Women Managing for the Millennium. Sally Garratt

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СКАЧАТЬ training role. In spite of her many successes, ‘I was starting to experience problems with a boss who was finding my innovative approach both disconcerting and a threat. He realized that women’s issues was a topical subject that he should address but, although I was the only woman in my team with relevant experience of these, I was never asked to contribute’.

      At the top of organizations, the unwillingness to appoint women to the board is commonplace. The experience of one director who was not promoted to her board despite seven years on the Group Executive Committee is not unusual. Private sector organizations, in particular, are seen as traditionally conservative, with chairmen appointing fellow board members in their own image – same background, same sex, same education, same professional training, same age. This lack of diversity, however, is now becoming subject to scrutiny and criticism, especially following publications such as the Cadbury Committee report which recommends the widespread use of non-executive, or independent, directors on boards. Growing numbers of experienced, professional women are proving valuable additions to boards across a wide range of business activities.

      Yet it is not just the male managers who prove obstructive. Those women who, in the past, felt they could progress within their organizations only by becoming ‘honorary men’ affected other women in two ways. First, as many of them adopted the ‘I reached this position through my own efforts. Why should I help you?’ attitude, they positively impeded their junior colleagues’ progress. Second, this approach deterred many other women from moving forward as it was not seen as an acceptable way of behaving. The role model presented by these power-dressing, aggressive female managers was not perceived as a positive one and other women did not, therefore, feel inclined to apply for more senior jobs.

      I was interested to hear one fifty-year-old executive, who is the only woman at her level in the organization, say that she feels she has little in common with other, much younger, female managers and that there are none anywhere near her age or experience. Because of her position she naturally has more contact with her male peers on a day-to-day basis, but she feels she is missing out by not working with other women. One disadvantage of the recent fashion for ‘down-sizing’ and ‘right-sizing’ is that there are signs of a small, but significant, counter-trend where some women have been forced out of top-level posts and those who remain may well find themselves in a similar situation of becoming isolated and lonely. Other women say that in such cases it is the duty of the older female manager to act as a mentor or coach to others as a way of helping them through the organization, as well as keeping in touch with the issues that affect the younger women – such as, how to communicate their opinions and needs in a positive, assertive manner, while maintaining their womenliness; combining home and work; influencing the corporate culture so that men and women value what they each bring to the workplace.

      Very few companies provide adequate if any childcare arrangements for their employees. This has a considerable effect on working mothers, who wish to pursue their career but who are not prepared to settle for unsatisfactory childcare facilities in order to continue working. Susan Hay, who founded her own workplace nursery consultancy because she could not find suitable childcare for her own children, has ten years’ experience in this field and knows that the position of working women has been hindered because of the lack of investment in childcare by organizations. ‘Access to childcare, as well as the cost and varying quality of it, has been a major influence on the development and expansion of part-time work for women. This often means that women are working below their abilities because the better jobs are full-time jobs. There is also a tendency for higher-level jobs to be in the key cities and this is not always compatible with acceptable childcare provision.’

      The growing importance of childcare issues was underlined in November 1997, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced the establishment over the next five years of 300,000 ‘After School Clubs’, which will offer places to up to one million children.

       Case study – Alison

       Alison, 41, is married with no children. She trained as a nurse and worked as a medical secretary, before moving into the field of management education and training. She was the founding director of a medical charity; set up a management consultancy; founded her own charity, Action on Depression; and is Director of the British Vascular Foundation. She was a former Chairman of City Women’s Network, and has served on the Women’s Advisory Panel of Opportunity 2000 and on the board of Fair Play for Women. She is a trained counsellor; Fellow of the RSA; a member of the National Association of Chief Executives of National Voluntary Organizations; and also sits on the board of The International Alliance (a global organization of senior women’s networks).

      ‘My girls’ public school had few expectations for its pupils and after leaving I became a nurse. I wanted to live in London and to be self-supporting after all the financial sacrifices my parents had made to pay my school fees, but I couldn’t stand the rigid hierarchy at the hospital where I worked and felt totally unstretched intellectually. I realized that I should have read medicine, not nursing, but financially it was not possible to give up work to take the necessary A levels, nor did I have the confidence to make the switch. After qualifying, I became a staff nurse at Guy’s, but at the back of my mind was always the niggling thought – “Is the rest of my life going to be like this?”

      ‘I decided to give myself a year away from hospitals to see what was happening in the outside world and thought again about studying medicine. I have always regretted not doing it. With the misguided idea that becoming a secretary would be a clear route into management, I enrolled for a six-week typing course and invented my own shorthand. I boldly put myself forward as a medical secretary and went to work in a hospital where I was tucked away in a back office with only the occasional consultant for company. This was not at all exciting – there wasn’t even the patient contact that I had so enjoyed as a nurse. So, making yet another mistake, I joined a firm of accountants because I thought it would be fun in the City. It was very jolly there, but my boss fell in love with me and, as I wasn’t interested and three years of accountants was ample, I left to help set up a private medical screening facility. It was the first of its kind and I soon realized that I actually possessed some entrepreneurial talents and obviously enjoyed starting new projects. However, once it was up and running successfully, I thought, “Where do we go from here? All this experience, no clear career path, no way to use the experience, so what should I do next?”

      ‘I was twenty-seven, had spent ten years in London and was bored, footloose and fancy free. I had the urge to go abroad again (as the daughter of a naval officer, I travelled a great deal), so I stuck a pin in a map and hit Hong Kong. I had no job planned, nowhere to live and not much money, but six weeks later I was on a plane. Hong Kong is a sink-or-swim place and there is nothing so motivating as having no money. The most useful thing that happened was being introduced to a residential club for business-women, the Helena May, where a group of us shared experiences, jobs, contacts and so on. I nursed for a short while, but felt even more exploited than I had done in the UK, so was soon looking for something else. Through the Helena May network, I went to a cocktail party and met a businessman who ran training courses and who had been badly let down by one of his tutors – who should have been running a programme in China, but had been taken ill. After talking for a while, he asked if I would like to take the tutor’s place – “Can you be on the 8.30 flight tomorrow morning?” Having agreed, I found myself in what felt like the middle of nowhere with sixty hand-picked Chinese executives who were there to learn about Western management methods. It was exciting, frustrating and I loved it. I developed a great love of China, in spite of developing malnutrition, surviving banquets of three-snake casserole and sea cucumber, and went on to learn Mandarin at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Later, I was headhunted to set up the Asian arm of an American computer company and my boss delegated everything so I ran the whole show.

      ‘Between contracts working in China and return trips to Hong Kong for much needed R&R, I went to a tea party and met my husband. We were married in England while still living in Hong Kong – so don’t ever complain about organizing a big wedding, unless you’ve arranged СКАЧАТЬ