The phrase ‘the glass ceiling’ was first used 30 years ago by Gay Bryant1 in her book, The Working Woman Report, which examined the status of women in employment in the US. Bryant said:
Women have reached a certain point – I call it the glass ceiling. They’re in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck.
Bryant’s idea was that women were stopped from progressing by an invisible barrier. They were not sure exactly what was stopping them but they could get no further.
In 1986 the phrase was picked up and used by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D. Schellhardt in an article in the Wall Street Journal.2 After that it spread rapidly. The same phrase was used repeatedly in the media and in 1991 it achieved official recognition when the US Department of Labour set up the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission. The Commission extended the concept beyond women to other groups: it examined disadvantage, ‘on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity’.
‘Glass Ceiling’ is a vivid and captivating metaphor. Its popularity helped to publicise the difficulties that women face in business and elsewhere. Unfortunately it also gives a misleading impression of the nature of those difficulties. As we have shown in this book, talented and determined women can not only see the jobs at the top of organisations, but they can also get to them. However, as we described in Chapter 9, the journey that women have to travel to reach the top is rarely as direct or as straightforward as it is for talented and determined men. The description we quoted from Helena Kennedy is apt and graphic. “It’s not in the front door and up the stairs as it is for many men. For women, it is more likely to be in the door, out of the window and up the drainpipe.” The route is convoluted with many hazards to navigate and wrong turnings to avoid. So the image of a labyrinth, as suggested by the American academics Alice Eagly and Linda Carli,3 is more accurate and revealing than the picture of a ‘glass ceiling’. Thoughtful and determined progress through a labyrinth is a better representation of how women actually achieve success than the dramatic violence needed to smash a panel of glass.
The authors of the Wall Street Journal article used the image of the ‘glass ceiling’ to suggest that the problem faced by women is a barrier that blocks their path. Indeed, the title of their article is:
The Glass Ceiling: Why Women Can’t Seem to Break The Invisible Barrier That Blocks Them From the Top Jobs.
In reality the difficulties faced by women are much more complicated than that. The external barriers are real enough but so are the pressures on women to conform to a stereotype that puts them in second place supporting the men who occupy senior positions rather than working alongside them. In our culture women are expected to conform to norms of appearance and behaviour that are scarcely compatible with what society expects of its leaders. And because career pathways are organised to suit men, the birth of children acts as a maternal wall that slows progress, halts careers and restricts opportunities. Men have made the rules and women have to fit in. It is not just a matter of removing the ceiling. As one woman put it to us, if women are to achieve equality the whole edifice of contemporary society needs to be rebuilt, “from the skirting boards up to the roof”.
In 1995, when the glass ceiling was rapidly becoming the normal explanation for the small number of women at the top of organisations, the American academic Patrice Buzzanell4 argued that the concept of the glass ceiling was taking policy initiatives in the wrong direction. She suggested that the task of achieving equality had come to be defined solely in terms of increasing the numbers of women who have broken through the glass ceiling into senior positions. Attention was being focused on how more women could be helped to succeed under the present system rather than on how to change the system itself. In Buzzanell’s view this is why women are advised to take extra training, to find a mentor to guide them, to promote themselves constantly and to network enthusiastically. As she explains, all this might help individual women to achieve success in a man’s world but it does little to deal with the deeper cultural problems that cause inequality. Indeed Buzzanell characterises the conventional package of advice that is offered to women as, in effect, asking women to do more to compensate for not being men.
Not everyone would be quite so dismissive of the advice that is given to ambitious women, but Buzzanell highlights the central question that has to be addressed in any debate about what should be done to achieve equality. Either we attempt to help individual women to succeed in the current system or we reform the system to make it fair to women. In short, we either fix the women or we fix the system. Buzzanell argues that it is the system that needs changing and we agree with her.
During our research we have uncovered a complex of organisational, cultural and attitudinal constraints faced by women in British society. The present system suits most men but in many respects is profoundly unfriendly to women. Giving women advice on how to make the best of the difficulties that a man-made society has created for them will confine women to a secondary position for all time. Such an approach is inadequate, patronising and deeply unfair. The barriers certainly need to be removed but we also need policies that change many of the customs, processes and attitudes in our society which restrict and penalise women. A great deal needs to be done and much of it will involve changing long-standing conventions and habits of mind.
Does any British Government that is likely to be elected in the foreseeable future have the necessary appetite for such a programme of radical reform? In the present state of British politics it appears unlikely. Several of the women we have interviewed have given us an insight into how successive British Governments have dealt with gender issues in the past 25 years. The commitment to gender equality has been patchy and uncertain.
In 1992, when it seemed that Labour might win the Election and create a Ministry for Women, the Civil Service started preparatory work. From what we have been told by insiders it seems that the Ministry for Women was conceived by the Civil Service as rather small with a Deputy Secretary rather than a more senior official in charge. The civil servant who was developing these plans was quoted as saying, ‘We (the Civil Service) haven’t anything to worry about but I expect we will need to bring others up to our level.’ The unmistakable impression was that senior civil servants regarded the policy as of secondary importance.
In the event the Conservatives won the General Election and Prime Minister John Major had no plans for a Ministry for Women or any similar initiative. Women were outnumbered by 20 to two in Major’s Cabinet and equality hardly figured on the Government’s agenda. Apparently there was a Cabinet Committee with an oversight of equality issues but we can find no evidence that it developed policies of benefit to women.
A Ministry for Women was finally created by Tony Blair in 1997. It followed one of those sad little episodes that is so revealing. The first list of ministerial appointments made no mention of a Minister for Women and the post was only created after Harriet Harman reminded the Prime Minister that a Manifesto commitment had been given and needed to be honoured. By that time the Government had already appointed the maximum number of paid ministerial posts allowed by law. So Joan Ruddock, the new Minister for Women, received no ministerial salary. This move, which was highlighted by the Prime Minister’s office, was widely regarded as an indication that the Minister for Women had a lower status than other ministers.
The record of the Blair Governments on gender issues is mixed. Women benefited considerably from policies like the National Minimum Wage, tax credits and Sure Start but there is a persistent impression that the central issue of inequality was not being faced and that these helpful policies were implemented for other reasons. The long argument that companies should be required to undertake equal pay audits was not successful and symbolic issues like page 3 of The Sun were side-stepped. Moreover, in spite of the Ministry for Women and the Equalities Unit in the Cabinet Office, Downing Street seemed quite content when parts of the media referred to Labour women MPs as, ‘Blair’s babes’.
The Coalition Government added a new element of incoherence to this story of uncertain commitment. The Coalition has made some attempt to increase the number of women on Boards but, at the same time, and in spite of the Prime Minister’s well-publicised ‘determination’ to appoint more women Ministers, the number of women in the Cabinet has remained depressingly low. Mixed messages abound. The Coalition Government aims to increase tax relief for childcare but the poorest women will get little benefit and those are the women who have been hardest hit by the Government’s austerity programme.
Can this rather uninspiring period be brought to an end and is it possible for a new Government to develop a coherent policy to achieve equality in Britain? Much depends on whether politicians are prepared to take a more positive view of the capacity of Government to make changes in our society.
Achieving equality involves transforming our current culture. Although modern politicians seem to believe cultural changes are too difficult to contemplate, there is in fact plenty of evidence that substantial changes can be accomplished. Sixty years ago, racism was an accepted part of British life. Black people were called ‘darkies’ and were regularly excluded from jobs and accommodation. Homosexuals were called ‘queers’, homosexual activities were against the law and prison sentences were often severe. Abortion was illegal and people carrying out abortions were regularly jailed. Persons stopped for drunken driving usually gained a good deal of public sympathy for being ‘picked on’ by the police. The majority of the adult population smoked and the atmosphere in most workplaces was as polluted as the air above our major cities.
The common feature of all these significant cultural changes is that they were achieved, in part or in full, by a change in the law. Either legislation led public opinion or it consolidated a change in the public mood. In each case the Government of the day was warned by traditionalists that the reform would cost votes. But that never seemed to happen. The change was accepted by most people and the traditionalists soon found that voters had other things on their minds when they went into the polling booth.
These examples offer an important corrective to the prevailing view of what is possible in politics. They also demonstrate the importance of legislation in achieving cultural change. Of course changes in the law are rarely sufficient on their own: legal changes need to take public opinion along with them. And governments will not succeed if the electorate as a whole feels that a new law is fundamentally unfair; the Conservative Government of the 1980s learnt that lesson as it tried to implement the Poll Tax. But leadership by Government can often be successful if it is determined, skilful and seen to be correcting an injustice.
However, for a new law to command support, the public must understand the nature of the injustice that is being addressed. This requires explanation and publicity. As we have shown, the customs, processes and attitudes that hold women back have a long history. They are deep-rooted and familiar. In many cases they are not thought of as unfair because they are not thought about at all. Therefore, an important element in any programme of reform must be a determined attempt to expose the flaws in many of the cosy platitudes that we have been taught to accept. For instance, we are always told that appointments of company Board members are made on merit. In fact, as we revealed in Chapter 3, nearly half of all the Non-Executive Directors on company Boards have been recruited through personal friendships and contacts. Even more startling is the revelation that only one out of every 25 Non-Executive Directors has been appointed after a formal interview and only a miniscule one in a 100 has been appointed after answering an advertisement. So are these appointments really being made on merit? Of course not. Most of the jobs go to insiders: to the friends, colleagues and acquaintances of men who are already Board members. A host of well-qualified people, men as well as women, will not even know that a vacancy exists until after it has been filled. The idea that merit is the main criterion for appointment is revealed as one of those comforting myths that are used to justify the status quo. The truth needs to be publicised. The public is entitled to know what really goes on in our important organisations and the Government has a responsibility to tell them.
Space needs to be made for public explanation and debate. However strong the arguments for reform, a challenge to long-held patterns of thought and behaviour is certain to provoke antagonism and resistance. Rushing ahead with reforms before the case is fully made is likely to mean that the programme stalls before it is complete. On the other hand, giving women a message that they should not worry because everything will be sorted out at some distant date is arrogant, insulting and foolish. Stella Creasy MP5 asks, ‘Why is progress so agonisingly slow? I look at my two and a half year old niece and I think, she’ll be drawing her pension before we have equality – and we can’t wait that long.’
Deciding on an appropriate timescale is a matter of careful political judgment. Our preference is for a programme that aims for equality not in two or three generations – the timescales implied by current policies and lamented by Stella Creasey – but in one. A single generation should be long enough for the explanation, justification and implementation of far-reaching reforms but short enough to give the programme credibility and maintain momentum. Even that timescale, which is much shorter than anything contemplated by most politicians, means that girls now in Primary school will be nearly 40 years of age before the programme of equality measures is fully complete. Men who think we need longer should try to justify that cautious view to their daughters and granddaughters.
It would also be a mistake to start with minor changes that are the least contentious. The here and now is very important in politics. A programme will not be taken seriously if it relies on what is planned to happen in 2040 or 2050. Most important is the issue of fairness. The sooner that Britain gets rid of some of the most objectionable examples of inequality, the better it will be for the women of Britain. Women are entitled to expect real benefit in the first few years of any serious programme of reform.
Many of the worst examples of inequality occur in employment and that is a good place to start a new programme of reform. In Chapter 2 we applauded the passing of the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act.6 However, we regret that those two reforming Acts of the 1970s have never delivered the improvements they promised. The failure is easily explained. Under the present system, the enforcement of equal rights requires individual women to take their cases to Tribunal, a costly process in itself. Once in a Tribunal they will be cross-examined – often mercilessly – and their case will attract personal publicity that can blight their career. It is not surprising that most victims of discrimination decide that the emotional and financial costs of going to Tribunal are just too high.
Two changes are necessary. The first concerns transparency. Employers should be required to declare in their Annual Reports the numbers of men and women at the various levels in their organisation. They should also be required to declare the number of women and men at each salary level. This information would be very easy to compile – in most cases it will already be on a spreadsheet in the HR department or in Accounts – and will give a clear indication of the relative career opportunities and salaries of men and women in each organisation. If employers consider that the impression given by these raw statistics is unfair, no doubt they will add footnotes of explanation to demonstrate how much better they are than they appear to be.
The publication of these figures is our first proposed reform. It should prompt a public debate about how far equal opportunities have been achieved in the British workforce and this will be valuable. We suspect that very many organisations will show the classic signs of job segregation, with women in large numbers in junior jobs and men occupying almost all of the most powerful positions. But the primary aim should be to give a specialist public agency the opportunity to examine the figures, to identify organisations with the worst record and to take action if there is evidence of discrimination. The public agency should have the right to take class actions to Tribunal, meaning action not just on behalf of an individual but on behalf of a section of the workforce. Trade unions should also have the right to take class actions on behalf of groups of their members. Setting up the specialist agency and allowing it to take class actions to Tribunal is our second reform.
The right of individuals to take equal pay or discrimination cases to Tribunal could remain but the whole emphasis of the legislation would change from a focus on discrimination against individuals to discrimination against groups. The public agency should have the task of encouraging improvement rather than engaging in litigation. If it does its job well, it is unlikely that many cases will have to go to Tribunal. However the change of approach would have a bracing effect on gender policies in the workplace. Employers would be encouraged to examine their practices and interrogate their HR specialists about recruitment, promotion and salary fixing procedures. A new urgency might be given to the development of adequate equality policies and action plans. Those companies that boast about their progressive policies but are reluctant to produce figures will have their claims tested in public.
Effective enforcement of the Sex Discrimination Act will ensure that employers give more attention to the experience and abilities of women when considering candidates for promotion. This should open up more career opportunities for women, particularly in middle management. However some commentators and a few of the women we interviewed regretted that women seem to lack the ambition to go for the topmost positions. In the rather repugnant jargon of the business world, a lot of women seem happy to get stuck in the ‘marzipan layer’ and never really try to get through to ‘the icing’.
We see things differently and so do most of the women from the corporate world whom we interviewed. One factor above all others seems to have a significant influence on whether women in middle management think that they can get to the top: whether or not women hold senior positions in their own organisation. “Seeing a woman in a top job is the only way to convince people that it is possible,” is Dianne Thompson’s conclusion. Many others agreed. One interviewee made a related point. Girls and young women are not shown enough of what women can achieve. The tabloids tend to focus on celebrities who seem to have done little of real consequence yet girls are encouraged to look on these celebrities as the main examples of female success. And, as we showed in Chapter 6, even those women who achieve career success tend to be presented as oddities, with the focus often on how they look rather than on what they have achieved.
The only way to overcome this cluster of problems is to make rapid progress so that it becomes just as common to see a woman in a senior position as it is to see a man. The slow and steady process favoured by the major political Parties will not do that, or at least not for an inordinately long time. Appointing women in ones and twos has the added disadvantage of leaving many senior women more or less isolated and surrounded by men. The best solution is to appoint a number of senior women quite quickly so that there is a critical mass of highly visible women at the top of every organisation. If the stereotype is to be shattered, seeing women in senior positions must become normalised as an everyday fact of life.
In 2002 Norway faced a similar problem: the number of women sitting on the Boards of their large companies was small and needed to be increased. At first, as in Britain, the Norwegians encouraged companies to take voluntary action. That produced little change. Eventually Ansgar Gabrielson, the Minister of Trade and Industry, became so frustrated at the lack of progress that he persuaded (some say bounced) the Norwegian Government into introducing a system of quotas, enforced by law, guaranteeing that at least 40 per cent of the Board members of companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange would be women.7 The new law took effect in 2008 and has aroused great interest throughout the world. One academic8 has said that the quota policy has been like ‘a snowball that has continued to grow’. In 2013 the EU Commission asked Member States whether they would support the introduction of a similar system of quotas throughout the EU. The British Coalition Government was adamant that it would not accept quotas enforced by law and reiterated the Government’s policy of following a voluntary approach through the efforts of Lord Davies.
Most of the women we interviewed were against quotas for women on company Boards and in respect of public appointments. They said that giving women special treatment would mean that women in senior positions would be regarded as inferior to men. They also feared that quotas would undermine the principle that appointments should be made on merit. One woman said that the whole idea of promoting a large number of women by introducing quotas made her “feel a bit queasy”.
We do not agree with these objections. During research for this book we looked in depth at what had happened in Norway. In 2013 we organised a Conference9 at the House of Commons where five Norwegian experts explained and reflected on the Norwegian initiative. What they told the conference was illuminating and reassuring. The Norwegian experts were able to dispel many of the myths that seem, for whatever reason, to have been circulating in UK Government circles and amongst the British business establishment.
In the first place, the introduction of quotas did not damage Norwegian business. Considerable efforts have been made to demonstrate that harm has been done but no convincing evidence has been found. A particular canard, often repeated by the British press, is that quotas meant that a small number of women scooped up most of the Directorships and became what they called ‘golden skirts’. In fact, as the figures presented to the Conference by Professor Morten Huse clearly show, the number of women who hold multiple Directorships in Norway is very similar to the figures for men. Most remarkable has been the way in which opposition to quotas, initially strong in the Norwegian business community, has faded away. Nowadays the consensus view in Norway is that Boards work better than they did before the change. Having women from a variety of backgrounds in the Boardroom has improved the nature of debate and the quality of decisions.
What about the fear that women who get into the Boardroom as a result of the quota law would be regarded as second class Directors, lacking the authority of their male colleagues? Professor Agnes Bolsø told the Conference that in Norway the fear has proved to be groundless. Businesswoman Mai-Lill Ibsen added that in her experience the reputation of women Directors depends entirely on their performance and not on the route they travelled to reach the Boardroom.
Unfortunately – and perhaps this is the intention – the discussion of the alleged problems with quotas has tended to obscure the considerable advantages of the Norwegian policy. Quotas were introduced in Norway to increase the number of women who sit on company Boards. It achieved that objective after other initiatives had failed. The proportion of women who sit on the Boards of the major companies in Norway is double the proportion of women on the Boards of big companies in Britain.
The case for quotas needs to be debated in the light of the evidence. People who dislike quotas should stop searching for deficiencies in a system that is working well in Norway and should be challenged to suggest an alternative which is as effective as quotas in improving the gender balance. Chi Omwurah MP quoted a former French Minister for Business to us. He said, ‘Quotas are terrible but we’re going to have them.’ Terrible or not, until someone finds an alternative that works as well, the choice facing Britain will be between quotas and decades of continuing inequality. That is why the introduction of quotas for Stock Exchange-listed companies is our third reform.
Quotas are valuable but policy makers must keep their eyes on the main objective: how to change the balance of power in business. As we argue in Chapter 10, increasing the number of women serving as Non-Executive Directors on the Boards of our largest companies will not, in itself, make a huge difference to who wields power in corporate Britain. The redistribution of power will only begin in earnest when company Boards start appointing significant numbers of women to be Chief Executives and Senior Executive Directors.
Some commentators have suggested that Boards containing a critical mass of women are more likely to appoint women to be Senior Executives than Boards dominated by men. The good news is that this common sense conclusion is now supported by evidence. Research presented by Atul Gupta, and Kartik Raman10 in 2013 showed that a Board containing three women is 20 times more likely to appoint a woman CEO than a Board with only one woman.11 Admittedly, even with three women on the Board, a male CEO is still more likely than a woman to be appointed. Nevertheless the research by Gupta and Raman supports the view that a good way to get more women CEOs is to make sure that company Boards comprise not just one or two women but that vital critical mass of three or more.
To complete the transformation, a new openness should be introduced into the appointment of Company Directors, both Non-Executive and Executive. This is our fourth reform. Job requirements should be defined, posts should be advertised and formal selection procedures should be used. The whole process should be publicised on the company website so that everyone can see that the normal obligation to behave in an unbiased and equal manner is being fulfilled. To observe the quota requirements, some of the appointments will have to specify gender, but the rigour of the new system should reassure the doubters that the most able women are being appointed instead of some insider who happens to be a friend, colleague or acquaintance of an existing Board member.
In Britain, Government policy has focused heavily on company Boards and much less media attention has been given to appointments to public bodies, where Governments have the power to change the gender balance very quickly. At first sight there have been some encouraging signs. The Prime Minister has spoken of the need to increase the number of women who are appointed and in 2013 the Cabinet Office stated that it was ‘supporting efforts’ to raise the proportion of women on public Boards to 50 per cent by 2015.
However, when we looked at the statistics, we found a familiar gap between rhetoric and delivery. The figures for 2012/1312 show that 354 women were appointed or reappointed as members of public Boards out of a total of 964 appointments. In other words nearly two men were appointed or re-appointed for every woman. As the number of men already outnumber women on public Boards by nearly two to one13 the current rate of appointment will merely consolidate the existing imbalance and do nothing to improve it.
The full story is even more depressing. In most public bodies a good deal of power rests with the Chair and the figures show that appointments and reappointments of Chairs of public bodies were even more heavily weighted towards men. In the year 2012/2013, 112 appointments or re-appointments of Chairs were made and only 29 of them were women. This means that three men were appointed as Chairs for every woman. Yet again, Government practice is acting to consolidate the dominance of men in positions of power instead of changing it.
Most observers will wonder why the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for gender policy, is trumpeting its attempts to close the gender gap while, with very few exceptions, the other 21 Departments of State which sponsor public bodies are doing too little. An obvious conclusion is that Ministers and senior civil servants do not feel any great commitment to meet the target set by the Cabinet Office. But, whatever the reason, this is a failure of government process. The Prime Minister should declare a target date for the achievement of a gender balance on public bodies and put his personal weight behind the policy. Because of ministerial and departmental apathy, the Cabinet Office’s target of gender parity by 2015 is unachievable but there is no reason why the target could not be reached soon afterwards. After all, appointments to public bodies are usually made for only three years and that gives the Government a good deal of discretion. Crucially, the Government’s commitment should not just be about the members of public bodies. To ensure a redistribution of power, a second target date should be set. Across the range of public bodies, we should seek to achieve parity in the number of men and women appointed to Chair public bodies. These two targets constitute our fifth reform.
Establishing a new policy for public appointments and carrying it through successfully requires the exercise of moral authority. This is where the Leaders of all the big political parties face a challenge. Introducing quotas for the membership of company Boards and delivering what is meant to be a determined policy on public appointments leaves the Party Leaders open to the question of exactly what they are doing to reduce inequality in their own backyard. Over three-quarters of Members of Parliament are male and only Labour has any firm constitutional arrangement to increase the number of women candidates; the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats apparently intend to rely on exhortation and persuasion, a soft policy that stands little chance of success and is taken by many to signify a lack of commitment.
Attempts to persuade business and the institutions to reduce inequality are unlikely to carry much weight if politicians are comfortable with male dominance in Parliament and in other elective assemblies. But changing the gender balance in the House of Commons and in local Councils is much more important than that. It is idle to talk about a redistribution of power in Britain unless it takes place in the heart of national and local government. Moreover the best way to combat the half-expressed prejudice that women are not suited to leadership is for the public to see women wielding political power as often as men. Unless the political parties take more decisive action, realistic calculations suggest that women will not achieve even 40 per cent of the seats in Parliament until after 2030, and it could be very much later. Parity is an even more distant prospect.
It is tempting to recommend a preferred method to change the gender balance in Parliament and in local government. The system of women-only shortlists that the Labour Party has used for the selection of parliamentary candidates has proved effective in changing the gender balance. As a result of women-only shortlists, the Labour Party in Parliament has a much better gender balance than the other Parties. Thirty-four per cent of Labour MPs are women compared with fewer than 15 per cent of Conservative MPs and fewer than 13 per cent of LibDem MPs.
Like most positive action to correct discrimination, women-only shortlists proved controversial. Plenty of men and some women suggested that women who had been selected from a women-only shortlist would not be taken seriously by voters and, if they were elected to Parliament, they would have a second class status in the House of Commons. Rachel Reeves, who sits on the Labour Front Bench, says that, in the event, she and other colleagues who have been selected from women-only shortlists faced neither of these problems. The statistics support her view. An analysis of voting trends gives no indication that voters are any less likely to support a women-only shortlist candidate than a candidate selected using the traditional procedure. Once in the House of Commons, MPs who come from constituencies operating women-only shortlists seem to be treated no worse than other women MPs.
It would be a big step forward if the Conservatives and the Lib Dems introduced the device of the women-only shortlist and if Labour used it more intensively. However each Party has its own view of democracy and other methods might work as well and be more acceptable to Party members. We suggest a more flexible approach. Successive governments have been strongly attracted to the idea of setting targets. A target has been set by Lord Davies for the gender balance in company Boardrooms, albeit at an undemanding level, and a rather more encouraging target has been set for public appointments by the Cabinet Office, albeit without much political weight behind it. Our sixth reform is that, as a stage on the journey to equality, a 40 per cent target should be set as the minimum proportion of women (and men) in each Party in the House of Commons and in local Councils. The target should be achieved by the 2020 General Election or, in the case of local councils, by the first local elections after that date. This reform will mean that Britain will start the next decade with the most representative House of Commons and, soon after, with the most representative local councils that we have had at any time in our history.
Parliament has two Chambers and there is no reason why the House of Lords could not achieve parity rather more quickly than the House of Commons. This is the intention behind our seventh reform. The Lords demonstrated flexibility in reducing the number of hereditary peers who can attend and a similar process could be adopted to achieve gender balance: the male peers would vote to elect the required number. An adjustment could be made to this process to take account of Party allegiance if that were considered appropriate.
As the composition of the Houses of Parliament moves towards gender parity, we also presume that the Government of the day will ensure that ministerial and Cabinet appointments move in the same direction. The scandal of allowing women in Cabinet to be outnumbered by five or six to one must never be repeated.
In this policy area, as in others, the particular change is important not only in itself but to create the circumstance where other helpful changes are made as a matter of course. A Parliament that includes a high proportion of women will be more likely to concern itself with issues that women as a whole consider important and a Cabinet that includes a high proportion of women is more likely to act on those issues. As many more women become MPs, Councillors, Cabinet members and Council Leaders, the priorities of Government should come a good deal closer to reflecting the realities of women’s lives.
We found in our research that one over-riding priority requires to be tackled. As most women know, it is when babies are born that the full extent of gender inequality is revealed. Because of long-standing traditions and a good deal of prejudice, the world of work has never taken proper account of the need for women to have babies and to look after their children. Earlier in this book we labelled that deficiency as arguably the biggest failure in western society.
Almost all women want to work and many want to build a career. But when they become mothers, women have to take time off work to have children but they also want to take time off when the children are young and, perhaps just as important, when the children are going through the pressurised teenage years. Most women do not want to stop work entirely during these periods but they often want to reduce their hours of work so that they can spend more time with their children.
It is when women try to implement these necessary changes that the inadequacy of our current system of work is displayed in all its miserable clarity. Employers often act as if work breaks and changes in hours pose significant problems that are difficult to accommodate. Suggestions are rejected or are granted grudgingly. Women feel that they are asking for favours and are inordinately grateful if the organisation – or more often a particular individual – is sympathetic and cooperative. Yet viewed in terms of the public good, these are not requests or requirements for which women should be expected to apologise. Indeed, ensuring that women have the time and space to look after their children is a good way to build a cohesive, civilised and happy society.
The second part of this miserable story is that even if women manage to get the time off and the shorter hours that they often need, they find themselves penalised in terms of pay and promotional opportunities. Any move away from a full-time contract usually means a career setback or, at best, what one woman called a “stalling period”. Compromises are worked out, some not very happily, and leave most mothers with the feeling that they do not have proper control of their lives. The contrary demands from work and home are never entirely predictable and stress is a constant companion.
These problems can be reduced if employers adopt more flexible practices. As one politician argued, making part-time work and job-shares readily available and attractive for men – particularly those in middle management and above – would help to change the male impression that ‘short hours are only worked by wimps’. With a little imagination and proper guidance, part time and job-shares can be used much more extensively. Many jobs in the service sector involve seven-day, around the clock, activity and that means that the responsibility already has to be split between different managers. In many cases it is not much more difficult and might even be more efficient to divide the responsibility between a mix of full-timers and part-timers rather than just employing full-timers.
The pattern of hours throughout the day might be varied so that mothers and fathers are able to cope more easily with that stressful time in the afternoon when children come out of school. We spoke to one civil servant who had negotiated a break in the afternoon so that she could pick up her child from school, deliver him home and then return to the office. More work might be task-based rather than involving the commitment to be present in a particular workplace. Few people want to lose social contact with colleagues but a greater flexibility about where work can be done would help many parents and carers.
Good will and imagination can produce many helpful ideas but, as so often in employment matters, best practice takes a long time to spread. Legislation can help to drive the necessary changes. The notion that people need a statutory right before they can ask for flexible working has always seemed somewhat strange: any good employer should surely be open to suggestions on any work-related issue. However the legal obligation on every employer to consider each proposal for flexibility in a serious and systematic way is helpful, as is the rule that a suggestion may only be rejected if the grounds for rejection are clearly stated. These requirements nudge employers in the right direction.
The trouble is that the letter applying for more flexible hours has to be written by an individual and this often takes a lot of courage. Making an application is more straightforward if the employing organisation has an equal rights policy and is accustomed to receiving such requests. But many organisations have no published policy and little experience of handling applications. The first request is likely to be unwelcome and the first applicant will have to explain and justify every sentence in her letter. In this respect, as in many others that we have noted, it is difficult being a pioneer.
The culture has to be changed so that equal rights and flexible working form an essential part of every employers HR practices. It is easy to see how this might be done because a useful precedent is available. Forty years ago when the number of deaths and accidents at work was considerably higher than it is now, the pressing need was to persuade employers to take safety issues much more seriously. The solution was to require every employing organisation to have a published safety policy with a senior manager directly accountable for safety matters. To make sure that the workforce as a whole was involved and that the organisation listened to the staff, safety representatives were elected. Some employers protested but a great deal of independent research has demonstrated that the system works well. Most important, Britain’s accident rate fell quickly after the new system was introduced.
A similar system would certainly improve Britain’s equal rights performance. Every employing organisation should be required to have an equal rights policy and a senior manager responsible for equality issues. An equality representative should be elected by the staff and equality issues should be considered as a matter of routine through the organisation’s consultative arrangements. The new system should be backed by a law giving the equality representative the right to be involved in all discrimination complaints and to be consulted on all applications for flexible working. The information about the distribution and pay of women and men throughout the organisation, which we have proposed as our first reform, would provide the basis of a continuing discussion about the organisation’s equality performance. These measures would ensure that every employer gives proper consideration to gender and equality issues and that all women employees have a reasonable expectation that applications for flexible working and complaints of discrimination will be treated seriously. The creation of this workplace-based system of equal rights accountability and consultation is our eighth reform.
All this would give a new momentum to equal rights improvements and, if there is a trade union to ensure that the spirit as well as the letter of the law is observed, so much the better. Working hours and working practices should become more flexible and this would be very worthwhile. But no one should believe that the introduction of more flexible working practices will, in itself, eliminate inequality. Flexible working helps to mitigate the problems faced by women but will not solve them. Even in sympathetic and progressive workplaces, women with children will still face difficulties that do not affect men. Broken career paths and the fact that women take the prime responsibility for childcare will ensure that some inequality remains.
In our research we considered a number of policies which, it is claimed, would usher in complete equality. The most popular on the political left is the creation of a more extensive set of legal rights for working women, with heavy penalties for any employer who is found in breach. There is no doubt that legal rights, properly enforced, can bring substantial benefits and we have advocated a number of changes in this and earlier chapters. But the limitations of this approach need to be taken seriously. When Lord Alan Sugar said that he knows of many employers who are determined not to recruit women of child-bearing age because they want to avoid the costs and inconvenience of maternity leave, he was understandably shouted down. Many said that he should be leading calls for equality not acting as an apologist for discriminatory employers. But it was also noticeable that after Sugar’s outburst a significant number of small employers joined the debate and stated that indeed they were wary of appointing women of child-bearing age to key positions.
We believe that companies should be required to publish figures showing how many women are employed and at each level in the organisation. An examination of these figures would reveal which companies were operating discriminatory policies. But this type of pressure works best with bigger organisations. A very large number of job opportunities exist in small firms which operate below everybody’s radar. A more active use of equality legislation would certainly bring benefits to many women but the attitudes that Sugar and his supporters have expressed will continue to deprive many other women of the chance of worthwhile jobs in smaller companies. Spreading equality of opportunity to the less visible parts of the economy is extremely difficult.
An alternative approach gets more publicity and has become the preferred solution in the minds of many commentators. If taking primary responsibility for childcare is what puts women at a disadvantage, then surely the best solution is for men and women to share childcare, balancing the burden and equalising the disadvantage. It is an attractive idea, elegant in its simplicity. Unfortunately some people who have tried to put it into effect have told us that it works much less well in practice than the optimists expect.
The main problem is that neither partner really wants to share the responsibility equally. The father will offer help but this offer is usually limited by remarks about what he cannot or should not do – like getting the school clothes ready each day or remembering when the PE kit is needed or making up the lunch box or leaving work early on a regular basis to pick up the children from school. It soon becomes clear that lodged in almost every man’s brain is the belief that, although it is reasonable for him to help, it is only right that the bulk of the routine work should stay with the mother.
As we described in Chapter 8, the mother’s position is more complicated. The mothers we interviewed wanted to retain their role as the principal carers. They want the final say on what the children eat and what they wear and they want to know immediately if their child is ill or badly upset. Some women confessed to us that, when the father took over, they had to fight the compulsion to keep giving advice and instructions. Sometimes this desire to retain control is exhibited through lists and post-it notes to ‘remind’ the father what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and how it should be done. We quoted Suzanne Warner’s conclusion in Chapter 8. She had “never met a mother who was not the default carer”. Our research strongly suggests that this is what both partners want and any attempt to build a policy initiative on a different assumption will cause unhappiness to women, discontent amongst men and would almost certainly fail.
If this analysis is correct, no clever fixes are available and we must simply find a way to ensure that women can take the necessary breaks without damaging their job and promotional prospects. This means that a career containing the pauses, the deviations and the changes from full time to part time and back again that women need, is valued as highly as the linear uninterrupted career conventionally worked by men. We can imagine how work can be reorganised to achieve this outcome but the necessary changes are so dramatic and so far-reaching that it would be foolish to pretend that they add up to a realistic programme for the near future.
Fortunately, an opportunity might come from an entirely different direction. Substantial changes will be taking place in the working lives of men and women in the next few decades. These changes might force a rethink of our attitude to work and a re-examination of what is still thought of as ‘a normal career’.
Girls born this year are likely to live to 100. The life expectancy of boys will not be far behind. This explosion in longevity will force massive changes in our social and economic life. This book is not the place to speculate in detail about all the consequences but it is obvious that we do not have the institutions, the customs or the psychological know-how to cope with such a large and rapid increase in the average lifespan. There will be a need to make substantial changes in the way society is run and this creates a major opportunity for reform and improvement. If a wise approach is adopted, we may be able to use the necessary changes to increase the life chances of the British people, to foster greater wellbeing and, in the terms of this book, to produce a society where women are treated equally with men.
However the outcome could be very different. The obvious consequence of the longevity explosion is that, by the end of this century, the people of Britain will be expected to work for 20 years longer than they do now. Only time will tell whether people will accept a working life of 60 years instead of 40 but a steady increase in the working life of the average person seems to be what is intended by Government. At the moment the only political response to the explosion in longevity has been the downbeat and small-minded conclusion that existing pension arrangements will be unaffordable and that the retirement age be raised and then raised again.
During the next few decades technological change, which already seems so rapid, is likely to accelerate further. This puts an enormous strain on our education and training systems. Throughout a much longer working life, people will experience a regular need to bring their academic and vocational skills up to date. The world of work will require a flexible system that makes education and re-education, training and retraining readily available for the majority of men and women who will need it. Britain does not have such a system. Education is typically delivered between the ages of 5 and 22. There are very few second chances. Colleges and universities take some ‘mature students’ (the name explains everything) but there are too few places and not many adults have the resources to fund themselves through further or higher education.
Employers could meet the demand for continuing education and training but at present most typically do not. The modern notion is that education and training is the responsibility of the individual. The message is that if you think you need it, you should access it and pay for it yourself. This is manageable if the person concerned is relatively affluent and the training is of short duration but anything that is substantial and costly means a struggle for almost everyone and is usually impossible for people without significant resources.
How does all this affect women? The short answer is that, in this arduous new world, women might face even greater difficulties than men. More women are going to university and that is encouraging but, as we showed in Chapter 4, women make much less progress once they get into work and in some occupations the attrition rate is very high. Many families continue to give a higher priority to the man’s employment than to the woman’s so many women will not have the resources to fund their own training and retraining. Women who take career breaks to have children and want to return to work will increasingly find that they need education or training courses to catch up with latest developments in the sector. At present few such courses are available and those that exist are costly.
Frances O’Grady told us that the creation of second and third chances for people who missed out on education in their teens would be of enormous value in increasing the life chances of women. So it would – and it would also be of considerable value to many men and to the sustainability of the British economy. This single policy change would begin to correct the inadequacies of our education and training systems and begin to prepare Britain for the greater challenges that will be faced by the next generation. So our ninth reform is the creation of a scheme of funded work breaks that will improve the educational attainment of the British population and, in time, deliver other social and economic benefits.
A work break scheme need not be particularly complicated. Adults should be given the opportunity to apply for a paid sabbatical from work for up to three years to study for an academic or vocational qualification. A salary would be paid related to previous earnings subject to a minimum and maximum. It would be unreasonable to put this financial obligation on the current employer so the scheme would have to be funded by the Government. The obligation of the employer would be to offer a job comparable to the one that had been left when the employee returns with their new qualification. This should be no hardship. An employee, reinvigorated by a break with time to think, learn new skills and develop their talents should be of benefit to any forward-looking employer in any field. Conditions could be imposed to meet the inevitable objections and a system could even be introduced to recover part of the cost if the Government of the time happened to be too blinkered to see the enormous economic and social benefits of such a scheme.
Not everyone will wish to take advantage of the work break scheme, particularly in the early days. Many people identify heavily with their career. They see themselves as drivers, doctors, builders, teachers, lawyers, IT specialists, cooks, politicians, gardeners, managers or the rest. This fixed identity gives them stability and a recognised place in society. They know where they are on the rungs of a promotional ladder. At a deeper level many people are emotionally and intellectually committed to their job and have a clear vision of how to further their career and how to increase the value of their work. For these people it could be unsettling to abandon their plans and focus on something new. They might feel that their ambition is being frustrated or that they are being pressurised to do something that does not accord with their view of themselves.
However there is another way of thinking about a long lifetime of work and we believe that, as the years of employment lengthen, this alternative view will become increasingly important and attractive. Some people trap themselves into a job which is not suitable and need to change direction. Some people find that they become stale in a job that has lost its satisfaction and want to try something else. People rightly need a period of reflection or to test themselves out against a new challenge or to rekindle their ambition. The work break scheme will be an invitation to try new ventures, develop neglected talents or simply have time to delve more deeply into familiar work.
Most of us change as we grow older, and it is perverse to expect a person of 60 or 70 to have the same work priorities as she or he had at age 20 or 30. Work breaks will provide second and third chances as well as the opportunity to adjust our working lives to match the changes in the way we view ourselves and the world about us. Offering women and men the chance to deepen knowledge, to develop talents, to reflect on their opportunities and to change direction will make Britain happier and more productive. We should not condemn our children and grandchildren to work for such a very long time within the cramped and inflexible system that we have created. If we are prepared to be bold, we can ensure that the working lives of the next generation will be more fulfilling and more equal.
The work break scheme could be extended beyond education and training. Individuals with plans to set up a new business could be granted a paid break. Conditions would be imposed to ensure that the project is genuine and viable, with suitable milestones to monitor progress. More ambitiously the work break concept might be opened to people who wanted to volunteer their services to charities at home and abroad. Perhaps places could also be found for people who want to set up arts and drama projects. No doubt other ideas will be put forward. The scheme should start with education and training because knowledge, understanding and skills top the list of our most desperate needs but it could be extended substantially as the scheme grows in popularity and if the Government has the necessary imagination. The test should be whether the projects enhance the economic, cultural and social wellbeing of the people of Britain.
Of course, once paid work breaks are judged by such a test, people will ask whether maternity and paternity breaks should be fitted into the scheme. In a better world, with many more women in positions of power, we trust that the question will be taken seriously. Would maternity and paternity breaks pass the test of enhancing the wellbeing of Britain? Of course they would. Having time off to bear children and to look after them is of overwhelming importance in a society that wants its young people to grow up as secure and communal citizens.
In fact the benefits of properly funding maternity and paternity go much deeper. For almost every woman the birth of a child is a matter of joy and wonder, a defining moment of life, never to be forgotten. Our society should celebrate childbirth and give it complete legitimacy, not surround it with doubts and difficulties. It is neither sensible nor reasonable for society to make pregnancy and childbirth into periods of economic stringency as household income falls and money worries increase. An equal society would stop applying financial penalties to childbirth. An equal society would force the world of work to change its culture so that there is a reconciliation between employment practices and the self-evident fact of life that women have babies. An equal society would stop making the birth of each child into a ‘career crisis’. And an equal society would also offer proper periods of paid time off to partners so that they can offer help and support for months rather than for a miserable few days. For all these reasons, extending the work break scheme to include maternity and paternity leave is our tenth reform.
Everyone should benefit from a work break scheme but women will gain some extra advantage. With better maternity pay women will be able to decide when to have children without so much financial pressure. They might decide to use part of their maternity leave to gain new learning and new qualifications; the scheme should be sufficiently flexible to encourage that combination. Greater equality will also come from changes in the nature of men’s careers. In time many men will see the benefit of taking work breaks to improve their skills or to change direction. As the working life grows longer, men as well as women might have several careers and will reach particular points at different ages. So women who have taken a work break to have children might not always find themselves six or so years behind the men they started out with. It would be too much to claim that a work break scheme will destroy the notion that normal careers are continuous and unbroken but the scheme should at least encourage more people to see breaks from work as a good thing for themselves and for society rather than as an inconvenient ‘woman thing’ that interrupts the smooth operation of business.
We think that, once the implications of the longevity explosion are understood and as people face the prospect of an ever-increasing working life, the work break scheme will be decidedly popular. But opposition is easy to anticipate. We will be told that Britain cannot afford the cost. We suspect that the idea of paying mothers a significant proportion of their former earnings for up to three years will be the subject of particular criticism. No doubt we will be assured that this is not a matter of prejudice, but just a matter of finance. And no doubt the opposition will forget to remind us that Britain is the sixth richest country on the planet. Some critics will suggest that large numbers of women will ‘exploit the scheme’ by having lots of babies. And no doubt these critics will forget to mention that this does not happen in Scandinavian countries where maternity benefits are already much better than in Britain.
We hope that people will see through the objections and appreciate the benefits. A scheme of work breaks will ensure that we are better prepared to achieve success in an even more demanding world. Women will have better career opportunities and so will men. The chance to learn more, train more and reflect more will take some of the drudgery and unfairness out of working life in Britain. Perhaps it will even help to make us a better, happier and more successful country.
The recommendations we make in this chapter for a programme of reform – for the better enforcement of equality legislation, for a greater transparency in appointments and pay, for the introduction of quotas, targets and in-house equality programmes to achieve a better balance of power in companies, public sector organisations and in Parliament, and for the introduction of a scheme offering work breaks – will all contribute to the correction of a long-standing injustice.
For hundreds of years women in Britain have suffered discrimination, both directly and indirectly. To achieve equality of opportunity, not only should the barriers that impede women be removed but we must also change the customs, processes and attitudes that frustrate achievement and success. We understand the desire to move cautiously but a programme of incremental change is too uncertain and too slow. Even the programme of more radical and positive action that we propose in this chapter may take a generation before the full benefits are felt. To make women wait longer for equality is unreasonable insulting and unfair.
In this chapter we have recommended ten far-reaching reforms. However the question that hovers ominously in the background is whether a British Government can be persuaded to implement such a radical programme of positive action. We accept that the prospects are not good. Earlier in this chapter we noted that recent British Governments have been inclined to show what we called, ‘an uncertain commitment’ to gender equality. That is why we should look for guidance at the two periods in the last 100 years when significant gains have been made. We find that in each case sustained pressure was exerted on the Government: by the suffragettes in the early part of the twentieth century and by the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The lesson of history seems to be that sustained pressure produces significant benefits but that without sustained pressure, progress is slow, improvements tend to be small and, on occasion, the position of women may even get worse.
So, in our next and last chapter, we consider the state of feminism in Britain today and whether it is possible to build a substantial and cohesive campaign that will be powerful enough and persistent enough to persuade the political parties to take gender equality seriously and to implement the far-reaching changes that are necessary to transform the lives of women in Britain.