Helena Morrissey - A Good Time to be a Girl - Don’t Lean In, Change the System

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Frontispiece Dedication Preface 1 A tale of two career women 2 New leadership required 3 The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power 4 Men, women, equal, different 5 Diversity of thought: welcome until anyone disagrees! 6 How CEOs can break the diversity barrier 7 ‘Get’cha head in the game!’ 8 Camp CEO 9 Gender equality: good news for men and boys too 10 We can write the future together Afterword Notes Acknowledgements Index About the Author About the Publisher

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Helena Morrissey 2018

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Graphs and charts by Martin Brown

Helena Morrissey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008292508

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008296391

Version: 2018-05-11

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Frontispiece Dedication Preface 1 A tale of two career women 2 New leadership required 3 The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power 4 Men, women, equal, different 5 Diversity of thought: welcome until anyone disagrees! 6 How CEOs can break the diversity barrier 7 ‘Get’cha head in the game!’ 8 Camp CEO 9 Gender equality: good news for men and boys too 10 We can write the future together Afterword Notes Acknowledgements Index About the Author About the Publisher

In memory of my wonderful grandmothers, Irene and Amy, who did not have the opportunities we have today.

Cover

Title Page Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Frontispiece Dedication Preface 1 A tale of two career women 2 New leadership required 3 The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power 4 Men, women, equal, different 5 Diversity of thought: welcome until anyone disagrees! 6 How CEOs can break the diversity barrier 7 ‘Get’cha head in the game!’ 8 Camp CEO 9 Gender equality: good news for men and boys too 10 We can write the future together Afterword Notes Acknowledgements Index About the Author About the Publisher

Copyright

Frontispiece

Dedication

Preface

1 A tale of two career women

2 New leadership required

3 The 30% Club: the strength of feminine power

4 Men, women, equal, different

5 Diversity of thought: welcome until anyone disagrees!

6 How CEOs can break the diversity barrier

7 ‘Get’cha head in the game!’

8 Camp CEO

9 Gender equality: good news for men and boys too

10 We can write the future together

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

About the Author

About the Publisher

It’s a good time to be a girl! In all honesty, I don’t think I could have written that unequivocally before now. Of course, I’ve seen real progress for women over my fifty-year lifetime, thirty-year career in a male-dominated industry and twenty-five years of motherhood, beginning with one son and now (a final tally) nine children, six girls and three boys. It’s certainly been – increasingly – a better time to be a girl. As you read my story I hope you will see so much to celebrate about this progress that we’ve already made, and how you can create your own opportunities for success, whatever stage you are at in life. I recognise now that I made some ‘lucky’ choices along the way; by seeing what works and what doesn’t, my hope is that you might leave much less to chance.

But today’s opportunity is so much greater than the unfinished business of the past – and that’s why I’ve written this book now. Gender equality is a well-worn subject but it is not one we have mastered. Despite the huge body of literature, of advice, theory and opinion, the reality is that still only a small number of women have been making it to the top or feel they are fulfilling their potential. Many more tell me they feel discouraged about their prospects, unfulfilled or conflicted in their multiple roles as mothers or carers with careers. They can’t see the linkage between their own reality and gender equality efforts that often seem targeted at a narrow group of white, privileged and highly educated women, rather than at all women.

Companies, too, are frustrated by limited progress in the numbers of senior women after many years of feeling they are doing a lot to encourage their female and other ‘diverse’ talent. Sometimes, the result of all these special initiatives has – inadvertently – been to do more harm than good; difference can seem difficult rather than desirable .

And yet, I am more optimistic today than ever before. I believe that we – men and women, working together – have an unprecedented opportunity to create a new, more successful, quite different approach, one that will not just create more possibilities for girls, but more choices for boys, too – a bolder approach to gender equality that’s not aimed merely at training a few more women in working practices that have outlived their usefulness. Those women (and even fewer ethnic minority, gay or disabled people) who have made it to the top today are the exceptions, the ones who have mostly played by the rules of the existing game. We now have the chance to reinvent the game – not at the expense of men, but by creating new ways of working and living that fit the world of today and tomorrow, not the past. I have spent years listening and engaging with both women and men who tell me very similar things about the pressures they feel to comply with ‘norms’ that seem habitual rather than right for anyone, or relevant in a digital age.