Eve on Top. Women's Experience of Success in the Public Sector

262 Pages·2011·1.338 MB·English

by  David P. Baker and Bernadette Casey (Auth.)

Eve on Top
Eve on Top
Women’s experience of success
in the public sector
D B
AVID AKER
AND
B C
ERNADETTE ASEY
Oxford Cambridge Philadelphia New Delhi
Chandos Publishing
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Chandos Publishing is an imprint of Woodhead Publishing Limited
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First published in 2011
ISBNs:
978 1 84334 495 7 978 0 85709 157 4
(Chandos Publishing) (Woodhead Publishing)
© D. Baker and B. Casey, 2011
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Foreword
By the Rt Hon. Harriet Harman QC MP
This publication makes an important and useful contribution to the
ongoing debate about how we can increase the number of women at the
top in our public and, indeed, private sector organisations.
Equality is not just a right in principle. It is necessary for individuals,
who have a right to be treated fairly; for the economy, as a competitive
economy draws on all the talents and abilities available to it; and for
society, as a more equal society is more cohesive and at ease with itself.
Huge inequalities persist in our workplaces today, from the gender pay
gap, which still stands at 16.4 per cent, to promotion prospects, despite
the Equality Act, the Equal Pay Act, extended maternity leave and the
right to request flexible working. Women remain severely under-
represented in leadership positions across a number of high-profile
sectors. Women make up less than 25 per cent of MPs in the UK, less
than 20 per cent of partners in the top 100 UK law firms, and less than
15 per cent of editors of national newspapers. Despite many actions
taken by the Labour Government while we were in office, inequality and
discrimination still exist, which is why we introduced tough new
measures in our Equality Bill including gender pay reporting and
proposals to ban secrecy clauses.
Public bodies make important decisions that shape the quality of our
lives and public services. We know that leadership teams that have a
diverse mix of people and talent make the best decisions. A balanced
team of men and women does not just change the face of organisations,
it changes the debate.
In this study, David Baker and Bernadette Casey have provided us with
the testimony of women who have broken through. What we learn from
their experiences will no doubt be a useful input to future policy debate,
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Eve on Top
and new ideas about how we can ensure that the growing pipeline of
female talent in Britain makes it to the top.
Harriet Harman QC MP
Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Secretary of State for
International Development
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Preface
UK public sector organisations by and large do not yet have a good
record when it comes to women in senior positions – and in particular in
the chief executive role. Typically, women earn less and go for any job
rather than be unemployed, whereas men are more likely to spend
periods unemployed while waiting for that more ambitious ‘dream job’.
Inequality begins even before the effect of childbirth. This translates
through to a much greater imbalance at the top end of many sectors. In
most public sector institutions in the UK, the position of female
employees is still relatively weak in comparison to that of men in terms
of senior positions. While attempts are being made to change the
situation, much remains to be done in order to bring the numbers of
women in such roles to a more representative level, not least because of
embedded cultural and attitudinal issues.
However, cultural heterogeneity can strengthen an organisation rather
than weaken it. It is argued that a diverse workforce will provide a better,
more successful model for an organisation as it needs to succeed in an
increasingly diverse society and, it is also argued, be more flexible and
able to cope with change by virtue of its diversity, with the broadest
range of skills, experiences and attitudes available to the organisation as
it faces future challenges. In recent years, there have been positive moves
to embrace and increase diversity in terms of the gender and social and
ethnic backgrounds of the workforce – diversity as the right, normal,
accepted, embedded situation in the workplace.
In preparing to write this book, we were surprised at the limited
amount of published material on the subject that took a qualitative
rather than a quantitative approach. We therefore decided to take an in-
depth look at the position of women in senior positions. A modified case
study approach has been adopted. Some 16 ‘successful’ women were
identified and interviewed in detail about their background, upbringing,
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Eve on Top
career progression, successes and failures, challenges and experiences.
While the majority of the participants in our study are from the public
sector, a number are from the private sector and most had experience of
different types of organisation. Each woman was asked to summarise
their interview with a ‘lessons learned’ response in the form of advice
both to other women and the organisations in which they work. The
participants are anonymous. The richness of the data from the research
was almost overwhelming, and we have had to omit a significant amount
of material from the published work. In doing this, we hope that we
have covered all the major themes and issues that our 16 participants
raised and discussed during the course of the interviews with them.
The structure of the book is as follows. The first chapter looks at the
broader context of women in senior roles through a review of recent
relevant key literature, while Chapter 2 describes and reflects on the
methodology used in our research. We then focus in the next two
chapters on the 16 women who participated in our study, the factors and
characteristics that shaped them and how they defined and viewed their
– and others’ – success. Chapter 5 then looks in general at how the
women had reached their present positions and the extent to which they
had planned their careers, followed by a more detailed review in Chapter
6 of mentoring, role models and networking. We follow this in Chapter
7 by concentrating on questions of gender, as experienced particularly by
the participants in our study, and with special reference to the extent to
which being a woman hinders – or helps – career progression. Chapter 8
then analyses the specific barriers and obstacles that our research
revealed, while Chapter 9 is devoted to ‘the glass ceiling’ as experienced
– or not – by the 16 women and more broadly. Chapters 10, 11 and 12
look at the sacrifices and gains, balances and choices experienced by the
women, the extent to which domestic considerations had to be taken
into account in their professional lives and careers and the degree to
which they had to work harder – or were perceived as needing to work
harder – than their male counterparts. Chapter 13 then focuses on
leadership and management styles as evinced by the women and also as
experienced by them, while Chapters 14 and 15 sum up the advice that
they would give to men and then women in senior roles. We aim to
summarise our work in Chapter 16.
David Baker and Bernadette Casey
August, 2010
xvi
Acknowledgements
The authors are especially grateful to all who made this book possible:
to Kathryn Kendon for her initial research for the book; to Glyn Jones
for his support throughout the development of the proposal and the
actual production of the book; to University College Plymouth St Mark
& St John for their financial support; to Nicky Davies, for excellent and
painstaking transcription of all the recorded interviews; to Wendy Evans,
who proofed the book at various stages for us; to Raymond Taylor for
compiling the index; and to Emma Wainman, our research assistant, for
her significant help in undertaking the background work. Our thanks
also go to Harriet Harman for writing the foreword to this book. Above
all, we would like to thank the women who participated in this study.
The book is dedicated to them.
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List of abbreviations
AMBA Association of MBAs
AWA alternative work arrangements
CBE Commander of the Order of the British Empire
CEO chief executive officer
CILIP Chartered Institute of Library and Information
Professionals
FTSE Financial Times Stock Exchange
HR human resources
ILO International Labour Organisation
IT information technology
MBA Master of Business Administration
MBE Member of the Order of the British Empire
MP(s) Member(s) of Parliament (UK)
NHS National Health Service (UK)
PC police constable/personal computer
SET science, engineering and technology
SME(s) small to medium size enterprise(s)
TUC Trades Union Congress
UUK Universities UK
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Editorial conventions and
confidentiality
We have tried for the most part to let the women speak for themselves in
this study. The interviews were transcribed from recordings made and
where possible the transcripts were checked back with the interviewees
before the material was used in the writing of the book. We have added
punctuation to the material from the interviews, but have tried to ensure
that this reflects rather than alters the meaning of what was said. Words
in the main text that appear in single inverted comments normally refer
to statements made by the interviewees, unless the text so delineated is a
quotation from other literature. Longer quotations from the interviews
are always indented, again with speaker identification, but not using
inverted commas, unless speech – or thought – within the quotation
overall needs to be identified. Of necessity, names have had to be
changed in the case of the participants in our study; where they refer to
other people by name, these have been replaced by square brackets and
‘him’, her’ or ‘they’. Similarly, the names of specific organisations have
also been replaced by ‘[organisation]’. Where text has been omitted,
either for reasons of confidentiality or brevity, three dots denote the
omission.
Given the high-profile positions of many of our participants, we have
used the above conventions to ensure that their identity remains
anonymous. To this end we have given each of our interviewees a
fictitious name selected randomly from an alphabetical list. No surnames
are used. The following is the list of names given to our interviewees:
Andrea, Bella, Carrie, Diane, Eliza, Fiona, Gill, Helen, Isobel, Jessica,
Kate, Lillian, Maggie, Nuala, Olivia and Ruth.
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