Tag Archives: Politics

Patricia Hewitt on “Sexism in the City”

24 Sep

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:

Cleo with straight hair, at the Grove in LA

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!

A new month, a new path

31 Aug

A busy week beckons, specifically, a very busy Tuesday 1st September. Tomorrow will be my last day at work, after 8 1/2 years with my current employer and I’ll be working in the office all day, doing a handover with my successor, prior to being “relieved” of my laptop and security pass at 5.30pm.

I’ll then be heading across London over to the second of what the Downing Street Project team call “teach backs”. Everyone associated with this exciting, embryonic project to date has been formed into one of four teams (covering such issues as fund raising, training, communications etc) and tasked with coming up with approaches for the future.

dsp_topimage

I was amazed at how much had been achieved, in terms of ideas, creativity and infrastructure, between the launch at the House of Commons on June 30th and the first teach back session four short weeks later – and I’m sure tomorrow night’s event will show similar progress. We are scheduled to cover and be reminded of the following:

- Why do we need this initiative?
- What problem in society does it intend to address?
- How does the DSP think it will make a difference?
- What is balanced leadership and why is it relevant? What can it deliver?
- What is the time line for the DSP over the next three months, the first year and next three years?

I’m really looking forward to both hearing the updates and also keeping my mind occupied on things other than the end of my job and all the implications of that …

Another quotation: Jerry Hall on Hillary Clinton

16 Aug

This, from today’s Observer newspaper:

“I’m voting for Hillary. I think bitches get things done.”

(2008)

That may well be true, Jerry, but I do tire of seeing somebody who I’d describe as a “strong woman” also being described as a “bitch”.

Since when did the words become interchangeable?

On having a difficult week: Hillary & me

14 Aug

We all have them, don’t we?

Difficult weeks.

Weeks in which nothing seems to go right … weeks in which one small thing blows up into something massive, weeks in which one small thing then turns into several huge things, weeks in which you end up feeling that you were solely put on this planet in order to deal with people who are depriving villages the world over of their idiot.

I’ve had one of those weeks, pretty much solely to do with all the admin associated with leaving my employer in a couple of weeks’ time. Firstly, I discovered that a colleague who has also left the organisation, but a couple of weeks ahead of me, was participating in what he described as “some really useful [employer funded] outplacement sessions”, where he received help with his CV plus tips on job hunting and interview techniques. Hurrah, I thought, that will be useful. But, when I enquired, I was told that said service was not available to me, due to being in a different division of the organisation. Given that said organisation is currently promoting a “One Firm” campaign wherein services and employee benefits are indeed available to all, irrespective of business unit, this didn’t sit well with me, so I challenged the “Not Available To You” feedback and a full and frank exchange of views ensued.

Days passed, the world turned, willows wept … and I received an attachment outlining the details of the three months (hurrah!) of outplacement support to which I am now, apparently, entitled.

Just as my blood pressure had returned to an acceptable level from this particular episode, I received a phone call from the data monkeys who monitor holiday take up and deployment. Now, I normally receive 25 days leave per year; but said monkeys claimed that, in 2008, my holiday usage had run as follows:

Allowance: 25 days
Taken: 25 days
Also taken: 17 days

Totalling: 42 days

(I wish! When would I have had the time, or even the inclination, to take 42 days of holiday, given that I was also away from home on business for just over 100 nights in 2008?).

We then commenced 2009, with a new allocation of 25 days, except that my tally looked like this:

Allowance: 25 days
Less: 17 days from 2008
Totalling: 8 days apparently “available”

Oblivious to any of this, I had proceeded to have the audacity to take 13 days of holiday so far this year, meaning that I now apparently “owe” the company 5 days, for which they were proposing to charge me, i.e. deduct the cost of said days from my final leaving salary.

Further full and frank exchanges ensued, which resulted in them “writing off” what was unhelpfully dubbed, in Monkey Speak, the “2008 data anomaly” and us then (more Monkey Speak) “re-balancing” the 2009 schedule. Just as I was thinking that I had escaped without quite losing the will to live, it transpired that they had somehow managed to merge my holiday record with that of someone with a completely different name – hence the cock-ups (or whatever phrase of a similar meaning is used in Monkey Speak: “Irretrievable Data Error” or some such, I expect).

Perhaps all of this is a Higher Power’s way of assisting me to separate from the company and forcing me to not mourn the organisation following our abrupt divorce?

But we continue. And mentioning people who’ve had a bad week, what are our thoughts on this Hillary Clinton “Don’t Mention My Husband!!!” debacle? Here’s a link to the YouTube footage, from which I both conclude and observe that:

- Mrs Clinton is a charm-free individual when caught off-guard and not in receipt of a script;
- She has obviously been asked to be a mouthpiece for Bill’s views a few too many times in the past and this was the one question which tipped her over and into the abyss;
- Surely the US’s Secretary of State ought to be able to cope with unexpected questions with a little more grace? She is meant to be the face of the USA overseas and, as such, a little more gifted in the diplomatic arts.
- That is one horrible outfit – so HRC was obviously lacking the stylist as well as the speechwriter on the day in question.

Like I said: a bad week.

On wishing I’d had a camera earlier …

2 Aug

This interview with Harriet Harman appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Times and is an interesting example of the Labour Party’s views on women in politics – essentially, HH is suggesting a quota system for certain roles:

” … in 2007, she secretly tried to change the party’s rules to formalise this principle. She apparently proposed that either the party leader, or the deputy, should be female.

She nods: “We haven’t actually effected a rule change, but I don’t ever think there will be a men-only team of leadership in the Labour party again. I think people would look at it and say, ‘What? Are there no women in the party to be part of the leadership? Do they want to do it all themselves?’ It just won’t happen again.”

Well, I hope you’re right, Harriet. Let’s see. However, I do agree with this bit:

“Harman feels strongly that voters are fed up with “boys running the show” and is convinced that every big organisation needs women at the top.

“Men cannot be left to run things on their own,” she explains. “I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have a men-only leadership. In a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves. I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions.”

And my camera requirement? When I passed through a tube station earlier today, the Evening Standard billboard screamed at me:

“Harman: World Banking Crisis is Down to Men”

Would have loved to have captured that one for posterity. Poor Harriet; all you do is repeat a six month old news story from the New York Times and hey presto – you appear to be the one blaming “men” for all the turmoil.

Young, gifted and Tory … or Independent

28 Jul

A little more here from the Sunday Times about both Chloe Smith and what the Tory party are doing to attract women.

This is obviously a media topic du jour, as the Observer ran a similar piece on 12th July. I find it very odd to find myself leaning towards a party which has never before had the slightest political appeal, but I do now feel as if the Tories have picked up on the zietgeist surrounding female power.

Is it a coincidence that Gordon Brown is said to “use women as female window dressing” according to former minister Caroline Flint – and that Labour seem to have left this field wide open for the other parties?

And of course, as of yesterday we have veteran campaigner and broadcaster Esther Rantzen standing as an Independent MP in Luton South, another constituency bruised and battered by the expenses scandal. I admire Esther’s courage and integrity but I wonder what her platform will be? Unlike Chloe Smith, she’s not a young woman replacing an older man, but is in fact an older woman replacing a younger – so her election won’t move the needle on the number of female MPs in the HoC (a mere 19%, in case anyone’s wondering, and as we were reminded with force at last night’s Downing Street Project meeting).

Good luck, Esther …

On the arrival of a new female MP

25 Jul

I think I’ve arrived at a new definition of “ageing” and it’s this: you know you’re getting on a bit when you’re closer in age to the leader (43) of a political party than you are to the newest elected member (27) of that party – and particularly so when said new MP becomes the new “Baby of the House”.

So, welcome to the world of Westminster politics, Chloe Smith. Aged 27, you are a woman who carries a number of firsts on your slim shoulders: the first new MP to be elected post the recent expenses scandal and, indeed, as a direct result of said scandal; the first Tory to take a seat from Labour in a by-election for 27 years.

Tory leader David Cameron commented that the result shows that “people want change in our country” – but is Chloe Smith the face of that change or simply a representative (or even, a victim) of tactical voting?

And Labour leader Gordon Brown noted that: “The voters were clearly torn between their anger and dismay at what’s been happening with MPs’ expenses, something we have been trying to clean up – and, at the same time, support for the former MP, the Labour MP Ian Gibson, who was very popular.”

As mentioned before, the Downing Street Project (DSP) was launched at the House of Commons last month, at an event which was hosted by Jo Swinson, the then Baby of the House and a Liberal Democrat MP since the age of 25. I love this photo, taken by Julie Gilbert, founder of WOLF and one of the amazing women who are involved with the DSP – her caption was “… the shadows of the next generation of female leaders”.

Shadows of the next generation of female leaders_DSP launch_June 2009

So, in that context, it seems obvious to me that Chloe Smith, notwithstanding her obvious talents and commitment to the political cause as evidenced by her career path to date, must have been selected in part because she is the anti-Ian Gibson; she is young (27 years old against his 60); a woman; a brand new politician, untainted by the behaviours and associations of the past. She is and has a clean slate.

There are said to be c. 200 MPs standing down at the next election, currently scheduled to occur in June 2010. As a result of the expenses mess, the lists of approved candidates, which had been closed, have been re-opened and the DSP team are hoping to use this as an opportunity to both persuade more women, perhaps more Chloe Smiths, to stand and to be a new type of political representative. David Cameron and co seem to have recognised this as an opportunity ahead of the Labour party; I think I read or possibly heard somewhere that Cameron made six constituency visits in the run up to polling day, which is an incredible amount of top down support for Ms Smith – and it remains to be seen in the coming months if all the parties will get on board with the concept of “out with the old, in with the new”.

The DSP is primarily, I think, not about women per se but about framing a new type of leadership in which women should be playing a vital and enhanced role; let’s hope that Chloe Smith is the first one of those women and that she manages to retain her seat at the 2010 election. How brave, in reality, are the Norwich North electorate?

On one thing leading to another

28 Jun

A while ago, I wrote an article for my corporate blog, which (for now …) forms part of my day job, on the power of networking. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how potent it can be to keep an open mind and have an inquisitive spirit when you’re out and about and meet new people.

In the last few weeks and months, the following chain of events has happened to me.

In March, I spoke at an event for International Women’s Day. After my presentation, I got chatting with Christine, who is the chair of Women in Banking and Finance. A few days later, she emailed me and asked if we could catch up over coffee sometime, as she wanted to bounce around a few ideas with me. I’m always happy to meet for coffee, so we did, got along very well and exchanged some interesting thoughts and suggestions.

Fast forward to the end of May and Christine invited me to attend the Women in Banking and Finance annual lunch at the Dorchester in central London. Along I went, wondering who, if anyone, I would know – to which the answer was, aside from Christine, not a soul. But that was OK – because sometimes, when at these events, it can be all too easy to stick chatting to the people who you do know and not emerge from your comfort zone in order to meet new acquaintances.

But I was forced out of my fur lined rut, and so I chatted and mingled and went through to the lunch – where I had the huge good fortune to be seated adjacent to two absorbing women. They both run their own very different gender diversity consulting firms, and are so well connected that I have Address Book Envy.

As if a wonderful venue, delightful lunch companions, and a spirited speech (in which she called for quotas for women in leadership roles) from keynote speaker Baroness Denise Kingsmill (reported here in the Guardian) wasn’t enough, I also won a prize in the raffle, thus continuing the recent winning streak with which I’ve been blessed, having won a couple of global diversity awards lately. But the luck didn’t end there, as Pauline, my neighbour at the table, also won a prize, as did one of the other guests at table 16. I won a designer silk dress, Pauline won dinner for 6 at a top London restaurant and the other lady (another Pauline, #2) won a huge bouquet of flowers.

Then Pauline #1, who runs a fascinating company called Gender Dynamics, and I discovered that we are actually neighbours in the same suburb of London, so we agreed to meet for, yes, coffee and learn more about each other’s roles and interests. And when we did so, Pauline mentioned that, in her experience, women tend to be very open to the idea of just getting together to bounce ideas around without there being a clear agenda or a defined objective or gain, whereas some men would only go ahead with a similar meeting if there was a very clear idea of what was in it for them at the outset.

Over skinny lattes, Pauline and I discussed our ideas and interests in women, business, leadership, success and so on. She also asked me if I would like to learn more about the Downing Street Project (DSP); to which my response was: “Is that similar to the White House Project? I (corporate) blogged about that last year …”

And yes, it is indeed a UK version of the successful and high profile White House Project; in a nutshell, it’s a UK based, cross party political supported initiative aimed at promoting and enabling “balanced leadership between men and women at every level of society, up to and including 10 Downing Street.”

Downing Street

Pauline then threw open her famed address book even more widely and introduced me to both Lee Chalmers, the director and founder of the DSP and also to Donna Thomson, the wife of the Canadian Ambassador to Britain; she is very active in the whole women in business and women as a force for change space. Pauline, Lee and I had afternoon tea at the “residency” earlier this week and talked about our various projects; these included the Downing Street Project (Lee), a film on gender (me) and a report called the “Leaking Pipeline” (also me); Pauline’s work on gender and biology and Donna’s involvement with the forthcoming UN Agency for Women, which is due to be launched in January 2010.

… And I am now scheduled to attend the DSP’s launch event at the House of Commons on Tuesday evening.

And all of this has come from chatting to Christine back in March ….

If any of these contacts result in a new job for me, I think I’ll send Christine flowers.

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