| Equality in the boardroom |
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Fabian City, Business and Politics Network Tuesday, 16th March 2010 Have we made enough progress in terms of equality in the workplace? How can we overcome the remaining barriers and what can we learn from other countries? The Fabian City, Business and Politics Network assembled an expert panel to discuss these issues at a recent seminar with Nia Griffiths MP, PPS to Harriet Harman, Simon Langley, Lead Manager for Inclusion and Diversity at National Grid and Martyn Henderson, Deputy Head of Evidence and Equality at Work at the Government Equalities Office. The first speaker warned delegates against complacency. Just because we didn’t encounter prejudice ourselves or within the company we kept, did not mean it didn’t exist. You only had to do some campaigning on the door step to be regularly confronted by racism and bigotry. The government had a responsibility to challenge this complacency at an early stage, starting with our schools and careers guidance services which still tended to pigeon-hole people according to gender stereotypes.These problems developed as graduates entered the job market. It was quite easy to be lulled into a false sense of security when people began their careers and did not immediately encounter problems, but barriers often arose the further up the ladder they climbed. We needed to re-think how we structured our work and family lives, said one participant. At the moment only middle class professionals could afford to pay for childcare and return to work. For women especially there came a time in their late twenties and early thirties when there was a real clash of cultures between the world of work and the pressure to start a family. There was often a huge mismatch between what women wanted and the reality with which they were faced. The “long-hours culture” was another significant barrier to parents wishing to work and people with care responsibilities at home. Those asking for flexible working hours still felt like they would be discriminated against in the workplace. Although legislation had helped, it was not sufficient to change the culture and people often came up against a glass ceiling. The idea of quotas was politically difficult argued one speaker, but we needed to take it seriously. We couldn’t allow ourselves to be driven off course by the idea that it was women’s fault they weren’t in certain positions when there were structural reasons why this may be the case. The next speaker made the point that business needed to drive the diversity agenda and should not simply leave it to the human resources department. There was a lack of role models and information for children and this is where many of the problems began. One delegate said that not all job posts were filled through open competition but that in many cases promotion came about through a “tap on the shoulder” or personal connections. We needed to analyse why it was women were sometimes overlooked for promotion and what information and support we could give them to make sure they progressed. We also needed to understand the reasons why people left their jobs. In terms of the recruitment side we were doing rather better than we were with retention. Part of providing an attractive working environment for women with children was making better use of flexible working hours and job-sharing arrangements. We needed to make sure that part-time or job share work was not devalued and did not mean that these people were thought of as lacking ambition. Pregnancy was not an illness, said one participant, although it was often treated that way. If children were our most valuable asset, why were nursery workers paid so little while childcare costs remained high? While there was a role for government, including the idea of quotas, the private sector could also take the lead in setting targets in terms of diversity, and shareholders should also take more responsibility for the make-up of boardrooms. However, one participant sounded a note of caution on quotas, saying that the American experience had led to open warfare between different diversity strands. One delegate told the seminar that there was a paucity of evidence around diversity strands other than gender and asked why there was such a focus on women and not other groups. In terms of gender, we needed to seriously consider why the labour market didn’t seem to work very well for women. We had already successfully addressed many of the issues in terms of skills and women under-40 now had, on average, more skills than their male counterparts. Girls did better at school but for some reason this did not translate to the labour market. The gender pay-gap emerged only two years after graduating, so this was not an issue of taking time out to have children but something else. Specific steps that could be taken included ensuring a steady supply of quality part-time work. Interestingly, employers were making greater use of part-time work as we came out of the recession, proving it could work just as well for employers as employees. However, while the majority of part-time work was done by women, it also tended to be low paid. We also needed to ensure that people’s aspirations and opportunities were not constrained by their gender, said one participant. This meant supporting women going into non-traditional roles such as engineering, where there was already a general skills shortage. There was also a need for transparency in terms of tackling discrimination, although it was agreed that legislation could only go so far in changing the culture and that measuring cultural change was very difficult. The government wasn’t prepared to introduce quotas in the way that other countries such as Norway and France had done because it would be hard to sell to the public and would require changes in legislation, said one delegate. Another delegate agreed there wasn’t broad public support for quotas but government could take the lead in terms of public procurement. If quotas were a non-starter we had to think about what we could do instead. Did we have the right framework and mechanisms for overcoming these barriers? Another delegate returned to the point made about the “tap on the shoulder” culture, saying this was one of the main means by which certain groups were excluded because they might not feel comfortable socialising with their colleagues outside the office. If the culture of an organisation was white, male and heterosexual people from outside that group often experienced unconscious bias on a daily basis. Unconscious bias was the primary cause of women and other groups failing to progress through an organisation as research showed people were more likely to favour colleagues who were like themselves. Therefore, the first step to conquering unconscious bias was to become conscious of it. On the specific issue of equality in the boardroom, there was clear evidence that diverse boards were more successful but boardrooms remained staggeringly homogenous, with a majority of non-executive directors drawn from a very narrow background. We needed to make sure we appointed non-executive directors from a wider range. Appointing people with more experience of working life outside those circles also made a lot of sense. To this end, all board positions should be advertised publicly, said one participant, particularly for non-executive positions. At the moment recruitment was done through agencies, and breaking down this system would be key. One speaker raised the issue of class barriers to success. Research showed that children from middle class backgrounds benefited in a host of ways, including during the school holidays. Another participant agreed that we needed to look systematically at class as this had an effect on outcomes every step of the way from nursery school onwards. One delegate argued that the media played a big role in enforcing gender stereotypes and made the case for an online database of women-only experts and speakers as “visibility was viability”. One speaker thought that professionalising the route to directorship might help increase diversity at the top level. A clear, qualification ladder which demonstrated people’s fitness for the job could be one way of overcoming biases within the system and increasing transparency. |
