This is a pivotal time for women. After decades of exclusion, things are finally beginning to turn around, with 71% of women employed at the end of last year while female-owned businesses made up almost a third of new start-ups. The gender pay gap is falling more slowly than many had hoped and the rate at which women are progressing into the boardroom in big corporations remains disappointing, however, overall there is a feeling that this is a time when there’s real opportunity for change. We need to work together to make sure that it happens.
Seizing opportunity
“This is a magic moment for women right now. It’s a moment in which employers are looking for women,” said Lady Barbara Judge, then chair of the Institute of Directors, at a meeting in the West Midlands in 2007, but she cautioned: “We have to make the most of it because it won’t last, the pendulum will swing back.”
She was referring, of course, to the growing awareness among senior executives that a shortage of female employees – especially in the tech sector – means that businesses have been missing out on talented individuals. This is the sector in which Judge specialises and it’s one which has since begun to reap the rewards of dedicated government and industry initiatives focused on encouraging girls to pursue their ambitions. Where once technical subjects were thought of as boys’ stuff, now girls are being persuaded to build on their talents from an early age and spend more time on maths and sciences, preparing them to move into the jobs market.
The value of diversity
This change has come about in part because employers are finally starting to recognise the value of diversity. We’re not just talking about social value here – research into Fortune 500 companies has demonstrated that there is direct monetary gain associated with including more women in key positions. Why? the theory is that more diversity means a broader range of perspectives on the world. In the tech industry this can be as simple as a woman pointing out that a device in development is unsuitable for her smaller hands, potentially leading to a better designed product with the potential to appeal to a much wider range of customers. It could also be about a woman looking at a strategic problem differently, bringing the benefit of her experience to bear and thereby increasing the range of potential solutions available for decision makers to choose from.
Changing the game
The bad news is that this new respect for women’s contributions doesn’t seem to have carried through to funders, with two thirds of female entrepreneurs reporting dissatisfaction with the way their business proposals were treated and only 9% of all start-up funding going to women – something which puts female progress in entrepreneurship in a different light. One of the problems, experts suggest, is that women generally aren’t interested in promoting themselves aggressively or competing for the sake of it in the way that men do, which can lead to them being perceived as weaker. If they do present themselves in that way, it’s seen as unacceptable, bitchy and unfeminine. How can they win? The best approach, some say, is to scrap the ‘game’ altogether.
It takes a different kind of toughness to make your way in the business world in the face of prejudice. That is something that’s gradually being recognised, as is the success of women in some areas of business and politics at building cooperative strategies that really get results. By promoting one another, women can make progress even without a fair measure of support from men, and as more women take up influential positions the power of that approach increases. This also helps to overcome the often unconscious bias that stems from the old boys’ club, whereby powerful men give jobs to other men because they know them personally and the fact they barely socialise with women leaves female job applicants out in the cold.
Starting early
As the success of those tech sector initiatives suggest, the real solution to getting more women into positions of influence is to start early. It begins with praising girls, not for how they look but for what they do, helping them to feel confident about every aspect of their lives. It’s about giving them the practical tools to be independent in life as soon as possible and making sure they know that they’re worth just as much as boys in all respects. It’s also about making them aware that the wider world may not treat them fairly but that they deserve better and they can do something about it.
By raising girls differently, supporting the new generation as it enters the workplace and supporting one another, we can bring about real, much needed change. At a time when our economy is in flux and a host of new opportunities are emerging, there has never been a better time for women to push into the corporate world and to build successful rewarding careers at all levels.