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The Glass Ceiling
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Sunday Times
22 October 2000
Women will lose as long as men make the rules
By Simon Howard
Followers of Jobfile will know I have never had much truck with the
idea of the glass ceiling. Propagators of the theory claim that women
are excluded from jobs at the highest level and are unable to
progress beyond middle management.
For my part, I have pooh-poohed this with a "wait and see because it
is all going to change" argument. The line is simple: the majority of
people on the boards of companies are aged between 50 and 60. This
means they started work in the 1950s and 1960s when only 5% of
graduates starting work were female.
But that has been changing since the 1970s. Today 55% of graduates
entering work are female. So on the basis that each level of
management recruits from the next level down - and in each of those
levels women are increasingly represented - it is only a matter of
time before we see more women at the top.
All very well, but I have discovered a wrinkle in this argument.
Nigel Nicholson, professor of organisational behaviour at the London
Business School, has created a theory of evolutionary psychology that
basically says that most businesses are run to satisfy distinctly
masculine drives. He believes that the organisational model is based
on male rather than female characteristics - technical focus, single-
mindedness, competitiveness and a desire for control.
Not only are these very male traits, but women are also not helped by
the fact that many of the men around them feel undervalued.
As he observes: "In nature the male signals his worth by high levels
of achievement. So in business, men are driving themselves to early
graves in pursuit of wealth and reputation, compulsively living lives
that leave no time to enjoy the benefits they create."
This is something that Lesley James, the former director of human
resources at Tesco, might agree with. "Men do behave differently in
the way they pursue their agendas," she says. "They can focus more
easily on their own agenda while women take a broader and more
corporate view." And why is she no longer there? "I got sick of
working an 80-hour week in a very hard environment."
I know which side of the ceiling I would rather be on.
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