Clarissa Farr - The Making of Her - Why School Matters

All that said, and while I believe that excellent education comes in many forms, there is still a vital, contemporary role for girls’ schools. Caricaturing them in a sentimental way because they represent a certain tradition or because they evoke a kind of Daisy Pulls It Off nostalgia may be amusing but it obscures what they are there to achieve in today’s world. They are important because they anticipate what we hope and believe will be the future for women: breathing the clear blue air of their capability without a thought to any limitation born of gender. So while the society into which young people emerge remains as unequal in its attitudes and opportunities as it still – sadly, shockingly – is, there will continue to be a role for girls’ schools to concentrate on developing resilient, clever, capable young women to take on the pressure and change it. So far from their being an anachronism, in fact, it turns out that girls’ schools are ahead of their time – the problem is that society isn’t quite ready for the young women educated in them. There is an argument about adapting to the realities, and I am thoughtful when people say that girls need to get used to the ‘real world’ that is out there. But how long are we going to wait before the gender pay gap is closed, or the excellent work of the 30% Club is replaced by the achievements of the 50% Club? Schools are not there merely to prepare young people to conform to society: they are about the future. The role of schools is to shape change. I don’t believe that learning to ‘adapt’ earlier – which all too often means learning how to play nicely, avoid appearing too clever, succeed by flirting and conform to male expectations of what you will be good at – is, in the long term, what girls should be doing.

Emerging from a culture as empowering for girls as St Paul’s may be a shock. But I like it that Paulinas are shocked at what they find. They should be. If they are not being accorded equal treatment, taken advantage of as ‘diligent’ rather than brilliant by being given the dull but necessary work on which their male colleagues build their success (as one young alumna described her life at a well-known investment bank), balancing on their heels at the edge of the pub conversation about rugby and cars while the boys network their way to promotion, then I want them to be shocked. I want them not to be ready for that and I don’t want them to adapt. I want their secure sense of self and their deep confidence in their own capability, developed brick-by-rose-coloured brick at school, to give them the courage and clarity to drive change.

But it’s time to talk about the other 50 per cent of humanity – the men. I want to reassure the men reading this book (I hope you’re out there still and haven’t rushed off to do the online shop or finish the vacuuming) that the answer is certainly not to demonise the male sex and hold them generally responsible for all the inequalities that women face. I admit we indulged in some affectionate teasing behind closed doors at St Paul’s – as I’m sure happened too at our expense across the river – but seriously, we have to guard against slipping into lazy caricature here. In our zeal to make society more equal, we women would do well to keep in mind that alienating men is not going to help us. There is a particular problem for the many enlightened men in the world who actually get all of this completely, because perhaps unavoidably they end up having to share responsibility for the legacy of prejudice and unfairness that women have faced for so long. But the result is that many of them, great modern sons, husbands and fathers who support and respect the women in their lives totally, need to feel they have a role and a voice. Why shut them out? They can’t help us if they are castigated for just being men. Driving the important changes must come through cooperation, with men and women acknowledging the issues and working together, not in opposition.

Which brings me to Dads4Daughters and why we launched an initiative at St Paul’s to harness historic male advantage and make it work for us, and why the dads loved it.

A few years ago I became aware of the United Nation’s campaign HeForShe through a powerful speech given by actress Emma Watson. HeForShe is a call to action for men and women and challenges one half of humanity – men – to get behind the inequalities of opportunity faced by women in society and unite with women to bring about change. This simple but crucial idea of unity rather than opposition struck me as having a very particular application in a girls’ school where, often, young women are being endorsed and supported in their education by their fathers who have been part of the decision to send them there. Putting it simply, if you are the father of a clever daughter, you are certainly not going to choose St Paul’s unless you believe in female empowerment. So snatching the term almost out of the air I chose my valedictory address to the leavers and their parents to launch our own version of the UN campaign, calling it Dads4Daughters.

We started by inviting fathers to write guest articles for our fortnightly newsletter about their view from the workplace and this produced an enthusiastic response. Through it we learned not just about the problems but about various very effective practices – for example reverse mentoring, where an older man is mentored by a less experienced, younger woman who is able to help him look critically at his behaviour towards female colleagues and call him out for evidence of bias that may be so ingrained that it’s unconscious. She will check his use of language (grown-up women don’t like being referred to as girls or being described as ‘feisty’), his assumptions about gender roles (women are not automatically better at making tea or taking notes) and will help him see the world more clearly from the female perspective. The father who described this process called it ‘the best professional development I have ever had’. Not because he was rampantly prejudiced – far from it – but because it made him so much more aware of his own behaviour.

The survey of our alumnae in the 25–35 age group produced the shocking finding that well over 75 per cent had encountered or been aware of workplace prejudice. At our launch event in school, we looked at the findings and heard the personal experiences of some of them as well as some fathers. It was wonderful to see how many fathers wanted to come into school for this event, with their daughters, and spend time talking about a matter of such importance to them both. This was a new alignment; fathers loved having a reason to spend time with their daughters, we found – we were tapping into something they really cared about.

Further, it was surprising to discover that many men who had become fathers had never been asked about it in their workplace and this cataclysmic event in a couple’s life was seen as solely the experience – and the responsibility – of the mother. No one wondered if they had had enough sleep or needed some flexibility to assist with childcare. Becoming a dad just wasn’t a thing. Dads4Daughters was morphing into Daughters4Dads – a new awareness of the role of the father in his daughter’s life. By now we were also thinking much more broadly about parenthood and its value. It was listening to a talk by St Paul’s alumna Annie Auerbach of the company Starling, who ‘solve business problems through cultural insight’, that I began to see how being a parent, far from undermining your ability to be a professional, could actually enhance it. Parents, Annie explained to the audience, leaning forward in her even, modern, graciously unassailable way, are not just resilient and adaptable; they have stamina, they are problem-solvers, they have patience, they are lateral-thinkers and they are expert in seeing things from someone else’s point of view. Who wouldn’t want these qualities in their boss or their subordinate? It’s time we saw being a parent – whether father or mother – as something to be proud of, adding to our humanity and capability, adding to our professional value too, rather than something to apologise for or be silent about as if it had nothing to do with the people we are when we go to work.