Work is a Feminist Issue
In his recent book, ’12 Rules for Life’, author Jordan Peterson discusses the drivers behind men’s need to succeed and prosper in ‘male regulated dominance hierarchies’. One of those drivers, he suggests, is to attract a female partner.
Sadly, it hasn’t completely dawned on such ‘male regulated dominance hierarchies,’ that female partners can be for their business lives as well as their personal lives.
Of course, diversity is on everyone’s lips, but has it really got much past lip service and tokenistic virtue signalling on corporate web sites?
On International Women’s Day in March this year, YouGov trumpeted the following:
Record 309 women on FTSE 100 boards, new data reveals
A quarter of FTSE 350 board positions now filled by women
The trumpet failed to mention, however, that there are still only seven female CEOs of FTSE 100 companies, which means that there are more CEOs called David (nine). Furthermore, of the women appointed to FTSE 100 boards during the last decade, 83 per cent were in non-executive roles. (1)
In academe and professional services the picture is no more Rosy, Poppy or Daisy.
For example, in law firms women make up three quarters of the staff, but only 48% of lawyers, and only 33% of partners. The difference is greater still in the largest firms, where only 29% of partners are female. (2)
And it gets worse. A 2018 survey of London law firms found that female partners receive 24% less compensation than their male counterparts. (3) And in 2017 Legal Week reported that female partner promotions at UK top 30 law firms fell 23% in the last two years.
As for academe a recent US research paper (4) concluded that:
The hierarchical structure of academic medicine has a significant impact on faculty work experiences, including advancement, especially for women. We suggest that medical schools consider alternative models of leadership and managerial styles, with a greater emphasis on inclusion. This is a structural reform that could increase opportunities for advancement especially for women in academic medicine.
We think Doctors Conrad, Carr, Knight, Renfrew, Dunn, and Pololi, (Conrad being the token male!), hit the nail on the head.
We need to go beyond quotas and affirmative action and look at the impact the underlying structure of the work has on diversity.
If we persist with ‘escalator hierarchies’, which you have to stay on to succeed, and a working culture that, despite the digital revolution, still judges work as real work if it’s done in the workplace, it will remain a challenge for women to be given a fair and equal chance to succeed. As a consequence we will continue to miss out on the talents of a significant proportion of our brightest and best.
In the words of one of those ‘brightest and best’, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (5) ; ‘it is increasingly recognised the more diverse a group is….(business or academic)….the more robust, the more flexible and the more successful it is.’
(1) Independent newspaper
(2) Solicitors Regulation Authority
(3) Major, Lindsey & Africa, legal search firm
(4) US Journal of Women’s Health
(5) Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP is an astrophysicist who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars. She is credited with, ‘one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th Century’
