The Gender Blog

On the Being Busy vs Finding Time to Blog continuum, the latter is rather losing out to the former at the moment.

However,  proof of my networking and writing activities came all neatly rolled up into one busy day last week,  when my article about IDDAS‘s report into board effectiveness (as viewed by the chairmen of a number of FTSE 350 companies) and where diversity fits within that model was published on the Glasshammer (here’s the link)  and a piece on travel tips also went live on Alpha Female.

Do check out Alpha Female if you can; it was founded earlier this year by Carol Paterson Smith (whom I’ll be interviewing later this week for a Glasshammer profile, so look out for that too) and is a fabulous treasure trove of useful connections, smart ideas and stylish hints to make life easier for busy women everywhere.

Carol and I met last month when we were seated next to each other at the WIBF awards, and that in itself was an interesting example of what can happen when you’re naughty and move the seating plan around so that you don’t have to sit with your back to the stage … if I’d stayed where I was meant to sit,  I wouldn’t have met Carol,  checked out her fabulous site (you have to create a user name and register to view the content,  but it’s free to do so and well worth it)  and written her a guest article.

* * *

If you follow me on Twitter,  you’ll have seen that I was Tweeting on Sunday about the community party we held on my street in west London in support of the nationwide Big Lunch initiative.  More on that event later this week; as well as being tremendous fun,  it was a fabulous example of collaboration, planning and new friendships amongst neighbours of long standing.

“Slowly, slowly, we approach the nervous foal with our hand out,  proffering a sugar lump,  or perhaps a chunk of carrot,  walking softly and gently on the balls of our feet so as not to startle him, speaking in a low, gentle, moderated voice so as not to cause him to veer up, startled and afraid”.

[As I'm sure David Attenborough never said].

But this approach is how these proposed new regulations from the Financial Reporting Council read,  when the nod towards the foal is so small as to be almost invisible – here’s the wording (my use of bold,  their use of underline):

“To encourage boards to be well balanced and avoid “group think” there are new principles on the composition and selection of the board, including the need to appoint members on merit, against objective criteria, and with due regard for the benefits of diversity, including gender diversity.”

And as Andrew Hill commented in the FT:

“it’s hard to understand why some companies feel threatened by the Financial Reporting Council’s decision to insist on annual re-election of boards and to nod, gently, towards gender diversity.”

Well, quite.

I await further media revelations as to which companies feel “threatened” and why … and what their share prices look like, too.

Can women be the key to moving the world forward and out of recession? Goldman Sachs’ economists seem to think so, judging by their recently published report entitled “The Power of the Purse: Gender Equality and Middle-Class Spending”.

The report reveals the enormous potential for companies in specific sectors due to the expected growth in female consumer spending in emerging markets – countries such as China, India, Russia, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil.

Goldman Sachs, by identifying what they dub the “sweet spot”, is especially interested in the countries where the middle class is projected to rise the fastest, along with significant improvements in the status of women.

It detects significant improvements in women’s status due to changes in health care, fertility rates, education, legal protection, and political involvement, as well as a slight increase in the proportion of women working (with fewert women working in low-pay sectors in some countries).

And the report says female spending patterns in emerging markets will be similar to those in developed nations, where women are responsible for three-quarters of consumer spending on child care, food, and education.

You can download it from this link and it was referenced in the Observer a while ago, when Ruth Sunderland commented that:

“Goldman Sachs … reckons that improvements in female status and earnings potential are likely to support the development of human capital and bolster economic growth.

The interesting point in a business context is what it means for companies and investors. Improvements in gender equality in the developing world coincide with the emergence of an expanding global middle class, with annual incomes of $6,000 to $30,000, whose numbers will swell over the next two decades from 1.7 billion to 3.6 billion. Industry sectors likely to gain are food, healthcare, education, clothing and consumer durables. Financial services should also do well, since women are more likely to save than men, partly to offset their economic vulnerability.

This is a vast new market, and the companies that benefit most will be those recognising the value of these potential female customers and employees. Another argument, if one were needed, for more women on male-dominated company boards.”

Along similar lines, I’ve also just downloaded Harvard Business Review’s paper on “The Female Economy”, which, in urging companies to re-position themselves out of recession by changing their female attraction strategy, comments that:

“As a market, women represent a bigger opportunity than China and India combined. So why are companies doing such a poor job of serving them?”

Why, indeed – take note and heed, those who manufacture pink laptops and cars with special lipstick holders and the like.

So, I’m back from California – what a great time. Now, let the blogging re-commence.

Why does September always feel like the start of the new school year? New courses, new teachers, new pencils and pens … old habits and memories die hard. And why, I wonder, don’t we make “September Resolutions” instead of (or perhaps as well as) ones in January? Of course, there are lots of changes for me personally this September; I finished my job of eight years on 1st September, then went on holiday and am now back to face all manner of new things.

Whilst away, I had a permanent hair straightening treatment in Santa Monica – check out Jordana Lorraine’s site for details of the really quite amazing “Brazilian Blowout” (™) treatment which has, no exaggeration, changed my life 100% for the better. This may sound like a trivial thing to mention but honestly, unless you’ve suffered with unruly, frizzy hair for your whole life as I have, it’s hard to imagine how amazing now waking up Every. Single. Day. with straight hair can be. I love it and am hugely grateful to Jordana for fitting in her desperate English client on my first day in California. Here I am, looking happy with my New Hair:

Anyway, moving on, as indeed I am … I struggled big time to get over the jet lag after this trip. Although I’ve travelled all over the place over the last three years, it’s been a while since I’ve had an eight hour time difference with which to contend and it’s taken me almost a week to get back on track.

One thing which was hugely helpful was absolutely HAVING to get up and get suited and booted in order to travel into central London in order to attend an event one morning earlier this week; I’m still trying to find a new pattern to my days and knowing that I had paid for my ticket was a useful motivator and gave a shape to my day. The event in question was British Telecom’s Executive Women’s Network meeting, which they had opened up to external, ticket buying guests. The meeting took the form of a “Question Time” panel event, with four panellists and a moderator doing the David Dimbleby bit.

For some reason, the not-David-Dimbleby bloke didn’t either introduce the panel or even mention their bios prior to launching in to the Q & A bit, so I’m not entirely sure of full names etc, but they were, I believe, two women from the consultancy “Everywoman”, Chris Ainslie, BT’s male, flexibly working “gender champion” and Patricia Hewitt, Labour MP, former cabinet minister and a BT non-executive director. I’d been invited to the event by my friend Pauline Crawford from Corporate Heart, so I kept her company in the front row of BT’s auditorium (and I must commend them on the seats; extremely comfortable, even for me, who usually starts to wriggle around and feel back pain in most such seating).

Most of the questions had been submitted in advance (I was too busy swishing my straight hair around in the Californian sunshine to do this) and had a common theme of examining female involvement in either the past (avoiding the credit crunch – could Lehman Sisters have had a different path?) or the future (re-building it to incorporate female strengths and talents). Patricia brought up the “sexism in the City” tagline when she argued the need for what she dubbed “cognitive diversity”, by which she meant having a variety of thoughts, strengths and skills brought to bear on a business issue, therefore leading to “less risk of things going haywire.”

She specifically cited as an example of, I assume, a lack of such cognitive diversity when referencing the “Edinburgh mafia” which, until recently, ran the Royal Bank of Scotland and brought it down so very low. I was interested to hear her mention that the major UK banks have 61 board positions between them, of which a mere FIVE are filled by women; and depressed to also learn that this is unlikely to improve anytime soon (in spite of such research as the McKinsey report on “centered leadership” which suggests that women are more likely to look at minimised loss rather than maximised gain) – due to the economic crisis causing a reduction in the range of people joining the banks’ leadership teams from non-banking backgrounds.

Pauline asked the panel for their views on the key attributes which women need to get into the boardroom, and their replies were as follows:

• You have to “really want to be there” (although I’m afraid this made me think, somewhat irreverently, of that infamous Saturday Night Live sketch from last year wherein Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin told “Hillary Clinton” that she’d nabbed the VP slot on the 2008 campaign because she “really, REALLY wanted it” – cue much grimacing from HRC).
• Ahem. Back to BT, and the panel also thought that authenticity and being yourself was vital to success –
• - as was bringing your own skills and passions to the boardroom.
• Be confident that you have the right to be there; ignore the “little voice” in the back of your head which says that perhaps you don’t (Imposter Syndrome, yes?)
• And Patricia urged us to make sure that we really “understood the finances; don’t just sit back when the numbers are being discussed”.

Other questions asked and answered were around issues of how to find (and be) a mentor, on how flexible working isn’t just a woman’s issue and how when a senior man like Chris works flexibly (he works a “compressed hours” week and hence doesn’t work on Fridays) it sends out very strong messages to both men and women as to what is both possible and acceptable within the corporate culture.

I didn’t get an opportunity to ask Patricia my own question but, with my Downing Street Project hat on, it would have been this:

“Do you foresee that the forthcoming election will see an increase in the number of female MPs from the current very low level of 19% and what will need to change for such an increase to occur?”

And I also missed out on a chance to share with Chris my own definition of a Generation Y person and how they differ from their older colleagues – but here it is.

A Generation Y person is someone who doesn’t have a landline. Think about it, and ask yourself how many 25 year olds you know who live independently (ie, not with the Bank of Mum & Dad) and have a landline. With the advent of the dongle bringing a portable and alternative way to access the Net, it’s not even needed for that anymore; plus most of the friends that I have in that bracket use their mobile/smart phones for most of their on-line access these days.

Perhaps, though, upon reflection, that wouldn’t have been a welcome nugget for a senior executive from one of the world leading telecom companies.

It’s good to be home!