently the potential client had specifically asked for a diverse team but the group that had arrived to present was all-white, male and middle-aged. My hosts explained that of course they had read the brief, and a young woman had been due to go along but she was off sick and no one had remembered the diversity point until it was too late. The issue just wasn’t front and centre of anyone’s mind. In contrast, Stewart Newton had created an investment philosophy where difference was integral to the thought-process, where multiple perspectives were valued. That was great not just for me, but for anyone who enjoyed thinking laterally, being challenged and challenging others.

The third essential ingredient behind my newfound career success was the true partnership with Richard. My career setback after our first son was born had not put us off having more children. Both Richard and I had grown up in small families and shared a romantic vision of the happy chaos of a large number of children. When we married we said we would love to have five. Neither of us is from a wealthy background and we had to be self-sufficient. Fulfilling our dream of a big and happy family involved some stresses, including financially, although we were conscious that this was our choice.

We had not planned to start our family so quickly, but were young, rather relaxed and, as it turned out, able to produce babies rather easily (or, at least, conceive). Our first child, Fitzroy, was born ten months after our wedding. Young women often ask me when is a ‘good’ time to have a baby. I always say there is no ideal time, although I am grateful that we started to have our children when we were young by today’s standards. We weren’t perhaps ready, but as first-time parents do, we learned quickly.

The financial struggles when Fitz was born were challenging, though. We were amongst the many young professionals who had borrowed money in the late 1980s to buy a small flat, only to see interest rates soar and our mortgage payments balloon, while property prices collapsed. Neither of us had a high salary and for a while, our outgoings outstripped our earnings, a clearly unsustainable situation. One income was not enough to cover the mortgage so we both needed to work full-time, but our only realistic childcare option was a day nursery near my office. The nursery fees were around a quarter of our after-tax income before we had paid even a penny of the outsized mortgage bill. That first year I returned to work after having Fitz was tough, particularly when I didn’t get the promotion that might have eased our financial strain, but the experience also made us very determined. My new job at Newton came with a salary rise and Richard found a higher-paid position too. Mortgage rates came down and although our flat was worth far less than we had paid for it, bigger properties had suffered even larger price falls, so we were finally able to move.

Buying a modest house enabled us to hire a wonderful nanny, Paula, who stayed with us for more than twenty years. She always lived out, which gave us precious family time together and space for her, but meant that either Richard or I had to be home before she left at 6 p.m. Richard was a financial journalist and had multiple daily deadlines so I would always do the morning shift, waiting until she arrived at 7.30 a.m. Paula was incredibly reliable, but every day I felt anxious about getting to the office on time by public transport.

There was no slack at all in the arrangement, no room for error or lateness, and the stress of us both rushing in and out of the home, often distracted by work when we were there, trying to ‘do it all’, was taking its toll, including on our relationship. Richard and I needed to work out how not just to survive but to be happy. We took our time having our second and third children, who were born more than three years apart.

It is a big part of our story that when we were expecting Millie, our fourth, who was born just a year after our third child, both Richard and I knew something had to change. With another baby on the way we felt at breaking point and one evening discussed how we could possibly make it all work. Richard volunteered to go freelance and work from home: he would be able to play a bigger role in bringing up our family. He also wanted a freer existence, having never enjoyed office politics. Over time, as we had yet more children, his opportunity (and desire) to take on paid work dwindled and he became a full-time, stay-at-home dad.

This reversal of traditional roles was ahead of its time: Millie is now at university. It has not always been perfect (nothing is) but it has been key to our ultimately happy family life as well as helping my career. At the beginning, we were completely open as to how things might evolve – neither of us knew whether we would be able to afford the arrangement becoming permanent. We definitely had to be careful about money: ‘staycations’, for example, were a necessity rather than a choice and it was a long time before we could decorate our new home. These were minor sacrifices for our happier family life.

Both of us feel confident that the set-up has been beneficial to the children: Richard enjoys being at home, is completely dedicated to being at every sports fixture, likes cooking and (most of the time) doesn’t mind the endless chauffeuring. It’s been wonderful for me to know that the children have been benefiting, both logistically and emotionally, from one parent being at home. Meanwhile, since I have always wanted to be home whenever possible, throughout my career I have been disciplined about leaving the office in time for family suppers most evenings. This time together at the end of each day has always been an important part of our family life.

Of course, with nine children, it would have been impossible for me to get to all (or even most) of the school plays, concerts and ballet performances, so I have prioritised those events that are each child’s ‘special’ thing. I do regret missing certain moments, especially not being there when someone simply wants to talk, but I know it has been a good arrangement overall. We cannot attain perfection, and to strive for it is a recipe for feeling inadequate. Most importantly, our children are happy and thriving (at least most of them, most of the time). Some of my male peers never see their children during the week – a situation that would make both my family and me quite miserable.

Ours is still an unusual arrangement and I often get asked about it, including questions about whether I feel guilty (not exactly helpful at those moments when I do) and how I ‘have it all’. When I guest-edited BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in December 2016, I asked five high-powered men, ranging from bestselling author Michael Lewis to the chairman of Barclays Bank, John Mcfarlane, how they balanced work and family life. All of them said it was a question they had never been asked before. It was also interesting that none of them answered that it was all possible thanks to their wonderful wife or partner. I suspect this was for fear of seeming politically incorrect, although I feel completely able to credit Richard for making it all possible, and he is praised for his modernity.

I realise now that the conversation Richard and I had all those years ago about how, together, we could make it all work is still quite uncommon. It’s a very personal matter for each family to work out how to bring up children with love and time, how to earn enough money, develop careers, contribute to the community and, hopefully, have time for wider family, friends and fun. Working together to make things as good as they can be, whatever role each of us plays, is crucial to building a happy life together. When she was CEO of the Financial Times, Rona Fairhead was asked for one piece of advice for girls. ‘Marry well,’ she said, before explaining that she didn’t mean marry someone wealthy, but someone who understands you, who is a genuine partner.

We do not always have the luxury of choice and I am very conscious that not everyone can find a true partner in life. Sheryl Sandberg tragically became a single mother when her 47-year-old husband died suddenly: she has since spoken poignantly of her awareness that the chapter entitled ‘Make your partner a real partner’ in her influential book Lean In does not always apply. (Sandberg also realised through her terrible loss that it is very hard to ‘lean in’ when life is difficult; in her own words, ‘Lean in? I could barely stand up’).

Young women sometimes say it is easy for me, with Richard’s support, a relatively high salary and greater flexibility with my time than someone starting out. I always stress that while I’m very aware of these advantages, they haven’t always been there. Struggles have been part of not just my journey but most people’s too; it’s almost inevitable that any successful person has had their share of failures. When Richard and I hit our low point of financial stress, my mother reminded me that nothing lasts for ever, and that helped me to focus on finding a solution rather than be dragged down by anxiety. The experience again made me realise that I could not rely too much on others but needed to take control of my own destiny as far as possible. We will return to these big topics later; for now, let me emphasise the importance of recognising that each of our lives is different, but there are things we can do that will make the most of a situation – or shrink our opportunities. Whether you have a partner or not, you need a few strong allies, friends, mentors: people you can really confide in, who will give you good advice. Ultimately we have to make our own decisions, but no person is an island and none of us has an unlimited well of confidence, or all the answers.

I was once interviewed on live TV about workplace equality and the (female) presenter kept challenging me on one point: surely, she argued, it must be possible for both partners to have ‘high-powered’ careers with children? It was slightly perplexing that she kept returning to the topic, but as I walked off set, the producer explained that my interviewer was getting married very soon. Apparently, she and her fiancé were struggling with the idea that one of them might need to be less focused on their career once they started a family. Both saw that as a potential career setback or even a death knell – and the woman was particularly worried because she could see it would be more likely to be her, not her future husband, stepping back. Looking ahead, I am confident that more people (not just women) will be able to take advantage of more fluid ways of working, to ‘dial up’ or ‘dial down’ their careers from time to time – and so feel less concerned about making a binary choice. As life expectancy increases, we will need to work longer and may have two or three careers (this may be forced upon us, as employment opportunities change along with the rise of artificial intelligence). Taking a few years off in the middle, or changing the pace for a while, should really make little difference overall. ‘Returnships’ – the opportunity to return to a meaningful role after a gap of several years – are likely to become increasingly prevalent and part of a big shake-up in employment patterns.

For all the discussion about women and our changing role in society, there tends to be little focus on what this means for men. Richard has always maintained that the logical extension of all the efforts to help women fulfil their career potential is for men to have more choices too. Gender equality cuts both ways and redefining what success means for all of us is part of what we need to do. There are, today, still quite straitjacketed expectations about what it is to be a successful man. As he made the transition to full-time parent, Richard became frustrated by the question ‘What do you do?’ – it was so clear that men are largely defined by their job. His honest answer would leave people hesitating about what to say next and they often seemed embarrassed. So he experimented with various ways of explaining his role, including referring to his other interests, such as painting, meditation and spiritual healing. We are still a long way from the point where having a stay-at-home father is seen as just as normal for families as a stay-at-home mother. (Or where a man can praise his wife for being a wonderful stay-at-home mother just as I can praise Richard today.)

Those factors that made all the difference to my career – self-awareness, meritocracy, and a supportive partner – are, I believe, very relevant to young, ambitious women – and men – today. My story is not a template, however. There is now much greater scope to be different and to influence your own path than there was thirty, twenty or even ten years ago. Women of my age (or a decade older or younger) in senior roles today are the exception, not the norm. We have been allowed into a masculine club at the top of business or politics. I think of us as a ‘transition’ generation, benefiting from the work that so many generations of women did before us, but still needing to mostly fit in with the status quo. Young people have different challenges, with uncertainty over employment prospects affecting both boys and girls. But they also have a greater opportunity to bring their differences into the workplace right from the start, to help create paths towards new thinking, new solutions to today’s challenges, not more of the same.

Chapter 2

New leadership required

We can’t solve problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

While my career had been progressing well at Newton, the opportunity to become chief executive just seven years after joining was unexpected – most of all by me. The takeover of the firm by Mellon Bank, an American company, had been long planned and took several years to complete. It seemed probable that some members of the management team might decide to move on. As part of the four-strong Investment Strategy group, I was a potential candidate for the role of chief investment officer (CIO). I was keen to get the job if it became available – I loved making the big strategic investment calls, enjoyed life at Newton and got on well with my colleagues. I was feeling restricted by my existing role: at the time, one piece of US economic data was driving bond markets around the world – the employment figures released the first Friday of each month. My whole working life revolved around this data point. In particular, one long weekend sticks in my memory. My husband and I had taken our children to visit their grandparents and instead of enjoying our family time I was glued to the news. The data was much stronger than anticipated, my positioning was all wrong and I felt distraught, helpless and rubbish at my job. This was obviously an overreaction, and as Richard and I discussed my loss of perspective, it was clear that I needed a new, broader challenge.

So I was delighted when Mellon’s UK-based chief offered me the CIO role, which offered the opportunity to lead a talented team, as well as to expand my horizons. My new boss told me that he would fill the other vacancy himself, adding the Newton CEO position to his responsibilities. Next morning, one of my colleagues stopped by my desk and quietly mentioned that the other senior investors had met and unfortunately they didn’t want me to become the CIO. Taken aback, having thought I had their support, I asked if they would meet me to explain why. As we went into the room, I mentally ran through my options, realising that I would probably have to leave, given what seemed (to me) to be a vote of no confidence.

It turned out that my colleagues thought, reasonably, that it was important for the CIO to have an equities background since most of the firm’s assets were invested in the stock market. The conversation turned to my leadership skills, and there it was clear that I did have a following. Before I knew it, the suggestion was being made that I become the chief executive officer instead.

My first reaction was a sense of relief. I loved working at Newton and didn’t want to leave. I also knew this meant that it was in relation to the specific role that my ability was in doubt rather than an objection to me as a person. At the same time, I was disoriented by what had just happened. We all left the room and I ducked into an adjacent one and gathered my thoughts. I called my husband and told him ‘I’m not going to be the CIO any more, I’m going to be the CEO.’ ‘What does that entail?’ he asked and I answered, truthfully, ‘I have no idea.’ What I did know was that I believed in what Newton had to offer our clients, in the team and the process, that I could lead and that this was an unusual, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

It was never articulated in these precise terms but I believe one reason why colleagues were prepared to back me as CEO was because of my collaborative style of leadership. We obviously faced a number of challenges immediately following the takeover, and my first task was to rebuild confidence. Where there was a problem, it was my job to come up with a solution. While I certainly didn’t have all the answers and frequently needed the input of colleagues, I had a clear sense of what we were trying to achieve.

I’ve often reflected on that bizarre day. I was only 35 and had no business experience or management training. The firm managed some £20 billion of assets. I had no real idea of how challenging the next few years would be – but also how fulfilling it would be to eventually come out the other side, when we had – together – achieved real progress as a company. I realise now that the decision to say yes rather than what might have seemed a more sensible no to the CEO role, was, in fact, the making of my career. A moment of disruption was my great opportunity.

That experience, particularly in those early years, taught me the importance of focusing on long-term goals, rather than on all the steps we can’t see clearly in the moment but know we need to take to get there. A bridge will often open up when we get stranded, as long as we don’t get distracted or lose sight of that end goal. My six daughters have heard me tell them to ‘leap before you look’ so many times that they now chant it whenever one sister is dithering, but all too often I have seen women (more than men) focus more on what might go wrong than on the prospect of success. We’ll return to this in Chapter 7 – it is vital to recognise and counteract this tendency to hold ourselves back if we’re to be able to capitalise on the opportunities ahead of us right now.

As a novice CEO (and frankly also when experienced) I made many mistakes. Just one day into my new role, I took a call from a tabloid newspaper. I had never had any media training and this was long before companies had ‘corporate communications’ teams. The journalist asked sensible questions about my vision for Newton, which I answered tentatively. She then probed into my family life. Here I felt on firmer footing and happily obliged with some candid information and thoughts on combining family and career. The next morning everyone was very quiet in the office and when I asked if all was OK, a copy of the paper was handed across. There was a rather sensational story on page three entitled ‘Billion Dollar Babe’, describing me as ‘the pinstripes’ pinup’. Richard correctly pointed out that those descriptions were wholly inaccurate (my comment at the end that ‘five [children] is plenty’ has also come back to haunt me), but I felt embarrassed and frivolous for contributing to the piece. After that experience, I didn’t talk to the press for several years and only agreed to do interviews again when I wanted to draw attention to the issue of women in the workplace.

I can see now that in the broader scheme of things that silly newspaper article was not a big deal, but at the time everything felt magnified. The whole experience of my early days as a CEO was a very steep learning curve, with many moments of self-doubt before I emerged on the other side, older, wiser and just possibly better at my job than if I had taken a more conventional route to get there, if only because I had to learn so quickly.

Happily, I did make a few good calls in those early days. One was to shut out the siren voices telling me to reinvent Newton, to develop new strategies that weren’t core to our strengths. I had already learned – in life as well as at work – that we cannot always please everyone and that it’s a mistake even to try. In business, the key is to offer something of value to some people; in life, to know what matters to you, a framework for the myriad decisions each of us needs to take. At that moment at Newton, it was more important than ever to focus on what we did best, to ensure our clients were being well served and that they had confidence in us to continue performing. We were not static, however, the marketplace was changing around us so we consciously evolved our investment services rather than sticking rigidly to what had worked in the past. As author, analyst and former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it, we were ‘antifragile’, seeking opportunity from change. At the same time, I needed to nurture the culture that had been so central to the business since it was founded. I was merely (and just about) first amongst equals, carrying the ultimate responsibility but in no way superior to my talented colleagues.

Different situations require different leadership styles and while my approach may not be the right one for every scenario or every company, it worked well for Newton at the time. There had been a dislocation, and a collaborative approach enabled our employees, the firm’s key asset, to contribute to the vision of our future.

This all happened a long time ago; now we can see a much more widespread desire for ‘alternative’ forms of political and business leadership. The command-and-control approach that has prevailed for very many years, where a narrow elite tells other people what to do, is rapidly ineffective in a networked world. There is much less deference to those in official leadership roles; leaders need to merit their authority. So the role is less about sitting at the top of a pyramid and giving orders, more about positioning oneself at the centre of influence. I felt this acutely as Newton’s new CEO: one minute I was one of many fund managers, the next I was officially the boss, but not in a position to instruct my colleagues. Instead, my role was to lead by influencing them, having first listened to what was on their minds, then to form a plan that took account of their views (or explain why I was going in a different direction), and bring them with me. This was partly the result of the circumstances of my appointment but it’s also a feature of active investment management firms, since talented investors often see themselves as self-employable. The CEO is more akin to the conductor of an orchestra than a prima donna. This leadership model is becoming the reality for many other industries, and in politics too.

Many people see the shock events of 2016 – most notably Brexit and the election of President Trump – as setbacks for diversity. Of course, at the time no one asked voters to indicate the reasons why they voted the way they did, and all sorts of interpretations can be offered. In my view, while the specific reasons vary, the fact that in both the UK and the US many people voted against the establishment is key. The shocks themselves demonstrate how power is changing in a way that should be good news for democracy and equality. People will no longer be told what to do by leaders who don’t connect with them. The problem is, if this isn’t recognised and addressed, the protests morph into extremism.

I was flying back from a business trip in Denver on the evening of the UK’s EU referendum in June 2016. As we landed, everyone checked their phones for the result and an American lady tapped me on the shoulder; ‘It was Remain, right?’ ‘No actually, Leave won,’ I replied. She looked perplexed and exclaimed, genuinely shocked, ‘But we sent the President!’ She couldn’t see that this might have been a counterproductive move: the Americans ‘sent the President’; the British government dropped Remain leaflets on doorsteps, and people voted the exact opposite. In the US presidential election, it wasn’t enough of a change that Hillary Clinton was the first female nominee; she was also perceived as part of the establishment, as likely to maintain the status quo. Donald Trump’s comments make many of us wince, but during the election campaign, he reached out to those voters who were certainly not living the ‘American dream’, who had not participated in economic or income growth, who felt that no one was listening or cared – and he connected with them.

We have seen the desire for change many times before, of course, but technology makes it much more likely to be fulfilled. We now have an (almost) level playing field in our access to vast amounts of instant information. Anyone with a network and something interesting to say can influence others through social media, without any formal authority. And anything and everything is discoverable, exposing the humanity of leaders. There needs to be consistency in what they say and do, or their authority is undermined, potentially catastrophically. We keep seeing examples across many sectors and in policy-making circles too, where gaps between talk and action precipitate the downfall of those at the top.

This is a profound shift. Centuries-old, patriarchal power structures are being very rapidly replaced by more diffuse, shared and democratic influence. Different skills are needed to lead now, skills that, as we shall see, tend to favour women’s ways of working and behaving.

Not everyone recognises this yet. While there is an emerging realisation that being ‘in charge’ is not what it used to be, there is still only a vague appreciation of the wide-ranging ramifications. Much carries on as before, in big ways and small: I am frequently asked by executive search firms for my recommendations for ‘diverse’ board directors and am repeatedly disappointed by the ‘old school’ lists they show me. There is still a game of musical chairs at the top – and this is a mistake. In the US, around 80% of the fifty largest public companies are connected to each other through one or more shared board members; in the UK, the tendency is to ‘recycle’ FTSE-100 chairmen, making that prized role still very much a male bastion.

The wheels of change may be turning very slowly at the top but the broader power shift is not a short-lived surge in populism. Unless we put the technological genie back in the bottle, it is irreversible and means leaders, companies and policy-makers need quite different ways of thinking and skill sets to be relevant, successful and genuinely powerful. We talk blithely of ‘disruption’ in business – when revenue streams built over decades can be grabbed by start-ups over a matter of months, if not weeks – but few seem to have grasped that this extends to power structures too.

The far-reaching impacts of this power shift can be compared with the wide-ranging (and often breathtakingly fast) impact of the internet on many traditional businesses. The retail sector is an obvious example. Even the most traditional, ‘heritage’ retailers are forced to address the vast challenge of online shopping opportunities. A few firms have been the disrupters, others have embraced the change, a third group is plodding along, trying to catch up with shifts that have already happened. In the UK, a number of long-established high street brands have gone into receivership; others struggle to redefine their business. A walk down any British high street – now usually a string of coffee shops, restaurants, hairdressers, nail bars and dentists, alongside a few specialist stores – shows how dramatically our shopping habits have changed even over the past few years.

In 2006, nine retailers dominated the US market; Amazon accounted for just 4% of the group’s total market value. By 2016, Amazon was 55% of the total. With over 750 million mobile users – more than four times all of its competitors combined – it has, in the words of John Koetsier, ‘won retail’, reinventing how we buy and receive products. Amazon achieved this amazing feat by creating a personal (yet automated) connection with their customers, tracking their history and searches to understand their needs – and delivering great service. For retailers – and so many other sectors now – a digital strategy is not peripheral to the main event: it is the main event. Companies are all technology businesses now.

The irony is that to formulate (and continuously evolve) the right digital strategy, businesses need the right human minds – and that means the right combination of minds. It’s not a question of digital or human, but digital plus human.

Companies therefore need to take the optimisation of their talent seriously. The impact of getting it right or wrong may not be immediate, but any company that drags its feet in developing its collective human intelligence will be less likely to succeed than smarter competitors and increasingly disconnected from its customers. Astute companies are already working hard to develop the right ecosystems, where their diverse talent helps create an intelligent working environment and strong customer engagement.

Out of this arise exciting opportunities for equality, but we could too easily squander them by failing to see that today’s destabilising changes offer the moment for a leap forward in the quest for gender and other equalities. A continuation of the past would not have got us to where we want to be – even if, superficially, it might seem more benign. Whatever you think of Brexit and President Trump, these votes show that there is an urgent desire for new ways of thinking and new leadership. I think it has been a huge mistake for the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic to dig in their heels, to be dismissive of those who voted for Trump or for Britain to leave the EU, or to try to undermine other ‘protests’ (in Spain and Catalonia, Italy, Hungary, Poland … the list will continue to grow). Instead, we should be devoting all our energies to creating a constructive way forward. To those who say that’s a naïve hope, I challenge back: by talking and listening to each other, we soon see points of human connection, similar hopes and fears alongside our differences of opinion. The common ground includes a desire for security; fulfilling work that can enable us to prosper; friendship and love; a sense of belonging; a good future for our children. With strongly empathetic, inclusive leadership, we could move forward together.

My experience in helping to solve a much narrower, simpler problem, the under-representation of women on UK corporate boards, showed me (just as the chance to be Newton’s CEO had done) how dislocations can create rare moments of opportunity to seize. Today, if we tap into our own, feminine brand of power, women can contribute much-needed new thinking to solve our problems – and become more powerful in the process. I was definitely on the outside of the real power base when it came to making changes in the boardroom, but was able to become effective by being empathetic and constructive in my approach. I reached out, rather than fought. Girl power, if you like, but not as we may have thought of it before. This is not about adopting the trappings of male power, but about redefining power, changing rather than mimicking the power structures that we have been largely excluded from in the past. Many decades ago, Simone de Beauvoir argued, ‘The point is not for women simply to take the power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.’

It’s been a long wait, but this is our moment to show the strength of feminine power.

Chapter 3

The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power

When you start to develop your powers of

empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up

to you.

SUSAN SARANDON

Having been appointed in rather unorthodox and dramatic fashion to be Newton’s chief executive, I focused on delivering the results that were proof that I was up to the job. Achieving strong results – both investment and financial performance – requires the right team, and with Newton’s motto that ‘No one has a monopoly on great ideas’, my colleagues and I made a deliberate effort to develop diversity of thought and perspective. Just as on a football pitch, the best investment teams are not necessarily groups of the most highly qualified individuals; the interaction between team members plays a vital role.

In common with the rest of the fund management industry, although Newton had a strong meritocracy there were relatively few senior women. I wanted to do something to specifically address this. Young women – both at Newton and in other firms – were often approaching me to ask my advice, usually about combining career and family life, and I was happy to talk one-to-one. It seemed an obvious next step to try to help on a bigger scale. With the encouragement of my Boston-based boss, Ron O’Hanley, I launched a women’s initiative for our parent company’s European businesses in 2005.

This initiative – like most other companies’ gender diversity efforts at the time – centred on networking events, often a talk from a high profile woman. The feedback was always ‘how inspiring’ but in fact no one seemed inspired to actually do anything differently. Over the next few years, we saw little change in the representation of women at senior levels – and no real evidence that this was likely to change any time soon.

Discouraged, I was about to give up when I was invited to give one of those talks myself at Goldman Sachs, as part of their 2009 Diversity Week. Afterwards Goldman hosted a discussion for 15 men and women from different organisations, and everyone shared what they were doing to encourage their female talent. As I listened, I discovered that I was far from alone: everyone was struggling, no matter how hard and how long they had been trying. So much effort, yet so little to show for it. It seemed pretty clear that we must all be doing something wrong.

One of the attendees was Baroness Mary Goudie, a Labour peer. We agreed that we wanted to ‘do something’ to break the deadlock. The approach needed a complete rethink.

Of course, it’s usually much easier to identify a problem than to come up with the solution. There was no reason to believe that the objective of having many more women in senior roles was simply unattainable: there were plenty of ambitious women, plenty of companies keen to see them progress. As I searched for a way forward, I read widely to see whether any companies or countries had managed to achieve better results. I also researched organisational behaviour more generally, and the theories about differences in the ways men and women typically work. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that most of us were rushing to try to motivate people from under-represented groups without really understanding what was on their minds, or how our diversity efforts would fit in with the rest of their experiences at work.

I came across a number of interesting practical ideas. One was an effort by Deutsche Telekom to ensure that there were at least 30% women at all levels of seniority. I liked that specific, numeric target and realised that most of us were making a mistake in not setting clear goals. We needed to measure our progress (or lack of it) and have a way of tracking women’s advancement just like our other business objectives. The literature I was reading on group behaviour suggested that 30% was a point at which critical mass was reached – and that resonated with me personally. As I thought about my own experiences, being the only woman in the room made me feel self-conscious and I chose my interventions carefully on those occasions. If there were several items on the agenda where I might have a different opinion from the rest of the group, I would speak up about just one or two. If there were three women out of ten people, I was just another person in the room and felt confident to speak freely.

The way in which Deutsche Telekom was promoting its ambition was also appealing: ‘Taking on more women in management positions is not about the enforcement of misconstrued egalitarianism,’ said the company’s then chief executive, René Obermann. ‘Having a greater number of women at the top will quite simply enable us to operate better.’ Not only was the statement striking in deliberately distancing the move from political correctness and towards the business case, but it was all the more impactful coming from a man.

I realised that women talking to women about women’s issues was never going to get us very far. We can encourage each other and feel less alone, but we are likely to need those in leadership positions – mostly men – to help us actually succeed, to open those doors that may be half-closed. This is nothing to be embarrassed about: men on the way up in their careers have long had champions or sponsors in more senior positions, who act as a sounding board, give them a reference, or even line them up for the next role.

But it still wasn’t obvious how to pull these thoughts into an action plan, so Mary and I invited almost all the senior businesswomen we knew to a lunch to solicit their input. Over forty came along. I stood up and suggested we needed a new approach if we were to break the deadlock and see more women fulfil their potential in our businesses. Some of those present made it clear afterwards that they did not want to be part of a specific women’s initiative, expressing concerns about how that would be perceived by their male peers. Later, I’m happy to say, and particularly after men had joined the campaign, a number of those women became generous supporters. Others were sceptical about the idea that we might ever be able to find a better way forward, after so many years of disappointing progress. All they could see ahead was an extrapolation of the past.

But a new opportunity was arising just as we were having these discussions. As is so often the case, what we actually needed was a vision, not a spreadsheet. The cataclysmic global financial crisis had thrown up a new possibility for us to explore. As analysts, regulators and policy-makers pored over the wreckage of the financial collapse, it seemed obvious with hindsight that bank boards and management teams comprised almost entirely of conventional, middle-aged, affluent men were inherently flawed. The directors might be individually brilliant, but if they were cut from the same cloth, educated similarly and moved in the same social circles, they were far more likely to back each other’s opinions than to challenge them.

‘Groupthink’ is far from a new concept: the term was devised in 1952 by American William Whyte, who used it to refer to similar people not just agreeing with each other but more perniciously believing that they are ‘right and good’ as well, and so excluding dissenting voices. It’s not an unusual phenomenon; many catastrophes long before the 2008 financial crisis have been blamed at least in part on groupthink, including the January 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster, when the shuttle broke up within two minutes of take-off, killing the seven crew members. The analysis of what went wrong showed how the inconvenient truth spoken by engineers concerned about the risks of launching in unusually cold conditions was disregarded by NASA managers in their ‘go fever’. A decade earlier, psychologist Irving Janis had studied American foreign policy disasters and identified eight symptoms of groupthink. The symptoms include the illusion of invulnerability, minds closed to warnings, the stereotyping of dissenters as stupid or biased, and pressure on group members to conform or be silent.

Sadly, it seems hard to learn from our mistakes. The subject matter was different in the financial crisis but the hallmarks of groupthink were present again. By early 2010, the realisation was growing that the boardroom, described by former fund manager Lord Myners in 2008 as ‘a retirement home for the great and the good’, needed a big shake-up. The door was ajar for different ‘types’ of people to become directors and an obvious place to start was to address the scarcity of women on boards.

In 2008, fewer than 12% of the directors at the UK’s top 100 listed companies were women. Almost a quarter of those companies had all-male boards. Royal Bank of Scotland had just one female director out of eighteen at the time of its ill-fated acquisition of ABN AMRO that precipitated the bank’s downfall. Many of these board members had very similar backgrounds, too – in fact, studying a picture of the 17 male directors at the time is like playing a game of ‘spot the difference’. It may be hard to believe, but the boards of the next 250 biggest UK listed companies, the FTSE 250, were even more male-dominated. In 2008 less than half of FTSE-250 companies had any female directors at all and the average representation was just 7%. Besides risking groupthink, 93% men is clearly not representative of society or (almost) any company’s customer base.

This was a big, emerging and brand-new opportunity, so I persevered with the idea of doing something different, despite the lukewarm feedback. I arranged a smaller lunch for 14 women out of the group of 40 who had responded positively. We were meeting on a Monday; the Friday before, I suddenly felt anxious that we might have yet another inconclusive conversation. I emailed attendees, suggesting the specific idea of the 30% Club. Over Monday’s lunch we agreed on a simple, narrow but ambitious goal: to reach 30% women on UK company boards over the following five years through voluntary, business-led change. The members of the Club needed to be the chairmen of the boards, since these were their boards and they had the authority to change things.

Of course, they were almost exclusively chairmen – at the time, just a single FTSE-100 company, Land Securities, had a female chair, Dame Alison Carnwath. Dame Alison has been a fantastic supporter of the 30% Club – but we needed more than one. So that very same afternoon, we tested out the 30% Club idea on two highly regarded and prominent FTSE-100 chairmen: Sir Roger Carr, then chairman of Centrica, and Sir Win Bischoff, then chairman of Lloyds Bank. Would they support a campaign led by chairmen aimed at reaching 30% women on boards? Both immediately said yes. In their own words, ‘when we have women on our boards, the dynamic is better, the decision-making is better – but there are too few of them’.

Sir Roger’s and Sir Win’s evangelism transformed the thinking around the issue. There were many dissenters and sceptics to start with, but the endorsement of these leading, male captains of industry made others sit up and take note. Maybe, just maybe, the under-representation of women on boards was about more than ‘just’ fairness? A new dynamic began to develop, encouraging more business leaders to join in. This different angle also proved newsworthy: when we launched later that year, with seven founding chairmen supporters, the Financial Times ran both a cover story and a prominent interview featuring Sir Roger and Sir Win. The message was clear: the scarcity of women at the top was no longer a women’s issue but everyone’s issue. Men and women were going to work together to resolve it.

But evangelism does not necessarily lead to results. Another newspaper wrote at the time that the 30% Club had a worthy ambition but ‘was very vague about how it was going to achieve it’. I soon realised that this vagueness was in fact an essential ingredient. Nothing had worked before so we needed to draw up a new map to reach our destination. We were wholly open to fresh ideas; we listened and adapted quickly as we made progress or encountered setbacks. Most of the time it was like driving in fog: we could see the immediate few feet in front, but the rest of the route was unclear. As long as we kept progressing, and learning from what was working and what wasn’t, we could reach the goal. I became a great believer in pilots to test ideas quickly rather than endless theorising. After all, we knew we had to experiment to make progress.

The approach the 30% Club took was to think big, start small but start now.

The fear of what might go wrong

In 2016, Harvard Business School Professor Iris Bohnet, the author of the acclaimed book What Works: Gender Equality by Design, wrote a case study about the rapid rise in the number of women on UK boards, something that has so far eluded the United States. Iris invited me over to help teach the case study to the first group of students. I had never even been to a Harvard MBA class, let alone taught one, and it was a fascinating experience. Professor Bohnet split the 80 students into five groups, each role-playing one of the parties involved (the government, the cross-party task force established under Labour peer Lord Mervyn Davies, the 30% Club, the executive search community and investors). The students’ first task was to list the difficulties they saw ahead. I then explained what had actually happened, whether the anticipated problems arose and how we overcame them. It was an intriguing exercise. The students came up with a cumulative total of no less than 53 potential problems. Many did arise and I started my remarks by noting that it was lucky I had not heard them before we embarked on the campaign, as it would have seemed an impossible task.

It is so easy to come up with reasons not to do something. There is always something that might go wrong. It is often very hard to envisage how to navigate through problems before they arise – but when we encounter them, I’ve found, we can often cope and find a way through. It’s very important not to panic at the lack of visibility or the unexpected twists and turns but to see that as part of the journey. That holds true in our careers as well as our personal lives, and helps us achieve so much more than if we hesitate over each step for fear of not being able to see the next or of how we will cope when we get there.

As it turned out, despite the wobbles and setbacks, the 30% Club’s timing caught the mood of the moment. The financial crisis created real appetite for change, then a few months after the 30% Club launch, Lord Davies concluded his cross-party public review into the scarcity of women on UK company boards. He made ten recommendations: like the 30% Club, he backed voluntary action rather than mandatory quotas. Lord Davies told me at the time that he had a number of reasons not to recommend legislation: one was that his daughter would ‘never speak to him again’, another was that the 30% Club chairmen supporters had promised that if given the chance, they would deliver progress through voluntary action.

Over the next five years the Davies Steering Committee and the 30% Club formed a powerful double act, combining supportive public policy with private sector action. By the time we reached our shared self-imposed deadline of end-2015, the results for the FTSE 100 fell between Lord Davies’ 25% and our 30% goals. Over 26% of FTSE-100 board positions were held by women (we finally broke past 30% in September 2018) and there were no longer any all-male FTSE-100 boards. The next biggest 250 companies had achieved even more progress from their weaker starting position: nearly 20% female directors (over 27% today) and just 15 all-male boards (now down to five).

This wasn’t an extrapolation of the past, it was a big leap forward.

It was very exciting to see this jump in the numbers – but even more exciting to see a change in the thinking. The issue was now being seen through a different lens. And success led to more success, increasing the acceptability of what we were aiming for so that eventually it just became expected.

(From Professional Boards Forum BoardWatch, data provided by BoardEx and The Female FTSE Board Report)

In November 2011, I interviewed Sir Philip Hampton for the 30% Club website. At the time of our interview he was chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, having taken that role after the bank had been bailed out. One of his immediate tasks was to appoint a new board. It is unusual for the chairman of a big company to have carte blanche and Sir Philip talked me through his thought-process. The previous 18-member board was far too big, as well as homogeneous. Sir Philip set about creating a 12-member board, with at least three women, some international experience relevant to RBS, and also, as he put it to me, a blend of experienced directors with fresher faces. He wanted diversity of character and background: 12 former CEOs would not make for a good boardroom dynamic.

As we were talking, he said he wanted to tell me something that he thought I would find encouraging. Every year, a group of FTSE-100 chairmen gathered for lunch. They had met almost exactly a year before, when the 30% Club had just formally launched. The conversation turned to the initiative, and there was a very brief discussion about whether this was something that should be supported – Sir Philip said that it was quickly closed down as ‘not really for us’. The same annual lunch had taken place just the week before Sir Philip and I were meeting. This time, the topic had been extensively discussed and there was no question over whether to support the initiative. Instead, the chairmen were asking each other what they were doing to actually meet the target. What a difference a year can make.

But it wasn’t just the zeitgeist or the combination of voices that made an impact. The 30% Club’s tactics were different from anything that had been tried before – in some respects deliberately so, in others more a stroke of luck.

Through both the campaign’s successes and failures, I learned a lot about how to effect change. I believe it’s a replicable formula that can help us reach our bigger ambition of gender equality.

There were seven success factors. I’ve mentioned five:

 seizing the opportunity created by dislocation

 focusing on the business aspects, rather than ‘merely’ the fairness issue

 having a measurable goal with a deadline to create urgency

 involving men with the ability to change things, and

 being open to new ideas.

The sixth was something of a ‘fake it till we make it’ approach. The 30% Club took one step forward but we would act as if we had taken two. We talked up the progress, we celebrated good stories, we were confident. This did not always come easily. But I could see that people wanted to become part of a successful movement and that there was a circularity to that success. The more progress we made, the more progress we were likely to continue making.

The intriguing aspect was, the bolder I became in my requests, the more likely the response was to be ‘yes’. One particularly ambitious event was a Washington DC breakfast, generously hosted by KPMG, and deliberately planned to coincide with the 2014 IMF conference. The US chapter of the 30% Club had just been launched and while Peter Grauer, the dedicated and energetic founding chairman supporter, would be on the West Coast at the time talking to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs about the campaign, we saw an opportunity to raise the 30% Club’s global profile just before the IMF’s official business got under way in DC. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and father of four girls, would be attending the conference so I asked Sir Roger (who was then serving as a non-executive director on the Bank’s Court – this is a tight-knit community) if he could see whether the Governor might be prepared to speak at our breakfast. The answer was encouraging but not definite. The Governor’s office explained they could not ‘mark-up’ his diary but said that Mr Carney was minded to accept if he was free. This left me in something of a bind. I wanted to encourage global bank chiefs to come to the breakfast, but they were much more likely to do so if the Governor was speaking. I spent a week of our family summer holiday hand-writing notes (which kept flying into the hotel pool) to invite CEOs and policy-makers to the event, indicating that we expected the Governor to be our speaker. Meanwhile I kept the Governor’s office up to date with the list of expected influential attendees, as that would surely increase the chances of his attendance. Brenda Trenowden of ANZ Bank, who later took on the mantle of leading the 30% Club, worked tirelessly to round up those acceptances. Finally, it was confirmed that the Governor would speak. Unlikely as it seems, this whole precarious plan, infused with a dose of bravado, paid off. The room was full of influential men and women and the Governor spoke openly and eloquently about the Bank’s 300-year traditions and the importance of diversity in creating a modern culture. The bank CEOs, seated at tables at the front, took turns with the microphone to contribute their own thoughts and ideas about how to accelerate progress around the globe. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The 30% Club’s final key success factor was taking a feminine approach to solving a business problem.

The word ‘feminine’ divides people. Some object to the very idea that there are characteristics more generally associated with girls and women. Of course, there can be as much (or more) difference between individuals of the same gender as between the genders. That is, in my view, perfectly compatible with using the words ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ to describe traits more commonly found in either girls or boys. It certainly doesn’t mean that those words apply to every individual girl or boy.

I’ve also encountered the anxiety that by using the term we may perpetuate gender inequalities. In fact, I believe the opposite may be true. If we understand each other’s (average) differences better, we can develop more ‘gender intelligent’ strategies to encourage both men and women to thrive, rather than try to force everyone into a system that tends to motivate one or the other. It’s important to recognise that we can be equal but different if we’re really going to achieve progress.

To become equal, but to stay different.

Punch Magazine, August 1971

(© Punch Limited)

It’s a contentious topic, and we’ll explore it more fully in the next chapter. For now, let’s use ‘feminine’ as perhaps imperfect shorthand for the approach that defined the 30% Club. We were not looking to assume the traits of the group that we were aiming to join – not trying to simply replace a few men with a few women who were just the same. The goal was, and remains, more diversity of thought, of approach, of behaviours. The 30% Club’s approach therefore emphasised, not downplayed, difference and in particular the qualities associated with women and girls: empathy, social sensitivity, collaboration, kindness and gentleness.

Encouraging voluntary action rather than legislation or quotas to achieve our goal of more women on boards was the most obvious manifestation of this feminine approach. Forcing people to do something would have completely undermined what we were trying to do. Quotas are very much command-and-control, a confrontational rather than an empathetic approach. Few people seemed to understand this, focusing on the speed of attaining results, not what those results really signified. The 30% Club’s ambitious goal was that men and women would become unified in desiring boards with a better gender balance, and that this would help improve culture throughout their organisations, as well as increasing the numbers of women on boards. We wanted to ensure not only that the very best people serve on boards, but to open up the definition of ‘best’ so it did not mean ‘just like the existing directors’.

Another symptom of our feminine approach was to be open source, to partner not only with the Davies Committee but with many others who were already doing great work in this area. There was no sense of competition, helped by the fact that the 30% Club was not a diversity business, simply a group of business leaders focused on achieving results. Members of the Steering Committee included leaders of successful initiatives like the Professional Boards Forum, which introduces chairmen to women with the ‘undiscovered’ potential to be non-executive directors. The Forum stages events where candidates solve fictitious boardroom problems: its success rate (attendees appointed to boards) is impressive, with more than 50 alumnae appointed as non-executive directors to date. We had no desire to reinvent the wheel but looked to provide cohesion to fragmented efforts, as well as fill in any gaps.

Through this joined-up approach we created a ripple effect, gradually widening out our radius of influence. Importantly, that included the media, which got firmly and consistently behind the campaign, amplifying our voice. Heather McGregor, now Professor McGregor, Dean of Edinburgh Business School, then Mrs Moneypenny, Financial Times columnist and one of our brilliant 30% Club Steering Committee members, was instrumental in keeping the story on the front pages. Everyone involved was generous with their time and expertise; numerous intensive research projects were conducted on a ‘pro bono’ basis, as was the broader publicity campaign, masterminded by Gay Collins, another stalwart member of the Steering Committee. It was incredible really seeing how determination and dedication could achieve so much, with no money changing hands.

Without being especially conscious of it at the start, we were drawing towards us people with the ability and authority to change things, to the point where they believed in the desirability of the goal. If they came to think of it as their own idea, so much the better. I discovered a new power of persuasion in myself, intensified by strong allies. Sir Win Bischoff spoke about my tactics onstage at a dinner some years later in New York: ‘Without us realising what Helena was doing, she was getting us to do the work,’ he said, with a broad smile. Several of the chairmen and I became good friends; it was fun making progress in such a positive, harmonious way. The chairmen came up with many of the specific ideas: Sir Win made an impromptu announcement onstage at one 30% Club event that we would now set a 30% target for women in executive roles and, in front of the bemused audience, asked me, as I sat in the front row, what timescale we should set for that. Sir Roger suggested that chairmen deliberately instruct search firms to look beyond their comfort zones and specifically at least one level below their normal seniority levels for boardroom candidates. Robert Swannell, then chairman of Marks and Spencer, kept up the pressure by stating frequently that he would rather have joined a 50% Club.

I soon saw just how much more could be achieved once those on the inside campaigned for those on the outside to join them. I firmly believe that male champions of change are important if we are to see real progress. For a start, men saying they wanted more women to join them were so much more convincing than if I’d said we should have the opportunity. Stated by a woman, the message can seem self-serving or become blurred with the fairness argument; stated by a man, the business case is – for now – heard more clearly.

The idea that men in positions of influence can be highly effective champions of gender equality is nothing new. In 1848, Frederick Douglass, a leader of the American anti-slavery movement, strongly defended Elizabeth Cady Stanton against criticism of her ‘Declaration of Sentiments’, a statement of women’s rights modelled on the United States Declaration of Independence. In Britain, John Stuart Mill, the eminent economist, philosopher and also then a Member of Parliament, presented a petition in 1866 to the House of Commons in favour of women’s suffrage. The following year, he added an amendment to the 1867 Reform Act, which was aimed at giving many more working men the vote: Mill substituted the word ‘person’ for ‘man’. His amendment was defeated by 194 votes to 73 but helped the suffrage movement to gain momentum and Mill continued to advocate strongly for equal rights for women. He wasn’t exactly typical, however: fifty years later British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst called on men to champion the cause of women’s right to vote in her famous ‘Freedom or Death’ speech, recounting, ‘One woman broke the windows of the Guard Club … some of the guards came out and they said “Why did you break our windows? We have done nothing.” She said, “It is because you have done nothing I have broken your windows.”’

In 1926, Serbian-American inventor, engineer and visionary Nikola Tesla gave an interview published under the title ‘When Woman is Boss’. Tesla foresaw the dramatic impacts of wireless technology alongside the ‘acquisition of new fields of endeavour by women’. He asserted, ‘It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.’

And critically, men can be the most powerful advocates not only for women’s progression, but also for appropriate behaviours towards us. Ben Bailey Smith, better known by his stage name Doc Brown, is a leading and compelling advocate for men to be respectful to women. Speaking at a school in 2013 he pointed out to his male audience, ‘Men that are older than us have somehow created a world where we’re supposed to believe that girls are somehow secondary to us.’ He added, ‘we have the power to change that, you have the power, I have spoken because now people listen to me’. I met Ben when we were both being interviewed on Woman’s Hour, and he told me that when he started working to improve attitudes towards women, particularly amongst young black men, he experienced a backlash from some of his fans who challenged him, saying he wasn’t ‘cool’. Ben has two daughters and a famous sister, the novelist Zadie Smith, and is convinced that weak men prey on the vulnerable, whereas strong men will use their power to improve things, including railing against the objectification of women.

The history of feminism shows how the involvement of men has ebbed and flowed, varying from times when men – often just a few enlightened individuals – have proactively sought to help correct what they have recognised as a wrong – to episodes of ‘sisters doing it for themselves’. When I was a child, the ‘second wave of feminism’ (the suffrage movement being denoted the ‘first’, although there were earlier advocates of women’s rights) was in full swing and the image portrayed by the media was that feminists were anti-men and militant. A woman could be a feminist or feminine but not both.

The words actually spoken by women at the time suggest that this was not an accurate picture. On 22 March 1971, the date of my fifth birthday (in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t actually listening at the time), American academic and feminist activist Kate Millett was interviewed by Sue MacGregor on BBC Radio 4. Millett suggested that ‘men and children, as well as women, could live much freer lives without this oppressive, patriarchal social system’. The presenter summed up her ambition: ‘You’re not out for an equal slice of the cake as it stands today, you’re out to change the recipe.’

But there was little receptivity to this way of thinking in the 1970s, and the message became distorted. In the same interview, Millett suggested that many of the ideas of the feminist movement at the time were being misrepresented and portrayed as destructive because the establishment felt ‘very threatened’. She stressed that, contrary to reports, the movement was ‘not out to demolish anything’ but was looking to build new, additional lifestyle choices and for basic human rights to be bestowed on women. The goal was not that women take on the ‘oppressive’ qualities of the very system they were trying to change: specifically, she said, she hoped for less of the violence associated with masculinity.

This really is possible now. I see men everywhere (although admittedly not every man) looking to encourage women and girls, welcoming our progress rather than feeling threatened by it. They are conscious of the changes in our world, aware that the ‘old’ system needs changing too, and are often extra-motivated by talented daughters. When the 2015 Oxford and Cambridge Women’s Boat Race finally – after 186 years – took place on the same day over the same course as the men’s race, helped by Newton’s sponsorship, I was a little unsure how it would be received, given the iconic status of the (men’s) Boat Race. As Newton’s then-CEO, it was wonderful to be greeted warmly by many, including men, as I walked with my husband along the pathway by the Thames, and as my whole family watched at the finish line. The overwhelming feedback was that the women’s presence ‘modernised’ the Boat Race and that it was ‘about time too’. That reaction revealed just how far we have already come.

It is a sign of confidence and strength now for men to support gender equality; we should extend our hand to them, to work with the men in power today to create a world where that power is shared. We should use our feminine qualities to work collaboratively and achieve far greater progress together, as the 30% Club did on a small but symbolic scale to create change in the very traditional British boardroom.

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