Archive | May, 2010

And the new Deputy Mayoress …

27 May

… of Ealing is my friend, neighbour, political campaigner/candidate and fellow blogger,  Rupa Huq.

Congratulations, Rupa!

Can we book you to come and open our street party celebrations for The Big Lunch next month, please?!

Not so wizard in Oz

26 May

It wasn’t until I started, as part of the consulting work which I’m doing for emberin, researching the status quo in Australian business circles with regard to women in corporate life, that I realised exactly where Australia currently sits on the gender diversity totem pole.

And the answer is … low. Here’s some data which I researched for an emberin paper on global best practices, sourced from such respected bodies as Catalyst, the FTSE 100 2009 survey of women on boards and Australian body the Equal Opportunities for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) – pretty shocking, isn’t it?

Country % of women as board directors
United States 14%
Canada 13%
United Kingdom 12%
Australia 8.30%

As I read and researched for my paper, it became clear that the (in)famous Aussie macho, blokey culture, described here in a piece on The Glass Hammer, and also in an interview with emberin founder Maureen Frank, is a huge part of the problem.

The very few women who have made it to the top of a minority of leading Australian companies describe a sometimes hostile environment built of what federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick calls both “belief barriers” (cultural convictions around the maternal role and what an “ideal” worker looks like) and “structural barriers”, such as issues around childcare and attitudes towards flexible working.

One of the ways in which this culture may end up being changed via force is through the introduction of some new legislation which will apply to Australia’s top 200 listed companies. About six months ago, the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) dropped a bombshell in which they outlined their proposals to expand the existing corporate governance principles to include a mandatory gender diversity policy, thus parachuting diversity to the top of the agenda for those ASX 200 companies.

Described by Broderick as “the first structural intervention we’ve had”, the plan will force companies to publish a gender breakdown of directors and senior employees and to set both objectives and targets for gender diversity.

In essence, the proposals mean that publicly listed companies will need to consider reviewing existing diversity policies, or creating new ones, to cover board and company wide diversity initiatives.

The recommendations will require listed companies to:

• Establish a “diversity policy” that includes measurable objectives relating to gender diversity as set by the board;
• Disclose in their annual report the measurable objectives for achieving gender diversity as set by the board in accordance with the diversity policy, and –
• Disclose in the annual report the proportion of women employees in the whole organisation, in senior executive positions and on the board.

The first step for ensuring compliance with these new regulations (currently scheduled to be implemented on 1 January 2011, with recommendations to be finalised by 30 June 2010) – is for listed companies to prepare a diversity policy for their boards and to create a diversity strategy to support the policy, which is of course where emberin come in.

What I think will be particularly interesting will be what will happen to those companies if they DON’T comply; presumably, there’ll be fines but will the next step be to follow in the steps of Norway (2008) and France (2009) and introduce quotas for female representation on boards?

The “quota” word is always a real debating point in this space; for some, it’s regarded as the only way to force specific and measurable change, and to accept that the situation of low female representation won’t fix itself; for others, it’s the complete opposite of a meritocracy and is tokenistic and insulting to women’s talent, implying as it does (perhaps) that they’re only present on the board or in the leadership team in order to make up the numbers.

I was reminded of this when I went to register for a diversity conference and was faced with the following pop-up survey as part of the registration process:

“Do you think the UK should impose quotas to increase the number of women at the boardroom level?”

The instant answers were interesting but unhelpful:

53% voted yes, 47% voted no.

My own view on quotas is that they should be the last chance saloon, an “if all else fails” tool if establishing and monitoring targets hasn’t worked and nor have any of the other cultural change mechanisms available to companies who are really serious about increasing the number of women in key corporate roles.

A few months ago, Deutsche Telekom (DT) announced that they were introducing quotas in order to fill 30% of their middle and upper management jobs with women by 2015. This is a bold move and the company hopes to shift the female numbers from the 2008 level of 13%. The BBC report went on to say that DT will use tools like its recruitment policy and executive development programs to reach the targets, in addition to expanding the company’s parental leave, childcare and flexible working programs.

But, as with the ASX directive, it is unlikely that this comprehensive suite of measures will succeed without the final missing ingredient of monitoring – and, in all honesty, some kind of punitive measures.

Women of Britain: please vote!

6 May

Rocking the vote in Florida, 2004

Whatever you do,  wherever you are today,  please go and vote; a hundred years ago,  you wouldn’t have had the option.

A hundred years ago,  women died, were imprisoned, starved themselves in prison, so that we, their future daughters,  would have the right to go to a polling station and exercise our vote alongside our husbands, fathers and brothers. 

Voting,  particularly for women,  is not only a right,  it is a hard-won privilege. 

If you think that “politics doesn’t apply to me”,  as I have been told so many times by so many women – then think about all the things in your world, in your life,  which do apply to you:  the environment, education, hospitals, employment, medical care, crime.  By voting today,  you are  using your voice to make a conscious choice about how your country is run and by whom.

Please – make time to vote today, whether it’s because you want to have a say in how UK plc is governed for the next five years or in memory of the brave suffragette fighters who suffered so terribly so that we would have the rights which they were denied. 

Here’s an extract from the 1909 diary of suffragette Laura Ainsworth,  in which she describes being force-fed:

“They hold your arms and legs … You have a towel wrapped around you. One doctor kneels at the back of your right shoulder and forces your head back.  He forces your mouth and the other doctor pushes the tube down your mouth about 18 inches. You have a great tickling sensation, then a choking feeling and then you feel quite stunned.”

(For more on these brave women and the debt owed to them by 21st century women,  check out “The Ascent of Woman: a History of the Suffragette Movement” by Melanie Phillips).

Spring is springing …

2 May

…. and the Gender Blog is back up and functioning,  after a brief April hiatus, which saw me spending ten days in France, having a multitude of interviews for all manner of global diversity jobs (at last! Finally! Is this proof that the economy is on the move,  if companies are once again prepared to invest in senior level diversity roles? I think so) and agreeing to undertake some gender balance writing work for leading Australian company Emberin.

(Emberin founder and CEO Maureen Frank,  the woman I have previously described as “so charismatic she could found her own cult”,  has just published an updated version of her bestselling book “You Go Girlfriend” and has sent me some review copies – so I’ll be reading and reviewing it later this month and offering up a couple of copies to anyone who … OK,  I need to think about that.  But anyway.  Free books,  imminently).

Whilst in France,  I spent a week at this magical place,  the Circle of Misse, on a fiction writing “boot camp” course. Although I’ve been blogging and writing non-fiction for years,  the last time I wrote a “story” was at school and so the disciplines and techniques of writing fiction were a complete mystery to me.  But I came back from Goa a few months ago with a story and a host of characters who just wouldn’t go away – what was I to do with them,  how could I bring them alive on the page?  Just as I was wrestling with this,  I received an email flyer offering a 10% discount on the Circle of Misse “Get Writing!” course and,  before I knew it,  I’d signed up and committed myself to sending through a sample of 3000 words of fiction to the tutor ahead of the course start date.

(c) Circle of Misse, with grateful thanks

In the context of A Room of One’s Own – I discovered that maybe I can write,  a bit. The course, hosts and setting were fabulous; Aaron and Wayne run writing, painting and cookery courses at their beautiful house in the Loire valley and I whole heartedly recommend the Circle of Misse experience for anyone interested in those disciplines who wants to perhaps do what I did – take a kernel of an idea and run with it – and see where you end up.  In my case,  I arrived with a concept,  a few characters and my 3000 words,  and left with closer to 20,000 words,  a fully formed plot and a far greater understanding of the techniques of novel writing.

(I think I’m still rubbish at writing dialogue,  but at least I now know that and can focus on improving those skills.)

Of course,  whilst I was away,  we had VolcanoGate and yes,  I got caught up in it – although it did mean that I still haven’t flown Ryanair,  which perhaps isn’t so bad after all. In common with thousands of other people,  I was stranded in France when my flight back from Tours was cancelled and so we (me and N, the guy from my course) had a highly improvised journey home consisting of a five hour car journey to Le Havre, courtesy of the C of M team, a NINE hour ferry crossing and a two hour drive back to London. And,  although the ferry crossing was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow and it was frustrating to have that “so close but yet so far” feeling,  from a writer’s point of view, it was a fascinating experience. 

Subsequently,  I described the boat as a ship of stories, because I heard so many tales of life on the road from people squashed onto the upper deck with me.  The ferry was absolutely heaving with a vast cross-section of travellers,  who had quite literally ended up there from all over the world.  I chatted to one family of four (this was on a Sunday evening) who had left Florida the previous Wednesday, expecting to fly Orlando to Gatwick, change there and fly home to Edinburgh. Five days later, they had flown Orlando to Detroit (?), Detroit to Amsterdam, caught a train from Amsterdam to Brussels,  another train to Paris and then hired a taxi to get them to Le Havre. After we disembarked the ferry,  they were collecting a hire car in Portsmouth and then driving through the night to get back to Scotland.  They hadn’t seen their cases since Florida,  they had only what they were wearing or carrying as hand luggage and Mum reckoned that this “adventure” had cost them in the region of £2000 – more if you add on the fact that their dog had had to stay in kennels for a further 6 days! 

I also met a very dishevelled Irish man in a suit,  who’d flown to Frankfurt the previous Tuesday for a 48 hour trip (he sold sandpaper … but I expect that that was the least of his worries) and who had hitchhiked, trained and bussed his way across Europe to Le Havre; from Portsmouth,  he was catching a cross-country train to the Welsh coast from where he would catch another ferry back to Ireland. So I guess that N and I got off very lightly,  all things considered,  although I am still c. £200 out of pocket and will doubtless remain so unless and until Ryanair cough up a refund for my cancelled flight.

Apart from getting news updates from TLS on volcano and travel related issues,  I was in a complete news avoidance bubble whilst I was in France and I’m still catching up.  It’s a mere four days to the UK’s keenly anticipated General Election and,  in some ways,  nothing much has changed:  the debate is still between three main parties,  led by three white guys,  who all still use the sound bite of “hard working families” (yes, Lib Dems,  even you) at every opportunity.

The Labour Party’s campaign has been challenged by one woman, namely Mrs Duffy from Rochdale – and the current shape of the media is indicated by two things: Mrs Duffy has her own PR rep and the Tories are streaming their anti-Brown Twitter feed onto a moving billboard on London’s A40 (westbound,  just before Hanger Lane,  if you should happen to be stuck in traffic there this week).

And mentioning Twitter …. check out the hilarious #nickcleggsfault hashtag on there … he’s responsible for everything, apparently, according to the right wing press,  including having been spotted poking an Icelandic volcano with a stick in early April.

Busy guy.

Meanwhile,  the Fawcett Society’s What About Women? campaign has been doing a sterling job of keeping women’s issues and concerns front and centre,  even if the all-too-frequent references (not by Fawcett) to this election as the “Mumsnet Election” serves to enrage those of us who aren’t mothers and,  as pointed out in this extremely tart and on-point Guardian column … “reinforce gender stereotypes”  by making women’s concerns focussed on childcare …or Sarah Brown’s footwear.

The Gender Blog  is now streaming to a newly established website, Missive, which has been set up to bring together women who write about politics.  The two founders, Caroline and Sarah,  aim to make it a way for women who write about politics to reach a wider audience.  If you can think of any female bloggers who ought to be on there – please let me know via the Comments function below.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34 other followers