P O L L Y C O U R T N E Y
Author of Golden Handcuffs | Poles Apart | Defying Gravity | The Day I Died | The Fame Factor
Polly's press & media appearances
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Novelist ditches publisher at book launch
Defying Gravity - 'A unique book'
'Definitely recommend this book'
Bonuses: The Fictitious Meritocracy
Do Brits know more than we think?
Self-flagellation and the City
Rediscover your Passion - Go It Alone
Finansmiljøet i London - et Jobbhelvete
Fear and Loathing in the Heart of the city
My Glittering City Career Turned into Golden Handcuffs
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Lord Davies’s decision to urge companies to set voluntary targets rather than mandatory quotas to boost the number of women in FTSE 100 boardrooms was met with a collective sigh in February. Her view was: “Many years of tapping away at the glass ceiling have left it stubbornly intact. It is time we put aside our drip-drip tactics and took bold action to achieve real change. Boardroom quotas are a radical but not unthinkable means of bringing about a dramatic shift in the role of women in business.” It is true that quotas have achieved huge success in Scandinavian countries like Norway, where four in every ten directors are women, following a mandatory 40 per cent quota introduced in 2008. But it’s also true that enforcing such a rule in the UK would only be addressing part of the problem. Currently, women make up 12.2 per cent of the 1,076 FTSE 100 board roles. And of the 135 new FTSE 100 appointments last year, only 18 per cent were female. This is down to a multitude of things – historical and cultural - but women’s ambition, or at least the perception it, plays no small part. A research report published by the Institute of Leadership and Management in February revealed that, at ever stage of their career, women’s ambitions lag behind their male counterparts. A large part of this was put down to women experiencing far lower levels of self-confidence (50 per cent compared to 70 per cent in men), and far higher levels of self-doubt. Their lack of confidence impacted their ambition, which then impacted their potential in the workplace.
“In the girls’ school, it was always ‘You’re doing well but you must try harder’. No one got As, you felt you weren’t good enough. At the boys’ school, it was more ‘You’re in the top .5 per cent of the population, you’re doing well, now keep doing well’. “It was very positive and I became much more confident in that environment. Of my peers at the girls’ schools, many are in careers where they could be doing a lot better now, better than their male counterparts, but they’re almost taking a step back. They don’t feel confident.” Together with confidence, a better understanding of women’s ambition is needed for them to burst through the glass ceiling today. Even women themselves need to redefine it. In Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, author Anna Fels summed up how her female interviewees felt about the topic. “[They] hated the word ambition when applied to their own lives. For these, ambition necessarily implied egotism, selfishness, self-aggrandisement, or the manipulative use of others for one’s own ends.” As a result, women often feel if they display traditional ambition, they’re perceived as ‘aggressive’ or ‘male’. So they tend towards a more collaborative and team-orientated approach at work. They are two very different expressions of ambition,” explains Elaine Aarons, a partner at Withers law firm in London. “One is somebody who has got ambition but it gets mistranslated. The other is someone who has ambition but can’t translate it.” Furthermore, men are confused by women’s perceived ambition when it comes to having children. Traditionally, the path to career success is considered a linear one – people graduate, get a job and climb the corporate ladder. Yet, for women, this isn’t always the case. “What they need is to be able to take scenic routes along the way,” says Aarons, who has specialised in employment law for nearly three decades. “Some women are ambitious to do really well as mothers and at work, and that causes confused messages around ambition. We haven’t really cracked how to understand that women who want to take a scenic route in their career can still have ambition to get to the top.” It doesn’t help that the very work practices introduced to help women with this – maternity leave, career breaks, flexi-time, part-time and compressed hours - are often counterproductive when it comes to their career progression. And that’s because they impact office face-time.  “Face-time played a big role in the City when I was there,” says Courtney. “There weren’t many women where I worked, but there was one who was sort of a mentor. She would leave the office to pick up her children from nursery and as soon as the door would slam, they’d be all like ‘Thanks for popping in…’ and ‘part-timer’.” Aarons agrees on the impact of less face-time. “Compared to before they had children, those women are often now leaving work earlier to get to the nursery on time, so they are not perceived to be participating to the same degree. It doesn’t mean that they’re not ambitious but it does translate in the minds of the employers to a lesser commitment.” Women’s reaction to this has been to turn away from the corporate structure and towards more entrepreneurial pursuits. A recent survey by London School of Economics suggested over 70 per cent of women aged 16 to 24 have ambitions to set up their own businesses – a trend the Institute of Leadership and Management survey also identified. Leading ladies like Tamara Mellon of Jimmy Choo and Jacqueline Gold of Anne Summers show just how capable women can be when doing business on their own terms. But before there’s a mass exodus from the City, it’s worth noting that much can still be done to get women into leading corporate positions. Sponsors, rather than mentors or coaches, have been identified as hugely beneficial. That’s according to research by the Centre for Work-Life Policy published in the Harvard Business Review in December 2010. “It is a sponsor that gives you your stretch assignment and sticks their neck out in order to help get you that next promotion or job,” says Aarons. “Research shows men have more sponsors than women do. If you see other people progress, it’s maybe because they had sponsors while you didn’t. Yet women have a tendency to think ‘I’ve probably reached my level’.” More honest conversations with employers are another way forward for women. While some jobs are quantifiable – like lawyers who are fee generating – others are less so, meaning that employers find women’s contributions and ambitions harder to quantify. In fact, many women who work part-time have the same ambition as before they had children, so work doubly hard on their allocated office days, allowing it to encroach on their free time. Aarons describes these as ultra-part-timers. Other women relish taking their foot off the pedal for a few years during motherhood, hence want their workload and responsibilities to reflect this. “If we had a greater degree of honesty, then ambition would be given a chance to be more clearly expressed and understood,” says Aarons. But regardless of these measures, the world is changing. The much-publicised ‘Tiger Mom’ parenting style - alpha ambitious parents who demand success of their offspring and groom them to achieve it - will undoubtedly impact female confidence and ambition in future. The workplace is also changing, and men’s ambitions are evolving with it. Though still in the minority, more are taking up the role of primary carer these days, with research stating 20 per cent of wives now earn more than their husbands (a five-fold increase since the 1970s). Generation Y is also increasingly moving away from linear-style careers and taking more scenic routes. “They want to take what has been described as ‘Odysseys’,” explains Aarons. “They don’t want to stay in one job for 50 or 60 years, they want experiences along the way, time out to travel and learn and experience things. Or they want to gain new skills and change course from time to time.” All this means that the world is moving in the right direction – and corporates with it. Whether mandatory quotas would greatly impact that pace is now a question confined to the future, but change is capable of happening nonetheless. Let’s just hope women hang around to see it. Polly Courtney’s latest book It’s A Man’s World (published by Avon) is out now. Read what happened at Coutts Women's Progression to the Boardroom event in this edition of Coutts Woman. By Barbara Walshe |
Don't chick-lit my books because I'm a woman
Novelist fires publisher for fluffy degrading covers
City Boys' Club Bad for Business
Breaking Stereotypes of Poles in Britain
From Engineer to Investment Banker to Novelist
Berliner Zeitung Magazin, 2007
I Know the Pressure Matthew was Under
I Sold My Soul to the City - then Wanted it Back
Banker Novel Shows it's not all Success in the City
Taste of High Life in City can Seduce Interns
City Woman who quit City over Sexism admits Lapdancing
My High Flying City Job was not worth a Life of Misery
Do Women Really Get a Raw Deal in the City?
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Schools
are partly to blame for this, says novelist and former City worker,
Polly Courtney. “I went to a girls’ school until I was 16 and then a
predominantly boys’ school for my last two years. nd the attitude from
the teachers there was so different.
