Sally Garratt - Women Managing for the Millennium

1 the percentage of women directors in member organizations has doubled in one year from 8% to 16%

2 women now account for 32% of all managers – up from 25% last year

3 the percentage of women in senior management is up from 12% to 17%, and middle managers from 24% to 28%

4 45% of all graduate entrants are women

Opportunity 2000 also makes positive steps towards recognizing and publicizing the achievement of organizations in increasing the participation of women in the workforce by giving awards to businesses which show demonstrable progress in this field. In 1997, for example, they awarded Yorkshire Bank an award for ‘dismantling the glass ceiling’. When a new chief executive arrived at the bank, he was shocked by the bank’s poor record on promoting women. He and the equal opportunities manager introduced a scheme whereby female employees were encouraged to seek promotion and this has increased the number of women moving into the first level of management by 29% in a year. The chief executive points out that this scheme is rooted in straightforward business sense and that, if 70% of the people in the bank were women, then the bank would not be able to achieve its objectives if it drew its management only from the other 30% of the workforce.

A report, A Question of Balance? A survey of managers’ changing professional and personal values , discusses the gap between managers and their organizations in terms of the cultural values which impact on performance. Modern managers are seen to hold positive attitudes which do not sit comfortably alongside the less enlightened cultures still found in many businesses.

Even though the business environment is changing to enable ‘female ways of managing’ to develop, I suspect that we lost a whole generation of women managers during the 1980s – probably because many of the women who reached the top during that self-centred, brittle decade did not help and support other women and may have, on occasions, actively impeded their progress. This has also resulted in many of the surviving fifty-plus year-olds saying that they have little in common with the younger women and either feel more in tune with their male peers, or feel completely isolated. Now, however, there is a strong feeling that this attitude is disappearing and that successful women are increasingly aware of the need to broadcast their achievements and act as role models, coaches and mentors for the up and coming generation.

We should also bear in mind that, as long as women tend not to measure success solely in terms of status, money and celebrity, there will not be equal numbers of men and women at senior management level. We need to think in terms of equal satisfaction in what women managers are achieving. An example of women’s broader approach is, ‘Although I was in a very senior, prestigious position, I have recently taken a (slightly) downwards step to another post in order to improve the quality of my private life and to maximize the time available for it. That was probably the hardest career decision I have ever taken’. I suspect that women would score higher on this criterion than the men, although it is true that the men are beginning to realize the issues and change their behaviours.

I feel, however, that the real differences will become clear as the current generation of teenagers moves into the world of work. I recently spent some time with the sixth formers at a co-ed public school and was impressed with the attitudes of the boys and girls towards the concept of working together. One of the issues we discussed at length was the occasional pitfalls of men and women working together in business and I was heartened by the positive and sensitive attitudes of both boys and girls to the subject. In fact they almost dismissed it, as it seemed obvious to them that working together on an equal footing was the natural and sensible way of doing things.

I sincerely hope that, as they encounter the current prejudices in organizational cultures, they will have the courage to hold on to the partnership idea and carry it through their lives at work, at home and at play. I trust that the boys won’t be persuaded to adopt the superior, ‘macho’ views of their male colleagues and managers and that the girls will not lose their self-confidence and begin to believe that they are the passive, second-class sex.

If our hopes for the future lie with these young people, then we have to do all we can to pass on what we have learned so that they, too, may learn and take that learning forward to the benefit of everyone.

I have been working with young people and feel strongly about the need to equip them to deal with the changing world of work. I now want to assess the changes that have affected women in management so that they may:

learn from the past and present and so approach the future confidently, with full knowledge of the challenges they will have to face

clarify how they may contribute fully to managing their organizations, businesses and communities as they strive to survive and flourish in the next century.

There is a feeling of optimism about the future for women in business. This revolves around an increasing compatibility between the sexes in the workplace, rather than the unrealistic expectation that male and female managers will ever be equal in numbers. The domestic factor of female employees with families is the main reason for this, although ‘family-friendly’ employment policies are gaining some ground. It is also significant that more and more women are either setting up their own small businesses, or becoming self-employed, as an alternative to having to fit into a corporate culture which is, for many, an alien way of working.

Demographic pressures and trends, education, male views of sharing family responsibilities, among other issues, are all building towards a peak that suggests we are on the brink of a fundamental change in the role women will play in the world of management. Women must prepare themselves to make full use of these changes and the consequent opportunities to take their appropriate places as directors and managers. They will introduce female perspectives and behaviours to complement those currently held in traditional, male-dominated organizations and bring a much-needed balance to the corporate world, thus enabling it to be more successful in its competitive environment.

Women are now in a position to excel as they grow in confidence and begin to understand the benefits of diversity in the workplace. As one manager says, ‘All successful women need to share their experiences – tips on success, motivation and confidence, as well as revealing failures – so all women will see it is not an easy ladder to climb’. They will, however, see that it is possible to climb that ladder.

Networking and the need for coaches and mentors have also been mentioned time and time again as an important way of building up a store of experiences which may be used to increase confidence in two ways: first, that to employ behaviours with which you feel comfortable is the best approach and, second, that you have learned and absorbed all the skills and knowledge required to do the job.

What I hope will prove interesting and helpful are the comments and opinions of women who have found themselves in a variety of situations and how they have dealt with them. They are typical of the many thousands of women managers throughout the country who have a strong feeling of their worth and who are beginning to make their presence felt.

Through the examples of case studies and interviews, through long discussions with friends and work colleagues, through articles in various publications and from my own experiences as an employee, manager, teacher, developer, trainer, and consultant to organizations, my aim in this book is threefold: