We like banter here in the Sermelo office and the other day we hit a controversial topic – should there be compulsory quotas for women on company boards in the UK?
After much discussion, we all agreed that rather than focusing on the question of quotas, it’s more important to focus on the question of how companies can nurture female talent through the ranks, up to boardroom level.
This is an issue I am particularly passionate about and I have to say the answer is not simple.
Nevertheless, I’d like to use my five minutes of fame on the Sermelo blog to give my two pence on possible solutions to the challenge of helping women climb the leadership ladder.
Let’s start with some facts. Women in Britain today make up 51% of the population and 45% of the workforce. These days, girls leave school, on average, with better qualifications than boys and there are now more women than men at university. At the same time, however, the ratio for many corporations is 50% women graduates, 30% women managers and 15% women top executives.
Now there are a variety of reasons as to why there is such an obvious drop in female representation up the corporate ladder, but the reality is that it exists, and as such it is the main motive for the current quotas debate.
Some say that this discrepancy of having adequate female representation on boards is because women often put their careers on hold to start a family. This line of thinking, however, is too simple, because recent data shows that one-third of educated women actually don’t want or plan to have kids.
Others say that because female emancipation in the workplace is a relatively recent phenomenon, it’s been harder for them to break through the “old boys” networks and therefore climb the corporate ladder at the same rate and reaping the same rewards as their male counterparts.
Regardless of why this discrepancy is exists, it is crystal clear that there are social and business forces in place, which make the issue of female professional development absolutely critical for companies to address.
The first reason for this is very simple – social and economic changes have meant that women today often have an equal breadwinner status to their male counterparts. This has meant that, similar to their male colleagues, they are as eager to build careers, while not necessarily having to sacrifice the opportunity to have a family.
The second reason is that in an environment where constant change is the modus operandi within industries, companies’ best bet for survival is to build diverse workforces within which the status quo is constantly challenged. Ensuring that women are represented at junior level is not necessarily difficult, but building a pipeline of female senior talent is where it gets tricky.
In my opinion, instituting quotas is not the answer to this challenge because they represent a structural solution, rather than a cultural one. And I think that truly uprooting discrimination of the female minority at senior management and board level should be all about changing behaviours and mindsets first.
Personally, I agree with London Business School’s Professor Isabel Fernandez-Mateo’s opinion, that rather than board quotas, policies to move more women up the corporate ladder need to be put in place as part of the solution (e.g. targets of female candidates for each promotion and hire). Going beyond recruitment and professional development, I also think that companies have to come up with more creative ways to ensure a cultural shift that will guarantee strong female representation at senior level. For example, more practical support for working mothers can be provided or mentoring networks among board members and female senior managers can be encouraged.
Solutions such as these are not as straightforward as quotas, but if implemented correctly and with rigor, can benefit organisations greatly and ensure a culture of acceptance and diversity, rather than one of marginalising minority groups.
Fundamentally though, regardless of whether quotas are the way to go or not, smart companies need to realise that a diverse viewpoint at the top is important to ensure sustainability in an ever-disrupted business world. At a senior level, women represent one minority group that can bring a lot of different thinking and approaches to the table, but they need to be let in and supported to properly join the party.
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