Valleys Mam, among others, has commented on yesterday's news that there are now less women in top positions across almost half of all industries in Britain than there were in 2006.
This is universally being seen as a step backwards for women's equality, but I'd like to put a different slant on it.
If women were in more top jobs in 2006, it strikes me that there haven't been any great changes in legislation or culture since then that would lead to a decline in opportunities open to them. Indeed, I feel that my options are as wide and varied as those of a man with my background and skills. Personally though, I don't have any great desire to be top of the tree in the sphere of business or politics, right now, so I'm not really working towards that goal. If anything, I am feeling a lot of pressure and encouragement to go through the process of becoming a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the amount of work, time away from home and extra responsibility that would come with being a selected PPC is not what I want right now.
I find myself thinking of a piece by another Welsh blogger, and old acquaintance of mine, Al Iguana, a few weeks ago. He was musing on the subject of why fewer women than men have prominent blogs, and decided that women simply have a less single-minded approach to these things than men do. Women's blogs generally tend to be personal affairs, which cover all topics and events that seem important to them from day to day, and allow them to stay in touch with other friends on the internet. Indeed, my own other blog is just this sort of animal. And it reflects my attitude to life: it isn't all about work, or all about politics, or all about family, or hobbies. It is about finding a balance between all these things I care about that is right for me. I find that I have this holistic view in common with many other women, especially at my age and in my circumstances.
Don't get me wrong here, I am all for gung-ho women who want to take the business world or the military world or the politics world in their teeth and rise to the very top. I also see that prejudices still exist despite decades of work by the women's liberation movement, and with that in mind I am also all for the encouragement and empowerment of those gung-ho women I'm thinking of. But what I'm not sure of is whether equality of opportunity will ever lead to parity of representation for women, because I believe that in general there will always be fewer women with the right kind of single-minded approaches and ambitions than there are men. Equality of opportunity, yes please. But crying out that because fewer women are in top jobs that there's a "reinforced concrete ceiling"? I don't know whether that's helpful.
Now, I'm off to take my daughter to see a friend, and tomorrow will be having lunch with my mum. Got to pack in as much of the rest of my life as possible before it is eaten by Liberal Democrat Conference in Bournemouth for a few days next week!
Friday, 5 September 2008
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11 comments:
Oh Steph! I don't know where to start!
Have you actually tried knocking on the glass ceiling? No? You think you have the same opportunities as your male equivalents?
You don't have the same opportunity to earn the same amount for doing the same kind of job, research tells us that time and time again. But maybe you don't have the single minded desire to earn the same for work of equal value?
Why is that you think women have 'different' priorities? It would be anything to do with the assumption by society that women are and should be the main child carers. Of course it's bloody hard work being superwomen so they choose not to do it but society, employers don't expect men to be where the child care buck stops. Men don't have to be supermen.
Equality of opportunity stops the day after you graduate and the older you get the worse it gets.
Jo - I half-expected someone to miss the point of what I was saying, but I didn't expect it to be you :( I don't believe you actually read my post thoroughly before commenting.
To answer your points one by one:
No, I haven't tried knocking on the glass ceiling. does this make me unqualified to comment?
Yes, I do think I have the same opportunities as my male equivalents. In fact I would argue that in my chosen fields I have more: the Lib Dems are very good at offering greater chances to women thanks largely to the Campaign for Gender Balance, and in my chosen sphere of paid work men are discriminated against as they don't normally become administrators or secretaries for businesses so are seen as peculiar when they do apply.
I know that women are not paid the same as men for the same grade of work, and this is extremely galling. However it doesn't relate to the content of my post, and I resent the implication that I am a traitor to the feminist cause by not convering every aspect of women in the workplace in this one piece.
I spelt out why I think it is that women have different priorities: I believe that women (generally speaking, and with some notable exceptions) have a more holistic view of life than men, and they don't necessarily set as much store by achievement in the workplace as men do. They want more out of life than just a great job, and at present, having a great job comes at the expense of time spent with family, of a varied social life, and of voluntary work and hobbies.
There is no assumption in my household that I should be the main child carer, in fact the jobs of raising my daughter are equally split between me and my partner - yes, even the unrewarding ones. And this despite the fact he is not her natural father. I realise that this is not the case for all women and I am sorry about that. However, I don't believe it is an expectation that I should be at home with my daughter that affects how far I go in the workplace so much as *my desire* to spend more time with her. It hurts to leave her at home with dad when I go off to conference, and if that is what life has been like for fathers all these years then I am sorry for them, too.
I would like to see a drastic change in the employment culture across the country, much as Ros Scott outlined in her post on this subject, so that both men AND women can balance their responsibilities to their families with their careers more effectively (though in practise I have no idea how that could possibly work as the top person in any organisation has to carry the buck and therefore be married to their job). Maybe then more women will choose to attain top jobs. But given that the employment culture is what it is, and that more of one's time and energy has to be dedicated to work the hgher up the career ladder one goes, I can't see it happening.
What I am basically saying, boiled down to its most antagonistic and un-pc is: women generally have more *sense* than to throw themselves into work at the cost of everything else that life has to offer. I believe I am a hell of a lot happier now than I would be in some cut-throat top-dog job, and I want to be happy far more than I want to be powerful or high-earning.
Great blog post.
I do also see Jo Christie-smith's point I think (correct me if I'm wrong). myself and other female graduate engineers tried working in the industry after graduation and we all left to do other things. The day-to-day misogynistic harassment from male colleagues was just too much to stand. that's after facing the astonishing prejudice at interview (I would shorten my name so it seemed like a man and when I walked in many were clearly rattled and uncomfortable). Yes the law allows us to prosecute each and every male in a group that bullies us with lewd and insulting comments but it's easier to leave.
Philipa: your story is very disheartening and I'm really sorry to hear about it. Like I said in the post, though, please please don't get me wrong. I am *by no means* saying that there is no discrimination against women in the world of work, but I am saying that it is only part of the story.
I'm also saying that it is odd that the news story I linked to is being picked up all over the place by commentators as a backward step in our struggle for equal opportunities - is there really any *more* discrimination now than there was in 2006?
Steph, I think that there has been a big backlash in the last couple of years: I don't think there's necessarily more discrimination, but it's entirely possible more women have given up.
Very interesting Steph, however I think realistically you (we) need to have some more empirical data on this. It seems like a perfectly reasonable argument, that which you say about how women view work-life balance compared to men...but on this subject it really pays to be sure, don't you think?
Something about it all just nags at me you see, I don't understand how women in general can be growing up in progressively more liberal times...yet no proportional increase in women in higher level jobs can be seen. My personal view is that unless we've hit some kind of bubble in time where women that were born around 40-50 years ago have less aspirations en masse to be in top jobs, then there is cause to look deeper in to the issue.
But then on this whole subject the data is blurry at best, the only hard data I've ever seen being women's pay compared in individual sectors at individual levels of responsibility...and that data doesn't make for good reading. We generally need someone, somewhere, to fund a real study in to this subject so that both sides can start arguing with information as well as their feelings.
Jennie: point, I do think the 'post-feminist' return-to-femininity attitude of some people has a lot to answer for. I think a lot of bright women are discovering that it is easier by far to become brilliant at knitting and baking cakes than to try to carve themselves a niche in any male-dominated environment...
Lee: I hear you. I am struggling with this lack of quantifiable data myself. It's not like we can go to women who have turned away from advancing their careers and present them with a questionnaire, or do something as ethically questionable and logistically unfeasible as to 'Truman Show' a whole generation into growing up in a bubble society where traditional gender roles are completely reversed during childhood to see what happens, but sometimes I would love to have that kind of hard statistical breakdown of just what is going on.
This post works from the assumption that given that we have had progressively more rights and freedoms enshrined in law over the years, and only seen a small amelioration in the crude figures such as these about gender profiles of top jobs (and latterly of course a random decline!), the factors at play do undoubtedly still include some discrimination, but must be more complex than that.
I don't as a rule like to highlight the differences between men and women, because I think it is within all of us to act as nothing more or less than gender-neutral human beings. And it really doesn't help 'the cause' any to think of us any other way. But the fact is, there are subtle differences in not just the biological makeup but the characters of men and women - I reckon a lot more of it is cultural than hardwired, but it's there. It seems a likely suspect for part of the blame for this lack of parity.
Equality of opportunity on its own will never do it. Until we have either (a) a significant number of women in all jobs at all levels - it doesn't need to be 50%, just enough to make it unremarkable, 45% would do at a pinch - or (b) a situation where people don't look at jobs and think 'can I picture myself doing that? Is it a job people like me[1] tend to do?', then the jobs market will always tend back to the mean. Which means that unless we keep pushing very hard indeed over the next forty years to get women to do jobs that they wouldn't normally think of doing, traditionally male jobs are, over time, going to drift back to being mostly male.
This is difficult, because a lot of women, and men for that matter, think the battle has been won, and that we can all stop pushing. In fact, they think that it's wrong to keep pushing because there's a danger of over-compensating and being too favourable to women. (Cue hollow laughter from many, including me, partly because I studied control systems at university). So most of the top jobs tend to be male-dominated (and white dominated, for that matter; gender isn't the only issue here), so women tend to miss them as career possibilities, so in ten years' time, there will be fewer women doing them and almost none coming in at the lower levels wanting to do them.
This is one occasion where I really hope my analysis is wrong, by the way. I'll be really happy if in ten years' time I'm looking back on this comment thinking how silly it looks.
[1] Of course, 'people like me' doesn't necessarily mean 'women'. But in order for this not to matter, it has to not mean 'women' not only for the woman thinking of the career, but for the employer thinking of giving her the job.
It will be interesting to see how the Norwegian positive discrimination legislation works out.
A stray thought: Northern Rock was run by men.
Lee Griffin: I brought the subject of Women in Snr Mgt positions within Welsh Councils, specifically NPTCBC having less than 10% women in Snr positions according to the Local Government Data Unit; once this came into the public arena Women in Snr postions within councils in Wales was taken off the Performance Indicators.
G Lewis
Bridgend Lib Dems
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