One word, almost more than any other, was used by high-achieving women as they described their careers to us and sought to explain the reasons for their success. That word is ‘luck’. Time after time we were told about lucky breaks, about being in the right place at the right time, about openings that occurred at an opportune moment and about their good luck in having supportive husbands or partners.
Sometimes it is easy to understand why the word luck is used. Emma Howard Boyd was working for a different organisation in the same building when the whole of Jupiter’s green and ethical investment team resigned. The team had to be reconstructed in a hurry, Emma Howard Boyd was close by and, according to her own account, dropped into a senior job. This was certainly a lucky break. But of course, however fortunate the circumstances, she would not have been appointed if Jupiter had not seen great potential in her and she could not have held onto the job if her performance had been below what was required. No doubt some luck was involved but perhaps rather less than Emma Howard Boyd would suggest.
On the other hand it is difficult to find much good luck in many of the other examples that were quoted to us. Anna Dugdale became Deputy Finance Director at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Trust after six successful years with a top accountancy firm in London. She told us that she was lucky because her boss, although well regarded and politically shrewd, was less energetic than he might have been. As a result he was content to let her take on more and more responsibility and do more and more of his job. This provided an opportunity to learn quickly about the Trust’s finances but it also meant that she had to work at a higher level than a Deputy would normally expect. And there is no doubt that her ‘politically shrewd’ boss would not have put his reputation at stake unless he was satisfied that she was highly competent and could be trusted to handle his work effectively. It sounded to us as if the boss was a good deal more fortunate than Anna Dugdale. We put this view to her but she insisted that “the chance to do the job before you have the title is a great opportunity for anyone early in their career”.
Adrienne Morgan told us that she was very lucky to be taken on as an articled clerk by a good firm of solicitors. But before she got that ‘lucky’ break she had the stamina to write unsuccessfully to over 50 firms. Sue Street thought that she was lucky to get back into the Civil Service after a gap of six years at a time when normal recruitment was suspended. Most observers might think that as a starred graduate trainee, with her previous record of considerable success in the Civil Service and her determination to apply after being told that an application would not be considered, was enough to earn what she labelled as good luck. Liz Nelson made perhaps the most startling comment of all. She said that she always felt lucky “because the men who worked for me didn’t seem to mind working for a woman”.
Some careers involve a succession of setbacks. Nevertheless, we found that a single moment of good fortune is likely to be remembered while the rest is forgotten. One poor woman who is now running a forward-looking charity described her “good luck” in landing a job with a major environmental company. In the days before that successful application, which was entirely merited by her qualifications and experience, hotel bookings had gone wrong, she had been involved in a nasty car accident and a senior colleague whom she worked with had suffered a heart attack. Another Senior Executive extolled her good luck in being offered a temporary contract in another part of the company after her boss, who had evidently taken a dislike to her, gave her a “terrible assessment” and almost ended her career. The appalling bad fortune of having such an unreasonable boss seemed to be forgotten as she described her good luck in getting a “second chance”.
Of course not every successful woman takes this view of her career. A minority told us that they did not regard themselves as particularly lucky and Lynne Berry declared unambiguously that most of her success was the result of “bloody hard work”. Clarissa Williams took the very clear-eyed view that luck might sometimes create opportunities but those opportunities have to be taken with confidence and competence if success is to be achieved. Nevertheless we found a much larger number of women who denied that their career had been in any way planned and that happenstance had played a big part in helping them get to the top. Frances O’Grady used the phrase, “I ended up as Deputy General Secretary of the TUC,” to describe a particularly important promotion in her career. This might have been just a figure of speech but it sounded almost as if fate had intervened. In fact she was appointed to that position and then into the top job at the TUC as the outstanding candidate and with the overwhelming support of the trade union movement.
It is obviously difficult to be objective about what constitutes good luck but, looking at the evidence, we find it very difficult to believe that the women we interviewed had more than their share of lucky breaks. In earlier chapters we have described the obstacles that ambitious women face and those obstacles are formidable. Women who get to the top in Britain achieve that success against substantial odds. And, as we began to explain in Chapter 7, ambitious women also face a unique hazard that can blight their careers.
In 2002 The Times newspaper carried an article claiming that companies led by women performed significantly worse than companies led by men. This was a very controversial finding and a team of academics at Exeter University, led by Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, put the evidence to the test.1 What they found entirely overturned the conclusion reached by The Times. It transpired that women were not taking top jobs in successful companies and turning those companies into failures. What was happening was that women were being appointed to top jobs in companies that were already in difficulties and were being given the formidable task of saving them. Ryan and Haslem called this phenomenon the ‘Glass Cliff’.
As they analysed the evidence the researchers found that ‘Glass Cliff’ appointments are quite common. Indeed it seems that organisations that are in difficulties are more likely to appoint a woman to a senior position than organisations that are performing well. Why this happens is not entirely clear. Some have suggested that companies in desperate straits might simply be more willing to try something new. Others have made the more cynical suggestion that the men making such an appointment might choose a woman because they want to avoid blighting the career of an up and coming male colleague by offering him a near impossible task. More recent research2 by Ryan and Haslam suggests that the stereotypical qualities that women are widely believed to possess – like resilience and the ability to support people in trouble – makes them particularly attractive to organisations facing serious problems. But, whatever the reasons, the evidence certainly suggests that a disproportionate number of women are offered leadership jobs in circumstances of exceptional difficulty.
During our interviews we found many examples of what seem like ‘Glass Cliff’ appointments. Mary Chadwick was appointed as the boss of a loss-making bank with a tight timetable to turn it round. Another private sector Executive was given the job of sorting out a high-profile and politically sensitive company that was universally described as ‘a pile of shit’. Deborah Hargreaves was given two jobs in succession that involved major and very unpopular reorganisations at the Financial Times. A public sector manager was surprised to be offered a big promotion but then found that the new job involved managing massive cutbacks in staff and a big reduction in service. Suzanna Taverne was appointed Managing Director of the British Museum when the £100million Millennium Project to build the Great Court was proving hard to deliver. The Government ordered an inquiry which found many faults in the management of the Museum. The Trustees did not want to appoint a Managing Director but the Government insisted. It was a classic ‘Glass Cliff’ scenario: the Trustees had to appoint a competent manager to take on a tough, high-risk job but wanted someone whom they thought would be easy to get rid of at the end of the project.
As far as we have been able to check, these examples have one thing in common. In each case the women who were appointed to take on these difficult and demanding jobs were replacing men. A significant feature of the ‘Glass Cliff’ phenomenon is that a man leaves behind a mess and a woman is then given the high-risk task of clearing it up.
The most spectacular example we found of a ‘Glass Cliff’ appointment involved the Ratner jewellery business. Its eponymous boss Gerald Ratner made a well-publicised speech which included the famous confession that ‘we sell crap’. In case his message was not fully understood he went on to explain that some of the earrings in his shops were ‘the same price as an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long’. The public reaction was devastating. The company went into free fall. £500 million was wiped off the share value. Sales plummeted. Jewellery worth £25 million was returned by angry customers. Graffiti was painted on shop windows. Shop staff were abused and many of the senior managers were sacked. That was the point at which Dianne Thompson was offered the job of becoming the new Marketing Director.
The company’s motive was obvious. It wanted to recruit someone completely different from Gerald Ratner and a successful woman fitted the bill exactly. What is less obvious is why Dianne Thompson accepted the job. She says that she relished the challenge and she wanted to test herself as a manager in difficult circumstances. But the job took its toll. When she eventually left the company to move to Camelot, she realised that she, “had not laughed once” during the time she had spent dealing with the mess at Ratner’s.
Dianne Thompson took the job at Ratner’s with her eyes wide open and in preference to another attractive job offer in the hotel industry which many managers would have preferred. We found other women who were also prepared to take on high-risk appointments for similar reasons. In our society ambitious women are under great pressure to prove themselves. But for most women other considerations also apply. Dianne Thompson had a choice of important jobs but for most women the offer of a top job does not come along very often. A man can turn down a high-risk appointment and know that he has a reasonable chance of getting a better offer in the future. A woman cannot be so confident, particularly in the private sector. As we explained in Chapter 4, only 5 per cent of the most powerful jobs in FTSE 350 companies are held by women. In these circumstances a woman has to think long and hard before she turns down any high-profile job, even if it looks risky and difficult.
All the women we have named made a success of their ‘Glass Cliff’ jobs. But we also found occasions where the task was just too difficult, the woman manager had to accept defeat and her career suffered a setback. Very few of these women blamed bad luck. Almost without exception they took full responsibility for the failure. They did not regret taking such a difficult job. They just regretted not doing it better.
We explored the many references to luck with Helena Kennedy. She stated firmly that luck had not been particularly important in her career but she understood why women might be inclined to suggest that they had been lucky. Women, she explains, are so often cast in support roles and are so frequently taught to regard their careers as secondary to men that they are bound to think in terms of luck if they go against the trend and achieve a premier position. Men, on the other hand, do not need to explain their success because, as Helena Kennedy put it, many of them are taught from a young age that they are “the centre of the universe” and feel a sense of entitlement that women do not have. Yet, in spite of her confident assertion that luck was much less important than women think, Helena Kennedy surprised and amused herself at the end of the interview by telling us “how lucky” she had been to have a husband who had been given the right upbringing by his mother. “Oh there,” she said with a broad grin, “Now even I have said it.”
Having discounted luck, we looked for more conventional reasons for success. Much sociological research demonstrates that success in life comes most easily to people who are born into an affluent family and who have the advantage of a privileged education. So we expected to find that most of the successful women we interviewed would have come from wealthy families and that a high proportion would have been educated privately. We were surprised that this was not the case. Seventy-eight of the women we interviewed mentioned the class of their family. Of these 48 said that their background was middle class and 30 said that their background was working class – a clear middle class majority but not overwhelming. And it was noticeable that many of the women who talked about a middle class upbringing had parents who were teachers or doctors. Only three seemed to come from a family that could reasonably be described as rich.
The absence of notable privilege extended to their schooling. Fifty-three mentioned their secondary education. Of these 44 said that they went to state schools and only nine said that they went to private schools. It is of course possible that a high proportion of those who did not describe their secondary education went to fee-paying schools but we were given no hint of that in other parts of their interviews. Most of the women who talked about their teenage years went to Secondary school in the 1960s and 1970s when the 11 plus was still being used extensively. Twenty-three mentioned that they went to grammar schools and three said that they had failed the 11 plus. Almost all those who talked about their schooling said that they had been to all-girls schools.
So far, so normal. But after Secondary school we come to the feature of their educational profile that is entirely exceptional. An amazingly high proportion of the women we interviewed went to university or its equivalent. Of the 100 women for which we have the relevant information, 92 have a first degree and, of those, 35 told us that they had a second degree. Only eight said that they do not have a degree and even this small group includes two women who won a university place but did not take it up. Seen in the context of the times, these figures are very surprising. When the women we interviewed were growing up, the proportion of women who went to university was tiny compared with what it is today. Most of the women we interviewed would have been aged 18 between 1960 and 1990. In 1960 only some 10 per cent of women went to university and that proportion did not reach 15 per cent until late in the 1980s. By contrast over 90 per cent of the successful women whom we interviewed went to university. This means that they were six or seven times more likely to go to university than an average young woman living in those times.
There can be little doubt that a high level of intelligence is a very important factor in explaining the success of this group of women. In a world where the top jobs are normally held by men and where the safe and comfortable option is to appoint another man, women need to show that they are special. Sue Street identifies intelligence as one of the crucial elements in the make-up of an ambitious woman who wants to succeed. “You have to be bright enough to impress people and ensure that they remember you – not an Einstein but bright enough to stand out.” Liz McMeikan says that having a degree from Cambridge was very unusual when she worked in Tesco and she was regarded as a bit of an intellectual. She insists that this description was wide of the mark but she allowed the “illusion” to flourish as it gave her a distinct identity.
Having high intelligence, and the wisdom to make the most of it, are great advantages but moving from an all-girls school to a university where men heavily outnumber women and then into a job where almost all the top people are male involves a period of uncomfortable transition. The support of parents and close relatives is a great help. But while we found that high intelligence is a defining characteristic of all the women, we found that the attitude of families to their able and ambitious daughters varied considerably.
Just over half of the women talked about the support, or lack of it, that came from their parents. Fourteen said that both parents were supportive while 13 picked out their mother and a slightly larger number – 15 – mentioned support from their father. However, although the number who specifically mentioned one or other parent is quite similar, it was noticeable that the nature of the support from fathers and mothers was distinct and that the women seemed to value the support given by each of their parents quite differently.
We heard that the support given by some mothers was strong and unwavering. Leslie Wilkin said that her mother was “very aspirational” for both her and for her older brother. Melanie Dawes told us that her mother gave her constant encouragement and was enormously proud of her academic success. In a few cases we were told that maternal support probably arose from the mother’s frustration at the limitations imposed on her own career. Liz Nelson told us that her mother was “a wonderful kindergarten teacher in the slums of New York but forever frustrated. She was a driven woman and she lived through me.” We were also told how this kind of maternal support also produced pressure to succeed. Dianne Thompson was an only child and when she asked why she had no brothers or sisters, her mother said, ‘We wanted to give you the opportunities that we never had.’ Dianne Thompson says that she has carried the burden of expectation throughout her life.
But these examples of up-front and positive encouragement from mothers are not typical. More often maternal support was in the background, providing security and comfort while support from fathers was more assertive and vocal. Anne Marie Carrie made the distinction like this: “My father had a very strong belief in his daughters’ abilities and encouraged us. All three of us are successful. My mother also wanted us to do well but she would say ‘Don’t get too big for your boots. Remember to be nice!’”
The women who talked about encouragement from their fathers seemed, without exception, to find that support to be liberating and enabling. Jenny Tonge recalled her father urging her to “do something now with your education while you are still young and before you marry and have children”. Mary Marsh said that she was close to her doctor father, drove with him on calls, and answered the telephone from patients. She discussed many things with her father and only later realised how much attention he had given her and how much she owed him. Patricia Hollis said that she adored her father and he “gave her licence” to succeed. She added that Barbara Castle, Margaret Thatcher and Jennie Lee are amongst the many successful women who had an adored and supportive father. Brenda Hale said that her parents, particularly her father, were her greatest influences. They expected their three daughters to go to university. Her father’s death when she was only 13 affected her deeply. “It pulled the rug of security from under me.”
The different manner in which most women spoke about the influence of their fathers and their mothers was very striking and, in most cases, the support of the father seemed to count for more. We discussed this conclusion with Carole Elliott, who – with Valerie Stead3 – has made a study of women leaders. She thought that there might be a straightforward explanation. When the women we were interviewing were growing up, men were even more powerful in society and their authority was even greater in the family than it is now. So perhaps the women were simply reflecting the fact that their fathers seemed to be more important than their mothers. There is some support for this interpretation in the interviews. Several women told us that their mothers expected them to marry and accept the restricted job opportunities normal a generation ago. Their fathers often expressed a wider view of the world and talked differently about ambition. Others noted, with approval, that their fathers treated them the same as their brothers, acknowledging that this was unusual. One added that, as the oldest child, she was given encouragement by her father “even though I was a girl”. In a male-dominated society, everything men do is liable to be given an elevated importance.
However, whatever the relative value of encouragement from mother and father, the bigger contrast is between those with parental support and those who had none. At one extreme is Joan Ruddock whose parents were “hugely ambitious”, encouraging her and her sister to travel and seek opportunities outside the South Wales valleys where she was born. At the other extreme is Stella Paes who says that her parents showed little interest in her schooling and she only remembers them going to the school once for a parents’ event. “They could never understand why I wanted to go to university.” One manager in the private sector told us that both her parents thought that going to university was pointless and wanted her to go straight out to work. Very recently she was outraged to find that her own daughter had been given the same advice. “Granny has just told me that going to uni is a waste of time.”
Sometimes a big part was played by other family members. Pamela Castle recalls that she was supported by her maternal grandmother who was determined that she would do well at school and should talk properly. Another woman remembers how her grandfather gave her particular support when she wanted to go to university. Jean Venables pays particular tribute to the support she had received from her husband’s parents. However she explained, with some sadness, that this was “the first time any family members gave me any real encouragement”.
All in all, the variety of family experience is so great that we found it impossible to regard any advantage of background or upbringing as an adequate explanation of success. Sarah Anderson’s family owned a chocolate company and she says, with admirable honesty, that she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Ann Robinson failed the 11 plus and was relieved because, “I knew that my parents could not afford to buy the uniform for the grammar school.” But what unites Sarah Anderson and Ann Robinson is an extraordinary modesty that seems to be a defining characteristic of almost all the women that we interviewed.
Sarah Anderson has achieved success in the public and private sector, founding her own companies and helping others to succeed, representing small businesses at the top of the CBI, chairing public bodies and leading important public enquiries. Yet she recounts it all in a matter of fact style, dwelling mostly on her surprise that others should believe that she is capable of such important work.
After failing to get into the grammar school, Ann Robinson managed to win a scholarship to Harris Technical College in Preston to do a two-year commercial course. Like the grammar school, the Technical College also had a uniform and she says that she “had to save up for ages to buy that”. After completing the course she took a typist’s job. Less than ten years later she was a high-flyer in the Civil Service and had caught up with people who had entered the Civil Service as graduate trainees with a good degree from Oxford or Cambridge. But she made no mention of just how exceptional her success had been.
The modesty of most of the successful women we interviewed is palpable. Although Sally Martin omitted to say so, she transformed the Shell UK and Ireland distribution organisation from a “tremendously challenged” part of Shell’s business into an effective operation. A failing distribution contract was reassigned to two new companies, a deal was struck with the Union to improve reliability and the service to petrol stations was greatly improved. This was achieved with the Government looking over her shoulder and seeking constant reassurance that there would be no disruption in the supply of fuel. Sally Martin explained all this by saying that she enjoyed working with such an effective team.
Alongside this modesty goes a ready willingness to remember the help and kindness received from others. Two civil servants spoke very highly of their bosses who had given them great encouragement. A Financial Times journalist told of the strong support she received from the Editor, Richard Lambert. Helena Morrissey remembers how helpful and brave Schroder’s had been in giving her a chance in the New York office when she thought that she was not the obvious candidate. Dianne Thompson recalls the kindness of managers in Woolworths when she came south, knowing next to no one, with a young daughter and needing to find a house very quickly. Our interviews were full of expressions of appreciation and gratitude to former bosses and colleagues, nearly all of them men.
Most of the women we interviewed were adamant that their career was unplanned and that they just made the best of the advantages they had and the opportunities that were presented. As with so much else that was said, we had to cut through the modesty to get closer to a more objective judgment. Being a woman amongst many senior men is the source of many difficulties but it also means, as Emma Howard Boyd recognised, that it is easy to be visible and to be remembered. But, as she went on to explain, this apparent advantage has to be exploited with care. Women have to behave cautiously when they enter new situations because negative impressions are formed so quickly. Men can ‘plunge in without paying much of a penalty’ but, if they are wise, women will move slowly and avoid dramatic public statements at least until they are known and trusted.
Helen Phillips used this extra visibility to gain a strategic advantage for her organisation. She was still in her twenties when she became an Area Manager in the Environment Agency. In its flood management work the Agency has to persuade many public authorities to work together. So Helen Phillips took the unusual step of inviting the top people to an informal meeting to discuss common concerns. With a nice touch of humour, she called the meeting, ‘a tea party’. Most of the public authority leaders accepted, no doubt curious to meet this young woman manager who had been appointed to a senior management position usually held by an older man. The tea party was a success and became a regular quarterly event.
Pamela Castle’s advantage was that, before she qualified as a solicitor, she had trained as a scientist. This made her a great rarity in the profession and an attractive employee to some legal practices. However the firm who recruited her wanted her to concentrate on patent law which was very remunerative for the practice but as she said, ‘rather limited’. She aimed to make the most of her unusual background by applying the methods she had learnt as a chemist, following the main thread of argument to a rapid conclusion rather than taking the normal legal route of considering an issue from a variety of different angles. Her direct approach proved to be very popular with clients and earned her rapid promotion.
Most impressive, and one of the defining characteristics of successful women, is the determined way in which they manage to create opportunities for themselves. When Suzanna Taverne realised that the five years she had intended to spend working for an investment bank had stretched into eight, instead of looking for a suitable vacancy she decided to create one. At the bank she had advised The Independent Newspaper on its financial structure. Judging that the company needed to plan its future more carefully, she wrote to Andreas Whittam-Smith suggesting that she work for him as Head of Strategy. She made a convincing case and he appointed her soon after.
Peninah Thomson was considering consulting as a career when the Director of the Department for External Studies at Oxford passed her a report, A Challenge to Complacency, which reviewed the UK’s training policy in relation to those of several other countries and was produced by the consultants Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC). The report included a critical analysis of the UK training. Having decided that she wanted to work on projects of this type, she telephoned the Coopers & Lybrand switchboard in search of the author of the report. After many failed attempts to find the author, the telephonist eventually put her through to the Managing Partner who – perhaps surprisingly – took the call. He was not familiar with the particular report. ‘We produce several hundred reports each month,’ he explained. But he was sufficiently impressed to ask her to come and see him and, after a series of interviews, he offered her a probationary job. She stayed with the consultancy for 14 years and eventually became a Director.
Every successful woman knows that, in a world of work dominated by men, hard work and persistence are obligatory. As we explained in Chapter 4, many women were told explicitly that they would only be treated equally if they outperformed men. Other women quickly learned the same lesson from experience. One journalist told us that, before she was really established, she telephoned the Reuters Area Manager every week for more than six months to get the offer of a fairly junior job. The pressure lasts right through each career. Lucy Neville-Rolfe was appointed the Company Secretary at Tesco after a successful time as Director of Corporate Affairs. There was no obligation on her to take any further training but she decided to study for the relevant qualifications and passed the examination with some of the highest marks in the country. It is difficult to believe that many men would have set about a programme of such arduous study to gain qualifications for a job they already held.
Even the most successful career stalls from time to time and the test is whether a way can be found to navigate out of the difficulty. Early in her career Dianne Thompson was unhappy working for Ronseal but had no early prospect of being offered a better job. So she adopted the, at that time, very unusual tactic of making a presentation to a head-hunter on her strengths and weaknesses. The head-hunter told her that no one had ever asked to present to him before. Barbara Young wanted to change jobs but she was unsure whether her own view of what she was best at was really valid. So she took psychometric advice to give her a more objective view of her attributes and the sort of job that she should seek.
There is little doubt that the greatest difficulties most women face during their career come when they have children. A generation ago the popular expectation was that a woman had to choose between being a wife and mother and being a ‘career woman’. Fortunately that time is now well past. Eighty-nine of the women we interviewed told us that they were either married or had a partner. Of these 28 or 31 per cent said that they had been divorced. It is notable that this figure is very close to the UK average of 34 per cent of marriages that end in divorce during the first 20 years of marriage – a reasonable comparison given the ages of the interviewees. Our sample is clearly not large enough to draw robust conclusions but these figures begin to contradict the suggestion made in some quarters that women who have high-profile and demanding jobs find it more difficult than others to form lasting relationships.
Nearly three-quarters of the ‘career women’ we interviewed had children. While our figures seem to show that marriage and career success can co-exist, our society has still not found a way to ensure that work and motherhood sit comfortably together. Indeed one woman told us ruefully that the birth of every child causes a ‘career crisis’ for the mother. It is sad, extraordinary and true that the extent to which ambitious women succeed in their careers still depends very heavily on how well they navigate their way through the ‘crisis’ of having children.
As we explained in Chapter 8, most women find that coping with one child is difficult but manageable. Much greater problems arise when a second child is born and a new set of needs are added to the first. This is the point at which most women review their career and try to make changes. It is also the point at which many careers stall and some go into decline.
Many women try to scale back their hours and work part time. However, although many employers are prepared to allow junior staff to work shorter hours, most employers are much more reluctant to agree to a senior manager moving onto a part-time contract. Several women we interviewed had suggested to their employer that a job-share agreement could work effectively. Some companies are hard to convince. When one interviewee returned from maternity leave to a FTSE 100 company in the retail sector, she asked if she might undertake her current role, one below Board level, on a part-time basis. The response was that she would have to demonstrate that she could run an international subsidiary of the company working three days a week, despite the fact that she was currently the Change Management and HR Director based in the UK. Apparently the thinking behind this response was that, since both roles were at the same level in the company, she would have to show that she could undertake not only her own job, but other jobs at the same level as a part-timer. To make progress, she suggested a job-share as an alternative. The response was somewhat surprising. She was told that job-sharing was a passing fad and, in that respect, was ‘a bit like organic food’.
Even if a job-share is agreed, problems can easily arise. The other party to a job-share might want to vary the arrangements. More seriously, if there is a change at the top, the new boss might want to cancel the ‘concession’. This was the experience of Deborah Hargreaves who was sharing the job of News Editor on the Financial Times with a colleague. Lionel Barber, the incoming Editor, made it very clear that he wanted the job done by one person and he eventually got his way.
A more radical solution is to change direction entirely and to try to make a new career which gives more flexibility and more control. Sarah Anderson cannot understand why more women do not opt for self-employment or running your own business. “As the owner of your own business you are free to arrange your work and family life so that they fit neatly together.” But this is not a unanimous view. Maria Adebowale insists that the increased flexibility is balanced by the fact that the owner carries the responsibility for the future of the business. “It can be difficult for you and your family. It’s important to get the balance right between looking after yourself, your family, the company and the people you work with.”
At first sight an attractive option is to ‘go plural’ – leave an Executive position and build up a portfolio of Non-Executive positions. This is more easily said than done. The number of Non-Executive appointments in the private sector is limited, vacancies are very rarely advertised and the favoured candidates are usually people who hold Executive responsibilities in other companies. Opportunities in the public sector are similarly limited and the most powerful appointments go to people with a strong record of past achievement. Deirdre Hutton has had great success in chairing difficult organisations, undertaking government enquiries and leading Committees in the public sector. However she is very much the exception and has built up her considerable reputation over many years. Any woman trying to emulate her success would need great skill, stamina and considerable resilience.
After looking at the alternatives, it is not surprising that most ambitious women decide to hold onto their full-time Executive positions and to try to cope with the inevitable problems as well as they can. One woman says she warns her colleagues that this often proves more difficult than they expect. She told us that most women have what she calls a “surplus of optimism”; they pretend to themselves that it will be easy to sort out any clashes between family and work commitments as they arise. In practice this leads to last minute cancellations and gets the woman concerned a damaging reputation for unreliability. The only chance of success is if the childcare is planned for resilience with several layers of support.
Sue Street says that a woman in a relatively junior or middle management position with ambitions of promotion must expect to spend, or rather ‘invest’, all her net salary on childcare. Trying to save money by limiting the quality or quantity of childcare cover can lead to a breakdown in the arrangements which, in turn, leads to guilt and stress. This advice was echoed by many others. Anna Dugdale was able to share childcare arrangements with another couple and this provided reassuring support, particularly as the other couple were family members. Many women said that back up support from relatives was vital in giving them peace of mind. Suzanne Warner found that her stress went away when her children were being looked after by their grandmother. She knew that the children were being loved and,
I also knew that they were being properly looked after. Good food was being prepared and shared with them, games were being played and, if necessary, homework was being done. I did not have to worry that they were in front of the TV or the Playstation with a microwaved dinner while the nanny was on the ‘phone. Not having to worry whether the children were OK was true liberation.
However, for almost all the women we interviewed, the most important factor in ensuring that they could cope with the often contrary demands of work and children is a supportive husband or partner. Fifty-seven women talked to us about the role of their husband or partner and 46 of those made special mention of the support they had received. But the extent of the help varied significantly. Susanna Jones said that her husband “provided enormous support and encouragement but the final responsibility for the babies was mine”. Hilary Cotton said that her friends were impressed because her husband cooked and ironed his own shirts. Other partners were more directly involved in looking after the children. Christine Blower said that her partner did more than his “fair share” of childcare and a senior civil servant told us that her husband provided a good deal of support for their daughter as she was growing up. Her husband worked at home and his availability was not only of great practical help but also went some way to assuage any guilt that she might feel at leaving her daughter.
We were given several examples of partners who adjusted their career to provide childcare support. One husband who works in the finance sector was said to have decided against working for one of the big Finance Houses so that he could spend more time working at home. Helen Phillips’s husband agreed to scale down his work commitments for a couple of years when their children were small and when Helen Phillips herself had to devote a lot of time to her job. Another very successful woman said that her husband had stepped aside from an expected promotion to allow more space for her to go after the very demanding job that she eventually secured.
A few of the women said that their partners had gone further and had taken over most of the childcare for an extended period. Jan Royall’s husband took on the caring role and did everything for the children. He enjoyed the role and managed very well. Anne Marie Carrie’s career involved a number of moves and she explained that her husband did most of the childcare during this hectic period. “He is a very caring father. When I moved to work in London, our daughter Helena didn’t want to leave all her friends just as she was starting Secondary school, so my husband looked after her and I commuted.”
Unfortunately social attitudes in Britain have not changed sufficiently for it to be regarded as reasonable for men to take a heavy share of the childcare. In Chapter 8 we noted that Jan Royall’s husband was sometimes patronised or ignored once he told people that he looked after the children. That caused Jan Royall considerable sadness. Ruth Bushyager’s husband also did a good deal of the childcare. When the family left the Midlands and moved south, they expected to find many other couples in ‘trendy’ west London with similar arrangements. In fact they found that they were very much the exception and her husband’s role was regarded as rather strange. Ruth Bushyager now realises how just rare their arrangement was. Her friends from university have married and in every case the woman has given up or limited her career in favour of her husband. It is not surprising that men dislike being described as a househusband when people still seem to think that a man who takes on a good deal of the childcare is a bit of an oddity.
It was during discussions about childcare and the role of partners that the issue of ‘luck’ reappeared. Most women who received what they regarded as an unusual level of encouragement and support from their husbands and partners said that they have been lucky. And in this case they are probably right. Pressure on men to conform to the stereotype and to put their own career first is considerable. Men who take the risk of being outshone in their career by their wife or who risk incomprehension and ridicule from family, friends and colleagues as they explain that they take on duties normally assigned to women, are still very unusual. They deserve to be applauded and the women who have the comfort of their support should certainly be regarded as fortunate.
Just how fortunate becomes clear from the examples we found where the woman received little support from their husband or partner. We were told of several instances where marriages were put under stress because the man insisted that his career should come first. Two women told us of ultimatums delivered by their husbands. One was brutal and one was gentle but they both meant that unless she agreed to move home to help his career, the marriage would be over. Another woman with a high-profile career told us bluntly, “My husband could not cope with my success, so in the end I dumped him.” Another told us that, during the time when she and her husband worked far apart, there were few problems. But when he came to work in the same town and he had to admit that she was more successful than he was, his pride could not take it and the marriage ended.
Liz McMeikan says that, when she was married, she was always the back-stop when it came to childcare and domestic responsibilities. After their divorce, although she and her ex-husband agreed to share access and childcare duties, he never picked up their children from school and it has always been her ex-husband who “needed to change the days and times of having the children because of the pressure of his job”. All this was in spite of the fact that her job – objectively judged – was at least as important as his.
Recognising the difficulties that women face in navigating their way to a successful career, several of our interviewees suggested words of advice that might be given to young ambitious women as they start out. Elizabeth Buchanan is anxious that young women leaving school or university are given little idea of what they will face in the adult world. “No one tells you what it is going to be like. Young women need to be much better prepared. It will be much more difficult than they imagine.” Patricia Hollis gives three pieces of advice to women students. In the first place she suggests that they become extremely well-qualified. This makes up for the extra experience of men who rarely have breaks in their careers and helps women fill up gaps in the CV. Then she tells them to be prepared to spend all their earnings on childcare if necessary. Finally she says, “Agree with your partner about minimum standards of food and cleanliness and then stop worrying!”
Sue Street thinks that there are four significant elements that help to determine the success of women at work: intelligence so that you “stand out”, enough confidence so that “you do not take every setback to heart” and a sense of perspective so that you “concentrate on the job and not on personal issues”. Sue Street’s fourth element is, perhaps inevitably, a large helping of “good luck”. And she maintained the importance of luck even after we argued that her own success seemed to have been due much less to good luck than to a great deal of hard work.
Kate Grussing runs Sapphire Partners, which she set up to help better promote senior female talent into the UK’s top businesses. She reminded us that conventional head-hunters give little help to women who have children. “By and large mainstream head-hunters avoid them like the plague!” So her main message is that women should help themselves by keeping abreast of developments in their own sector, by trying to get part-time work, by taking professional advice, by seeking out a coach and by making sure that all their recent activities are recorded on their CV so that it is right up to date. If a woman is on an extended maternity leave or on a career break she should take the initiative herself in maintaining contact with her previous organisation because, as Kate Grussing puts it, “You need to keep reminding them of your existence.” And she adds, “Make sure that you know the current market rate for your work and do not shy away from asking for any necessary pay rises when you get back to work.”
These recommendations are valuable in themselves and the nature of the advice is significant for other reasons. In the first place the advice reminds women that their career path will not be straight-forward.4 Very few of the women we interviewed had the sort of linear progression that characterises the careers of many men. Helena Kennedy expressed the difference in a graphic image. “There is a real problem in the convoluted path women have to take to reach the top. 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.” Success tends to come to those women who recognise that there will be major obstacles and find a way to navigate round them.
The advice given by the women we have quoted, and by most of the other women we interviewed, is also significant for what it does not include. Throughout this book we have described the unfairness faced by ambitious women who try to get to the top. Those few who have managed to travel the convoluted labyrinthine path to success are certainly outstanding people. By and large they have not reached the top because of great good luck or through some advantage of birth or background. Their defining characteristics are considerable intelligence, the imagination to make the most of their advantages and the great determination to get around the obstacles that an unfair and insensitive society has placed in their way. Some have been encouraged by supportive parents and many more have had the advantage of a supportive partner, but a few have achieved great success without the benefit of either. The main conclusion that must be reached, which is highly complimentary to the successful women we interviewed but rather depressing in its judgment of our society, is that to get to the top in twenty-first century Britain a woman has to be an extraordinarily able individual. As Jane Fuller remarked, “We will know when we have achieved equality because as many mediocre women will get to the top as mediocre men!”
Almost all of the women we met recognised that it is much more difficult for a woman to get to a senior position than a man. One woman even told us that she would like to be reincarnated as a man, because men’s lives are “much easier and more straightforward”. But few of the women we interviewed and none of the advice that was offered to other ambitious women stated that the most urgent need in Britain is to change the system in Britain and to eliminate the unfairness. Their focus was almost exclusively on how to work within the system that we have. Helena Morrissey, the most prominent private sector campaigner we interviewed, described herself as a “coper” and that is the position adopted by almost all the women we interviewed. They recognise the injustices in the present system and they seek the best way to cope. But very few of them say that the main priority must be to fix the system so that women and men have an equal chance of success.
Such pragmatism has certainly worked for the successful women we interviewed. Of course it is an open question whether any of them could have achieved more or reached the top more quickly if they not had to deal with the problems of being a woman in a system that favours men. Michaela Bergman, for one, thinks that she would have done better. “My early career would have been more enjoyable and I would have been recognised earlier had I been a man.” But that is only part of the problem. We have talked to a large number of very able women who succeeded against substantial odds. There is no way of knowing how many other women might have joined them at the top if the obstacles had been fewer and if the system had been fairer. Our best guess on the basis of the figures given at the beginning of this book is that, with a fair system, the number of women reaching the top would double and treble. So the rest of this book is dedicated to those women and to the changes that must be made to give them the same life chances as the men they work alongside. Having more women in positions of power would change the way women are seen and the way women see themselves. That vital change would help to bring about a society with a wider range of opportunities for all women, whatever their ambition, aspiration and chosen lifestyle.