This is the text of a speech I delivered today as part of Warwick University’s International Women’s Week. The event was also live blogged on the Student Journals site – here.
Hello, and many thanks to the organisers for inviting me to speak at this event. I hope you have a really successful International Women’s Week.
Okay, let’s have a look at some statistics.
I’ll start with Westminster.
According to the most recent figures from Fawcett, men now outnumber women 4 to 1 in Westminster. In fact only 22% of MPs are women, 22% of peers are women, and 17% (20 out of 119) of government ministers are women.
In local politics, while 31% of elected councillors are women, only 13% of local authority leaders are women.
As far as the media goes, there are only 2 female editors of national newspapers in this country and, according to a recent piece of research carried out for the Guardian, 78% of newspaper articles are written by men; 72% of BBC Question Time contributors are men, and 84% of reporters and guests on Radio 4’s Today programme are men.
Women make up a majority of full-time teachers, but only just over a third of secondary school heads are women.
Only 15% of high court judges are women, and there’s only one female supreme high court judge.
Only 22% of senior managers are women. And while women are estimated to be responsible for about 70% of household purchasing power, while they make up 46% of the economically active workforce and over half of all university graduates, their average representation in the business world stands at 10.2%. Only 14.2% of directors on FTSE 100 boards are women.
And that’s it for the statistics. But I do think it’s important to hear them because it’s only when we examine the numbers like that that we get a really clear picture of how things stand.
And how do they stand?
Well, there are only two logical conclusions that can be drawn from such staggering differences between men’s and women’s representation on the highest rungs of just about every career ladder out there. Either women are just really really crap at their chosen careers, or there’s something else going on that’s preventing them from getting to the top.
And my experience tells me that women are not really really crap.
But don’t just take my word for it. Did you know for instance that companies with women on their boards have been found to outperform their rivals with a 42% higher return in sales (oops, statistics again, sorry), a 66% higher return in invested capital, and a 53% higher return on equity?
Women are good for business. Women are good for employers.
Sadly though it doesn’t work the other way. Because clearly neither business nor employers are particularly good for women.
So what is it exactly that’s standing in our way?
Which brings us to glass ceilings and sticky floors, the invisible barriers that both prevent women from rising to the top of their professions, and in a large number of cases keep them from even beginning any kind of ascent away from the low paid low status jobs where their employment is disproportionately concentrated.
Invisible barriers such as systemic or institutional sexism. Covert sexism, that means that while employers are not directly discriminating against women, because that would be unlawful, what they do have are practices that make women’s advancement more difficult.
They might for instance insist on holding residential away days or training events without making any provision for childcare. Or they might do a lot of their key networking and planning on the golf course or in lap dancing clubs and other sex encounter establishments.
There might be a long hours culture, where employees are expected to stay late no matter what their domestic commitments in order to get the job done, night after night after night, because work-life balance is a foreign country, and in our capitalist money-beats-all culture we’re all supposed to act as though we don’t have children, or home lives, or interests outside of the organisations we’ve committed to working for.
Many, too many, businesses are still headed by those who place more merit in the old boy networks and the old school tie than they do people’s ability to actually do the work. And while not many business tycoons are as honest as Sir Alan Sugar was when he admitted that no one would want to employ a pregnant woman, it’s becoming increasingly more evident that plenty of other business heads secretly agree with him.
Women are still being held back because workplaces are not women friendly: there aren’t enough workplace nurseries, and the cost of alternative childcare can be prohibitive. There’s a reluctance to bring in family-friendly working policies, such as flexible working or condensed hours, and there’s still a lot of indirect discrimination going on in the way employers recruit, hire, promote and retain their employees.
So that’s the glass ceiling.
But I think things go even deeper than that.
Because I think part of the reason women’s representation at the very highest levels of business, and politics, and the media, is so paltry, begins before women even make it into the workplace.
Which brings us to the patriarchy. The rule of men.
Patriarchy. The way society, and that includes the early socialisation of our children and the gender stereotyping that attempts to dictate the different paths our boys and girls should follow; that includes our education system and the labour market, has been designed and shaped to fit men’s needs. Men made the rules, and the rules they made, the systems they set up, help them hold on to power.
That’s what’s holding us back.
And every time we challenge that power, every time women make progress in so-called ‘men’s spheres’, we’re met with a backlash.
It’s one step forward, and two steps back. What better illustration of this is there than the fact that despite us being over 40 years away from the equal pay act we still don’t have equal pay, and that despite more and more women joining the workforce over the past few decades, women’s unemployment now stands at a record 25 year high.
Twice as many women lost their jobs in the final quarter of 2011 as men. 1.12 million women are now out of work.
But what can we do to tackle all this? What can we do to ensure our daughters and our granddaughters are not restricted by the same barriers?
Well, obviously as a trade unionist I’d like to encourage all of you at the very first opportunity you get when you commence your careers to join whichever trade union services your workplace. Unions brought us many of the gains we’re now struggling to maintain: holiday pay; sickness pay; maternity leave and pay, the list goes on.
But I also want us, women, to think about doing things differently.
Just as an example, where women have succeeded in getting to the top in numbers is the voluntary sector, where 48% of chief execs are now women. I think you’ll find in a lot of cases those chief execs are running by women for women organisations, organisations set up by women, run by women, helping women.
And I want us to think about ways of working, ways of creating success, that do not simply replicate patriarchal, hierarchical power structures.
I want us to do things differently, to be more imaginative. Because if the last century or so has taught us anything it’s that the system as it is now isn’t working. It’s not working for women, and it’s not working for the working class.
And it’s time for a change.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
I attended, and Cath – you were great!
Hi Cath, dragged out of my usual lurkerdom by this one as it is a very interesting post. I saw you raise the question, fact or fiction? on Twitter the other day, and my first reaction was “well it’s a bit more complicated than that.” And having read your (very good) speech, I think you’ve proved the point.
I don’t like the phrase glass ceiing, because I think it creates a false impression of the problem, it makes people think of a simple barrier of discrimination, whereby women reach a certain point in the career ladder and suddenly bump their heads on the glass ceiling and can go no further. As your post acknowledges, that is only one (I think quite small, you may disagree) aspect of the problem. So it’s quite easy for people to answer the question ‘fact or fiction?’ with “fiction. Next” as your Twitter correspondent put it.
Personally I think there are two overwhelming issues.The first is this:
“Women are still being held back because workplaces are not women friendly: there aren’t enough workplace nurseries, and the cost of alternative childcare can be prohibitive. There’s a reluctance to bring in family-friendly working policies, such as flexible working or condensed hours, and there’s still a lot of indirect discrimination going on in the way employers recruit, hire, promote and retain their employees.”
There’s an unspoken assumption underpinning this, which is that raising kids, being the primary carer when a child is sick or at weekends and all the rest is a woman’s role. Now we all know in practice this is usually the case, but I don’t think either of us believes it needs to be like that or even that it is the ideal. I think to challenge the different gender-role outcomes we need to challenge the different gender-role inputs. (EIther that or smash capitalism, which would be nice of course, but seems unlikely before a week next Friday or so.)
That leads me on to this:
“The way society, and that includes the early socialisation of our children and the gender stereotyping that attempts to dictate the different paths our boys and girls should follow; that includes our education system and the labour market, has been designed and shaped to fit men’s needs”
I don’t disagree with that. But it seems to me that a lot of attention has been paid in schools to modernising the education of girls, preparing girls for the workplace and professional realms – the success rates in schools, universities etc show that. I honestly believe that as a society, we are now pretty much comfortable with the idea of female bosses, doctors, CEOs, engineers, whatever. But we are simultaneously holding on to a stubborn insistence that raising kids and looking after a family is women’s work – that “family-friendly” and “woman-friendly” are synonymous (you even do it yourself above.) In brief, short of a major economic revolution, we won’t have equal numbers of women at the very top of every realm and profession until we have equal numbers of men taking years off (and weekends & evenings off) to look after the family.
Much of the challenge of this will be to challenge male attitudes and patriarchal beliefs. But challenging women’s attitudes and beliefs is every bit as important. Women must be prepared to relinquish their traditional role as primary parent, secondary earner. That’s a big battle that I don’t think your analysis addresses, because that mindset is every bit as central to women’s sense of self as the partriarchal breadwinner role is to men. And many women like it. They would rather be good mothers than high earners. .
I’ll add that I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. If a *person* freely decides that the most fulfilling and useful thing s/he could do with a lifetime is to look after a family and home, then good luck to him/her – although I acknowledge that the best thing for society is to have equal representation (particularly in politics and powerful roles).
Now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to have typed all through Spider-Man and one child is now jumping on another child’s head. The patriarchy will have to wait.
Brava, Cath 🙂 Thank you.
Much of the challenge of this will be to challenge male attitudes and patriarchal beliefs. But challenging women’s attitudes and beliefs is every bit as important. Women must be prepared to relinquish their traditional role as primary parent, secondary earner. – AllyF
This presupposes a hetero-style *family* situation, doesn’t it? What of all the families which are comprised of lesbians and their children and sisters/mothers/grandmothers all raising children whithin their existing family units and are ALL, by virtue of the patriarchy, “secondary earner[s]” as far as actual income goes?
Also, the patriarchy waits for no woman. As I’m sure you know.
SargassoSea
This presupposes a hetero-style *family* situation, doesn’t it? What of all the families which are comprised of lesbians and their children and sisters/mothers/grandmothers all raising children whithin their existing family units and are ALL, by virtue of the patriarchy, “secondary earner[s]” as far as actual income goes?
Sure, apologies for the, ahem, heteronormativism.
Although since we’re talking statistical trends here, lesbian couples only ever make a small percentage of couples so are unlikely to make *that* much difference to the overall statistics. Also, you seem to be assuming that women are less likely to progress in careers and earn a good income, irrespective of motherhood. I don’t think that’s true, statistically. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think statistically women who have never had children now have almost identical prospects of earning and promotion as men (for whom parenthood makes no difference), and (again) statistically lesbians earn significantly more than heterosexual women.
There is real discrimination against women in the workplace, and most of it relates in some way to motherhood – the Alan Sugar syndrome etc. There are many ways in which society is organised to disadvantage women economically, but most of them again relate to motherhood in some way.
If we are serious about solving these problems, I think we should be serious about diagnosing them correctly.
Much of the challenge of this will be to challenge male attitudes and patriarchal beliefs. But challenging women’s attitudes and beliefs is every bit as important. Women must be prepared to relinquish their traditional role as primary parent, secondary earner.
They’re already doing that though. 20% of women are choosing not to have children at all. Is it really true though that women – outside the pages of the Daily Mail – are stopping men from caring for children? Because at my work the people pleading childcare as the reason they need to leave early/work flexibly (and in some cases basically skive) all seem to be men. It seems to be the women who are in the office at all hours.
That doesn’t necessarily mean of course that the majority of women have the ‘reach the top of the shitheap at all costs’ mentality that you probably need to get to the top, or what passes for it. To be at ‘the top’ usually means sacrificing any kind of a life outside work of any kind. Never mind having it all, I’m having none of it. I’ve (currrently) got a job which suits me nicely and a social life which suits me nicely and I’d like that to continue as long as it can. I earn more or less the average wage, and that’s fine. I’d just like more people to be able to join me in the middle.
Thanks for the comments everyone, and Jane – it was lovely to finally meet you!
There was an interesting question towards the end of the debate that I have to admit flummoxed me slightly, about whether men should be made to take time off work to stay at home and care for their children to balance things out. I’m afraid I waffled a bit on that one, because I’m not sure anyone should be forced to be a stay at home parent.
But the students who asked the question approached me afterwards, and we talked about the Swedish system, where parental leave is generous and can be shared between both parents. I think that’s a really good model, and it seems to work well for the Swedes.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think statistically women who have never had children now have almost identical prospects of earning and promotion as men (for whom parenthood makes no difference), and (again) statistically lesbians earn significantly more than heterosexual women.
Well I’ve searched and I can find no evidence of the first. There is some evidence of the second but apparently it only applies to women in couples.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5224002.stm
Make of that what you will
Hi polly
“Is it really true though that women – outside the pages of the Daily Mail – are stopping men from caring for children? Because at my work the people pleading childcare as the reason they need to leave early/work flexibly (and in some cases basically skive) all seem to be men. It seems to be the women who are in the office at all hours.”
Ha. Guessing you work in either public sector or voluntary sector? Surrounded by Guardian reading men 😉
I think the sad truth is that there are more Mail-readers than anyone else.
That doesn’t necessarily mean of course that the majority of women have the ‘reach the top of the shitheap at all costs’ mentality that you probably need to get to the top, or what passes for it. To be at ‘the top’ usually means sacrificing any kind of a life outside work of any kind. Never mind having it all, I’m having none of it. I’ve (currrently) got a job which suits me nicely and a social life which suits me nicely and I’d like that to continue as long as it can. I earn more or less the average wage, and that’s fine. I’d just like more people to be able to join me in the middle.
Couldn’t agree more. Good on you.
I quite agree on both counts Cath. I think the Scandinavians get as close as anyone to sorting this stuff. They ain’t half bloody smug about it though!
And glad you didn’t go along with the mandatory child-caring plan. Not the best idea I’ve heard on all sorts of grounds.
Great speech Cath, well done!
It’s funny you mentioned golf days. A few years ago, I was in the upper management of our branch (equal second highest paid). There was a ‘golf day’ for ‘management’ which included a bunch of dudes lower on the rung than I was. I didn’t even get an invite to this golf day, I found out the day before, when I was committed elsewhere.
Apparently, one has to have a penis to play golf. Who knew?
The bottom line is, even when a woman does make it into upper management, she is frequently excluded from things for no reason at all, other than she being female.
I’m not sure you can prove statistically that lesbian couples make more that hetero ones.
I do know in the US tax code, that lesbians pay more taxes than het couples, and more for all the heteronormative ‘specials” out there. But I must admit, I do get paid more than the average het woman, because I chose more demanding work, I did put in more hours, and I didn’t waste time on men at all (a big time and emotion drain for het women). If we want to beat the patriarchy, if we really want to change decades of these statistics for the betterment of women, well we’ll really have to question the structure of the hetero family itself, the theft of women’s labor by men in the home. The risk women face getting pregnant and having kids in the first place. We’ll have to look at women’s unpaid labor in service to, well men. It starts in the home, and business and politics are just extensions of this system of women’s labor theft.
If we want to beat the patriarchy, if we really want to change decades of these statistics for the betterment of women, well we’ll really have to question the structure of the hetero family itself, the theft of women’s labor by men in the home. The risk women face getting pregnant and having kids in the first place. We’ll have to look at women’s unpaid labor in service to, well men. It starts in the home, and business and politics are just extensions of this system of women’s labor theft.
I’d probably phrase it rather differently, but I basically agree with you on that Shelia.
I think the political./ moral difficulty is in the clash between what is best for / wanted by the individual and what might be best for society as a whole. I agee that society would be a better place with an equal number of women and men in all positions of influence and power, but that involves telling people like Polly (above) that she’s letting down the sisterhood and society by sacrificing income and promotion for her own choices and quality of life. And it involves saying the same thing to mothers who choose to have kids and/ or raise their kids themselves for a few years rather than rush back into full time work. I don’t much fancy that conversation. Do you?
Fantastic speech and it covers a lot of issues that face women throughout their lifetime.
I would add that studies have shown that very young children will depict ‘mummy’ as the caregiver and ‘daddy’ as the worker, even if this isn’t the case at home, or even if it is the opposite! So by the time a child can draw these stereotypes prevail.
It takes robust legislation, such as the generous parental leave in Sweden, to keep women in the work place. Women, you have so clearly demonstrated, are beneficial to the workplace. Perhaps women only organisations is on of the key ways to smash Patriarchial influence.
I also believe that the Labour Party’s decision to keep rigidly to AWS lists is of great benefit politically. Those statistics in Westminster would look dismal if Labour didn’t do this.
Ally
I agree this is a biggie. I know so many awesome competent women, and yet when we all sit down and talk about this stuff not one of us actually wants to be the one to put themselves forward for ‘advancement’.
I think it’s that thing isn’t it, where the people who would make the best politicians and so on are precisely the people who won’t stand, because they’re not interested in power and money and influence and having to do all the grubby stuff you have to do to get to the top.
That’s why the system needs changing, so you don’t have to sell your soul to hold public office or whatever.
maggie – Thanks, and I completely agree about all women short-lists.
Well obviously Sheila the research on lesbian vs heterosexual salaries in question is based on a sample which may not be representative. But I think it’s an intriguing finding nonetheless. There are basically two possible explanations that leap out at me – one is that heterosexual women are more likely to assume that they can depend economically on men, so they don’t bother to earn as much, the second is that women in heterosexual relationships are actually discouraged from earning more by partners. Both only speculation of course. And the third (which I don’t know if the study controlled for) is that the women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to be mothers.
Oh I’m not only letting down the sisterhood Ally, I’m actively seeking to destroy society if you listen to some people (and I’m looking at you John Sentamu and Catholics too numerous to mention). I don’t mean I’d sacrifice any promotion, I’ve actively kicked arses to get to the level I am (but thereby hangs a tale too long for here, let’s just say it involved hiring an employment lawyer). But the very ‘top’? Even in my job going up a grade would probably involve overnight stays in the arse end of nowhere, even more trips up and down to London than I do presently (not so bad from Manchester admittedly). I’m just idle and like to be able to sit in the pub of an evening. And a bit of a commie who favours income redistribution anyway. I’ve also had a degree of financial luck of course in that I couldn’t possible afford to buy my house if I was starting from scratch now. So maybe I’d feel different if that was the case.
polly:
“There are basically two possible explanations that leap out at me – one is that heterosexual women are more likely to assume that they can depend economically on men, so they don’t bother to earn as much, the second is that women in heterosexual relationships are actually discouraged from earning more by partners. Both only speculation of course. And the third (which I don’t know if the study controlled for) is that the women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to be mothers.”
I’d put my money on the third one accounting for most of it. With the added factor that those lesbians who are parents are more likely to have adopted, thereby avoiding the maternity leave / breastfeeding aspects.
Another intriguing possibility is that if an employer believes / knows a woman is lesbian, she is less likely to be discriminated against on the basis that she is perceived to be less likely to get pregnant.
**
“I’m just idle and like to be able to sit in the pub of an evening. And a bit of a commie who favours income redistribution anyway.
Which is entirely to your credit of course!
Hey Polly,
I think we just don’t have much data on lesbian income vs. het women’s income. We have very little data on massive numbers of lesbians to begin with… you know, blind studies, statistically valid, funded by big bucks funneled into the hetero study machine. Someone said upthread a bit that lesbians would have an advantage in the work place because het women would be assumed to be mothers, or liable to get pregnant, or unable to work long hours. I’d say most lesbians I know have had a devil of a time in a lot of work places. I figured out soon enough that it was about production, bringing in lots of business that a hetero boss couldn’t deny and could get in my way.
Now, things might be different. I know of virtually no lesbians around my age who have children at all. Het women do know they can fall back on men for extra income, and sometimes I find it hard to know where het women’s income comes from. Often they are simply getting male subsidies, but not earning their own way. Still, we need studies of lesbian community, and the 500,000 lesbians that live in our large urban area. However, we do have to be careful, because advertisers haven’t a clue we exist, or don’t know how to sell to us. Thus, we have more freedom that het women who are really stuck within media manipulation, excess consumption… etc. I do know there is almost no empiracle anything that documents just what careers lesbians exceed at, and what our actual work place advantages are. I do know I’m a whole lot tougher than most het women out there, because I have had to work very hard. And het women actually believe that men are on their side, when I know I am at war with them. Big difference in how this looks. We need the studies…. we need the data, and we need to see what the real differences between het women and lesbians actually are.
, AllyF and his ilk can throw their weight auornd because if the fear they know has been ingrained into women through other men’s violence. All the verbal abuse is backed up by rapes and violence and memories of the same even if it isn’t them doing it themselves, (mind you I have my suspicions about the guy calling for fourteen year old girls to be prostitutes).It’s good you don’t feel victimised over at CiF Cath, but a lot of women do. I certainly do. That doesn’t make me a weak person who can’t stand up to the haters, I do go there every now and then to say my piece the point is that what they are doing is an abuse of power. I used to comment on the Guardian Talkboards until I got run of by the misogynists (including the moderators who lied about how many times I’d been given a warning in order to boot me off). Life is just too short to accept that kind of level of abuse. There’s enough of it in real life without subjecting yourself to it on the internet.We’re not on a level playing field. Men coming over here and being abusive about feminists and feminism and denying the existence of male violence against women are not in the same place as women getting pissed off at the same thing and working to challenge it. Actually the word that came into my head last night when I was thinking about the abuse over the weekend here and at CiF was evil . That’ll probably send everybody into a fit of the vapours using a word as strong as that. But it certainly fits some of the things I’ve read here and now that long list of vile abuse that’s been directed at you. Certainly if someone said those things to you over the phone or in the street they’d probably be done for harassment or breach of the peace. On the Guardian though they just get their comment deleted and they are allowed to post again.I think the way to stop that kind of hate at the Guardian is to ban the people dishing out the abuse. Saying that the only way to deal with it is to accept it and just try and outnumber them is a mistake. We don’t say the only way to deal with criminals in our society is to outnumber those committing crimes. We challenge their behaviour and deal with it. I’m not putting myself in a position where vicious misogynists can take the opportunity to vent their hatred at me, I don’t see why I should. It’s the misoynist’s behaviour that needs to be dealt with.