News - Midlands
The feminine touch
Twenty years have passed since the term "glass ceiling" was first coined by The Wall Street Journal to describe those inconspicuous barriers to a woman's career advancement and equal treatment in the workplace. So, is it still an accurate description?
"I think it's just as valid," says Dr Susan Marlow of De Montford University, Leicester, who has just completed a study on the financing of female-owned businesses. "Looking at vertical segregation of the labour market, there are more women graduates in accountancy, law, medicine and veterinary science. But then if you look at where they end up - taking my own profession for example - men are 550 per cent more likely to become a professor than women."
Some say the term is an easy way to explain away women's failure to keep up with men. Suzie Walker, founder and managing director of executive search firm Catalyst Associates, gives the whole thing short shrift. "Personally, I'm not convinced it ever was a valid phrase but some women were fast to use the glass ceiling or gender gap to explain why they couldn't get jobs or move ahead based on their own personal merit," she says.
Walker is not the only one who feels this way. Ros Kerslake is chief executive of RegenCo, the urban regeneration company for West Bromwich. And if there is one industry that can accurately be described as male-centric, it's property. "I feel very strongly that complaining is the least helpful way of addressing the issue," she says. "Instead men and women alike should look at the industry's history to understand how we're arrived at the current scenario and why we have a battle on our hands to change both perception and reality."
But the bottom line is that there are still nowhere near as many women on company boards as there are men. Cranfield University's 2004 Female FTSE Index shows that of all new FTSE 100 director appointments in 2004, 17 per cent went to women and that the number of directorships held by women in the FTSE 100 stood at 110, taken up by 96 women. There is still only one female chief executive and one female chairman.
Angela Maxwell is the commercial director of coffee machine manufacturer Fracino and managing director of Acuwomen, which offers a range of business support services from an all-woman group of entrepreneurs. She says it's all just a matter of time. "If there are ten people going for a chief executive job and nine of them are men, the likelihood of a man getting it is very high. Until we have five men and five women going for these top jobs we will still have a problem," she says. "We need a full cycle and that takes 30 to 40 years. Let's be honest, it's not that long since the suffragettes."
Taking a career break to have children, often at a critical time in a woman's working life, cannot help but have an effect on a woman's career. Walker says there will always be fewer women in executive jobs than men. "Quite simply women often have children at the peak of their career and not all choose to return to work; those who do return find that their colleagues' careers have progressed while they have taken time out. With the responsibilities of a young family some female executives actively choose to return to a role with less responsibility," she says.
Others argue that women are pressured in to these less responsible roles because the perception is that a) they might have another baby in a year's time and leave again, b) their priorities now lie with the family rather than business or c) there is a resistance to offering flexible working in more senior positions for fear the job won't be done as well.
As Deborah Gordon-Brown, head of law firm Shoosmiths' Nottingham office, says: "There is still a certain scepticism as to whether flexible working arrangements or managing a full-time career and family is good for business."
So the women who do make it in the workplace are those who behave like men. Marlow says: "You have this notion of a career which is based around the things that men do and then you invite women to become honorary men. If you want to achieve in the same way then all you've got to do is act like one of the boys. There are certain dangers with that and I think the government is facing up to some of those changes at the moment - like we have a falling birth rate."
Those women who do forego children to get ahead, can find themselves blamed by other women for playing the game and perpetuating this situation. Gordon-Brown says: "Career women who have opted or felt obliged to forgo a family can prove to be as much of an obstacle as male executives with old-fashioned beliefs. If women feel pressurised to delay having a family or even sacrifice having one at all this will probably only continue to hold back progress."
So, unless we want women to continue to choose not to have children because of the impact this has on their careers, or wait until they are older to have one child, we all need to be a bit more flexible. And the government thinks so too.
"There is a great government focus on the need for flexibility in work, which largely focuses on women because it is presumed that women, rather than men, need space to look after children," says Marlow.
Giving men the option to take some paternity time instead of the woman could make this less of a gender issue - less about women and more about family. Indeed, only in recent weeks the government mooted extending paternity leave entitlement to six months.
Because the workplace is not yet as flexible as it could be, many women have to find other forms of employment where they can combine childcare and work.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2003 shows men are still twice as likely to start a business as women, but increasingly women are setting up their own businesses in answer to the work/family dichotomy.
But then there is another hurdle for women to overcome: dubbed "the glass safe". Marlow has conducted research in conjunction with Prof Sara Carter at the University of Stirling into the financing of female-owned businesses and whether they have the same access to funding as male-owned ones. "We interviewed the high street providers and the bank loan officers were very adamant that they would never discriminate on the basis of gender," says Marlow. "It's not good practice for them to do so - on the basis of their reputation - but also in terms of attracting new business."
And yet, according to the research, women set up their businesses with an average of £36,100 of bank finance, compared with the male average of £318,500. Also, women are far more likely to use their own finances to set up a business than men.
But even here, women set up business with £36,150 of their own money on average, compared to the male average of £317,800.
About half of all self-employed women operate their business part time (less than 30 hours) compared with 13 per cent of men. Over a third of women, compared to 12 per cent of men, operate from home.
"Men are more likely to own high-growth businesses. If a woman goes into self-employment, it may be because she wants more flexibility and wants to be able to combine work with childcare. If she is suddenly faced with the prospect of a growth business it will take more and more time, which defeats the point of going into self-employment in the first place," says Marlow. "There are clear differences between the types of businesses that women own and the types of businesses that men own.
This affects the way they are financed."
Of course, not all women set up a business so they can run it on a part-time basis for some extra cash while they bring up the kids. Walker says: "My reasons for setting up Catalyst Associates were in no way connected to being a woman. I felt strongly that we could offer customers a service and flexibility that far exceeded the industry norm. It is my firm belief that the success in running my own company has been neither because, nor in spite of, being female."
Meanwhile, there are differences between the way men and women do business, simply because men and women are different. For this reason, Bank of Scotland has its own women in business team. Claire Logie is the team's director: "So that they can provide a better service, we have been talking to our staff about what the differences are, because although they are very subtle - differences in style, attitude, approach and communication - they are very important."
Logie says that women are enormously relationship focused and will stay with an organisation that treats them well and that they have a strong relationship with, even if it costs them more. "It's the same when women are running businesses as well. It's not always about just getting the best deal, it's about doing the business the way they choose to do it," she says.
There is also research to suggest that women are more risk averse. "We suspect that this is down to socialisation; girls are brought up to be more cautious and risk averse; boys are encouraged to be more aggressive and competitive," says Marlow. "But having spoken to the bankers, they say that they find that caution quite attractive because it makes them better payers."
But women do struggle to access finance. Part of the problem may lie in the sectors in which women operate. Marlow says: "Frequently you find that women are starting new firms in sectors that are already quite crowded, in what we call lower order services: caring, catering, personal services like hairdressing. There tend to already be quite a lot of firms in those areas because they are quite cheap to set up and you can more or less do them from home. But if you look at it from the bank's point of view they have to look at the risks when someone comes to them with a business plan. So it's more structural factors."
Logie rejects the idea that the banks are more likely to say no to women because of the sectors they choose. "It's about selling yourself and about selling your proposition. If you can do that effectively, working in a particular sector won't stop you," she says.
The fact that women tend to have about a third of the capitalisation that men do has other implications: under capitalisation can lead to under performance.
Marlow says: "If you start off with a very small amount of money there aren't the same opportunities for growth and development. It's almost a vicious circle. You start a new business and fund it yourself, but if you do that you'll probably be running it in constrained circumstances and it will be more difficult to attract new customers and have creditability with suppliers, which in turn hinders growth."
As well as having less monetary capital, Marlow argues that women also have less social capital when they start a new firm, which includes access to business networks. Networking, particularly, can be challenging for women. Kathy Halliday, employment law partner at law firm Cobbetts, says: "Networking has traditionally been a male-dominated activity, with a large number of get-togethers being centred around sport or social drinking."
Women's exclusion from both formal and informal networks means they don't have that access to those professionals that give you advice and information on financial products.
The Bank of Scotland's women in business team conducted its own research on 220 female business owners. The two products that they were overwhelmingly happy with were the overdraft and term loan. "When we asked them about other products, such as factoring, invoice discounting, venture capital, business angels, the knowledge went down dramatically and they were very uncomfortable with using those sorts of finance," says Logie. "They do tend to stick to the ones they are most comfortable with. If they don't have access to this information via those networks they are going to be less confident about business products."
No other area of business finance highlights this better than venture capital (VC). Statistics from the Aurora Women's Network show that only 3 per cent goes to women-owned ventures and Marlow's study didn't even look at VC funding "because women are more or less excluded from that market" and that's because VCs are seeking high-growth firms that will expand rapidly and give them a substantial return; and women don't tend to own that type of business.
"Setting up a business aged 23 and deciding you are going to be rich and it's going to be as big as it can possibly be: that is the traditional mode of business and it is what we are used to seeing in this country," says Logie. "I think it's slightly different for women, they choose to manage it in a different way.
"That's what people mean when they talk about the change that women in business is bringing about - that dilution of traditional business. There is now a lot more variety in how people are choosing to run them, what their reasons are and what they want from them."
"I think it's just as valid," says Dr Susan Marlow of De Montford University, Leicester, who has just completed a study on the financing of female-owned businesses. "Looking at vertical segregation of the labour market, there are more women graduates in accountancy, law, medicine and veterinary science. But then if you look at where they end up - taking my own profession for example - men are 550 per cent more likely to become a professor than women."
Some say the term is an easy way to explain away women's failure to keep up with men. Suzie Walker, founder and managing director of executive search firm Catalyst Associates, gives the whole thing short shrift. "Personally, I'm not convinced it ever was a valid phrase but some women were fast to use the glass ceiling or gender gap to explain why they couldn't get jobs or move ahead based on their own personal merit," she says.
Walker is not the only one who feels this way. Ros Kerslake is chief executive of RegenCo, the urban regeneration company for West Bromwich. And if there is one industry that can accurately be described as male-centric, it's property. "I feel very strongly that complaining is the least helpful way of addressing the issue," she says. "Instead men and women alike should look at the industry's history to understand how we're arrived at the current scenario and why we have a battle on our hands to change both perception and reality."
But the bottom line is that there are still nowhere near as many women on company boards as there are men. Cranfield University's 2004 Female FTSE Index shows that of all new FTSE 100 director appointments in 2004, 17 per cent went to women and that the number of directorships held by women in the FTSE 100 stood at 110, taken up by 96 women. There is still only one female chief executive and one female chairman.
Angela Maxwell is the commercial director of coffee machine manufacturer Fracino and managing director of Acuwomen, which offers a range of business support services from an all-woman group of entrepreneurs. She says it's all just a matter of time. "If there are ten people going for a chief executive job and nine of them are men, the likelihood of a man getting it is very high. Until we have five men and five women going for these top jobs we will still have a problem," she says. "We need a full cycle and that takes 30 to 40 years. Let's be honest, it's not that long since the suffragettes."
Taking a career break to have children, often at a critical time in a woman's working life, cannot help but have an effect on a woman's career. Walker says there will always be fewer women in executive jobs than men. "Quite simply women often have children at the peak of their career and not all choose to return to work; those who do return find that their colleagues' careers have progressed while they have taken time out. With the responsibilities of a young family some female executives actively choose to return to a role with less responsibility," she says.
Others argue that women are pressured in to these less responsible roles because the perception is that a) they might have another baby in a year's time and leave again, b) their priorities now lie with the family rather than business or c) there is a resistance to offering flexible working in more senior positions for fear the job won't be done as well.
As Deborah Gordon-Brown, head of law firm Shoosmiths' Nottingham office, says: "There is still a certain scepticism as to whether flexible working arrangements or managing a full-time career and family is good for business."
So the women who do make it in the workplace are those who behave like men. Marlow says: "You have this notion of a career which is based around the things that men do and then you invite women to become honorary men. If you want to achieve in the same way then all you've got to do is act like one of the boys. There are certain dangers with that and I think the government is facing up to some of those changes at the moment - like we have a falling birth rate."
Those women who do forego children to get ahead, can find themselves blamed by other women for playing the game and perpetuating this situation. Gordon-Brown says: "Career women who have opted or felt obliged to forgo a family can prove to be as much of an obstacle as male executives with old-fashioned beliefs. If women feel pressurised to delay having a family or even sacrifice having one at all this will probably only continue to hold back progress."
So, unless we want women to continue to choose not to have children because of the impact this has on their careers, or wait until they are older to have one child, we all need to be a bit more flexible. And the government thinks so too.
"There is a great government focus on the need for flexibility in work, which largely focuses on women because it is presumed that women, rather than men, need space to look after children," says Marlow.
Giving men the option to take some paternity time instead of the woman could make this less of a gender issue - less about women and more about family. Indeed, only in recent weeks the government mooted extending paternity leave entitlement to six months.
Because the workplace is not yet as flexible as it could be, many women have to find other forms of employment where they can combine childcare and work.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2003 shows men are still twice as likely to start a business as women, but increasingly women are setting up their own businesses in answer to the work/family dichotomy.
But then there is another hurdle for women to overcome: dubbed "the glass safe". Marlow has conducted research in conjunction with Prof Sara Carter at the University of Stirling into the financing of female-owned businesses and whether they have the same access to funding as male-owned ones. "We interviewed the high street providers and the bank loan officers were very adamant that they would never discriminate on the basis of gender," says Marlow. "It's not good practice for them to do so - on the basis of their reputation - but also in terms of attracting new business."
And yet, according to the research, women set up their businesses with an average of £36,100 of bank finance, compared with the male average of £318,500. Also, women are far more likely to use their own finances to set up a business than men.
But even here, women set up business with £36,150 of their own money on average, compared to the male average of £317,800.
About half of all self-employed women operate their business part time (less than 30 hours) compared with 13 per cent of men. Over a third of women, compared to 12 per cent of men, operate from home.
"Men are more likely to own high-growth businesses. If a woman goes into self-employment, it may be because she wants more flexibility and wants to be able to combine work with childcare. If she is suddenly faced with the prospect of a growth business it will take more and more time, which defeats the point of going into self-employment in the first place," says Marlow. "There are clear differences between the types of businesses that women own and the types of businesses that men own.
This affects the way they are financed."
Of course, not all women set up a business so they can run it on a part-time basis for some extra cash while they bring up the kids. Walker says: "My reasons for setting up Catalyst Associates were in no way connected to being a woman. I felt strongly that we could offer customers a service and flexibility that far exceeded the industry norm. It is my firm belief that the success in running my own company has been neither because, nor in spite of, being female."
Meanwhile, there are differences between the way men and women do business, simply because men and women are different. For this reason, Bank of Scotland has its own women in business team. Claire Logie is the team's director: "So that they can provide a better service, we have been talking to our staff about what the differences are, because although they are very subtle - differences in style, attitude, approach and communication - they are very important."
Logie says that women are enormously relationship focused and will stay with an organisation that treats them well and that they have a strong relationship with, even if it costs them more. "It's the same when women are running businesses as well. It's not always about just getting the best deal, it's about doing the business the way they choose to do it," she says.
There is also research to suggest that women are more risk averse. "We suspect that this is down to socialisation; girls are brought up to be more cautious and risk averse; boys are encouraged to be more aggressive and competitive," says Marlow. "But having spoken to the bankers, they say that they find that caution quite attractive because it makes them better payers."
But women do struggle to access finance. Part of the problem may lie in the sectors in which women operate. Marlow says: "Frequently you find that women are starting new firms in sectors that are already quite crowded, in what we call lower order services: caring, catering, personal services like hairdressing. There tend to already be quite a lot of firms in those areas because they are quite cheap to set up and you can more or less do them from home. But if you look at it from the bank's point of view they have to look at the risks when someone comes to them with a business plan. So it's more structural factors."
Logie rejects the idea that the banks are more likely to say no to women because of the sectors they choose. "It's about selling yourself and about selling your proposition. If you can do that effectively, working in a particular sector won't stop you," she says.
The fact that women tend to have about a third of the capitalisation that men do has other implications: under capitalisation can lead to under performance.
Marlow says: "If you start off with a very small amount of money there aren't the same opportunities for growth and development. It's almost a vicious circle. You start a new business and fund it yourself, but if you do that you'll probably be running it in constrained circumstances and it will be more difficult to attract new customers and have creditability with suppliers, which in turn hinders growth."
As well as having less monetary capital, Marlow argues that women also have less social capital when they start a new firm, which includes access to business networks. Networking, particularly, can be challenging for women. Kathy Halliday, employment law partner at law firm Cobbetts, says: "Networking has traditionally been a male-dominated activity, with a large number of get-togethers being centred around sport or social drinking."
Women's exclusion from both formal and informal networks means they don't have that access to those professionals that give you advice and information on financial products.
The Bank of Scotland's women in business team conducted its own research on 220 female business owners. The two products that they were overwhelmingly happy with were the overdraft and term loan. "When we asked them about other products, such as factoring, invoice discounting, venture capital, business angels, the knowledge went down dramatically and they were very uncomfortable with using those sorts of finance," says Logie. "They do tend to stick to the ones they are most comfortable with. If they don't have access to this information via those networks they are going to be less confident about business products."
No other area of business finance highlights this better than venture capital (VC). Statistics from the Aurora Women's Network show that only 3 per cent goes to women-owned ventures and Marlow's study didn't even look at VC funding "because women are more or less excluded from that market" and that's because VCs are seeking high-growth firms that will expand rapidly and give them a substantial return; and women don't tend to own that type of business.
"Setting up a business aged 23 and deciding you are going to be rich and it's going to be as big as it can possibly be: that is the traditional mode of business and it is what we are used to seeing in this country," says Logie. "I think it's slightly different for women, they choose to manage it in a different way.
"That's what people mean when they talk about the change that women in business is bringing about - that dilution of traditional business. There is now a lot more variety in how people are choosing to run them, what their reasons are and what they want from them."