“Girls just need support, encouragement and mentoring to follow through with the sciences.” – Sally Ride
There's a really nice article on BBC News, continuing the story of four women in space. The focus is on Naoko Yamazaki, the second Japanese woman to go into space. Her story embodies what the fight for equality is about for me, because she isn't a woman that 'has it all'. She doesn't do space training and then go home and care for the kids. Nor does she do her exciting job while her husband does his and the nanny takes care of the rest. No, Yamazaki's husband stays at home with their seven year old daughter.
That's a concept that doesn't seem to have caught on yet, especially in a country where the women were referred to as 'birth machines' not so very long ago. Oddly enough, the Japanese are calling her Mum Astronaut.
So many people are focused on why women aren't reaching the tops of their professions - be it IT, finance or politics, and consequently there's a lot of effort on making things look exciting for the school kids, recruitment from universities, mentoring for young professionals, and awards for women on their way up. But none of that addresses the main reason women leave or don't progress up the ladder: family.
I've written about the 10,000 hour theory before, and the The Glass Hammer had an interesting article a few days ago specifically looking at the familial issues surrounding women in investment banking.
I am not a fan of 'outsourcing', as the terminology goes these days. Part of having children is raising them, and I strongly believe that the best way to instill values and behaviour is by exemplifying them whilst spending time with them. Whether that interaction occurs from the mother or the father is up for debate, but the fact remains that it simply isn't a choice right now.
The focus is on maternity policies, childcare opportunities and flexible working arrangements. None of these will ever be good enough. If anything, they encourage frantic running around and the myth that women can have it all. What we need is a change in culture and mindset. We need to believe that children are important, and that mums aren't the answer to everything.
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.” – Charlotte Whitton
March was women's month in many ways, from it being Women's History Month in the U.S. to International Women's Day on March 8th, but now that it's all over, it's nice to see that we're not out of the news just yet. Here's quick round-up of the latest:
- Asian women set to make Westminster breakthrough: In 1892 an Asian first gained the title Member of Parliament, and it was unsurprisingly a man. 118 years later, it looks like Asian women are finally going to make their move.
- Spacewoman power: 4 women in orbit at same time: On Monday, three women - Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki - will be sent into space aboard Nasa's Discovery space shuttle. They will join Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who is already in space on her second mission, making it the first time that four women will be in space at the same time. While it is wonderful news that more and more women are being sent into space, they will still unsurprisingly be outnumbered by the men. Will the day ever come when we have the majority?
- Enterprising Young Brits 2010: Girl Geek Dinners: Sarah Blow founded the Girl Geek Dinners in 2005 because she was tired with the stereotypes and problems that women in technology face, and she wanted a way to network with other women in technology. Five years later, it's expanded massively beyond London to reach 57 locations across 21 countries. Sarah and Girl Geek Dinners have been selected as a finalist in the people's choice award in the Enterprising Young Brits 2010 - so feel free to give her your vote.
- UK's financial firms 'need more female directors': It's nothing we didn't know already and haven't heard before, but a Commons Treasury Committee report (which only had one woman on the committee) has published its findings to remind us once again. Women are poorly represented in the city and there's a huge pay gap.
“The best way to shatter the glass ceiling, she said, is first to shatter the myth that you can have it all.” – Mrs Moneypenny
Monday is International Women's Day 2010. I had expected one of the FT writers, a Mrs Moneypenny, to write about it - because she touches on a range of interesting issues around women in business - but instead she chose to ignore it and focused on something else.
It's an unheard, unsaid, shameful truth: women can't have it all.
It's thankfully not because we are somehow inferior. No, it's because no one can. Superman doesn't exist. Superwoman, less so. No one can have it all. Men have never had it all - it's just that 99.9% of them like to think they do, and like to tell the world it. But the sad truth is that men made the decision to go for the career and to leave their families behind. There is a small but fighting group of stay at home dads, and while they get the occasional mention in some news article, they generally are fighting for parental rights and leave the work/life balance issue alone. Most men, it seems, don't feel the need to have it all.
So why do women? There are countless reports and surveys produced showing the lack of women on FTSE 100 boards, and even more reports (usually produced by our Scandinavian friends) quantifying the benefits of gender balanced boards. No wonder career driven women are so focused on entering that elusive echelon where they can increase profitability by their mere existence.
Unfortunately, the truth has finally emerged. You can go and sit on a board and be that superwoman, but something else has got to give. It doesn't take a genius to realise that it's going to be the family - if you managed to find the time to have one in the first place. Countless networks and organisations work to find ways to enable women to keep their hands and feet firmly in both worlds, but is it time to admit defeat? Perhaps women can't have it all.
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” – Douglas Adams
Last Friday, the Royal Institution made it's director, Susan Greenfield, redundant. The decision itself was far more melodramatic than that statement, from the information garnered by the media. It's said that staff were given thirty minutes notice to attend a meeting in which it was announced by the chief executive, that she was locked out of her grace-and-favour flat immediately, that she was offered a superb redundancy package which she turned down, that she had wrecked the prestigious institution's finances, that an 'old boys' club' culture was really behind it all.
Unsurprisingly, the bit that seems to have taken off is the 'old boys club' claims. Lady Greenfield made a statement saying that she will be presenting a claim in the employment tribunal which will include allegations of sex discrimination.
"I am the only female who has been appointed to this iconic post throughout the 211-year history of the Royal Institution, and I cannot see how this decision can be in the best interests of the organisation or its members."
Lady Greenfield is widely acknowledged to have been a fantastic asset to the Ri: she is clever, accessible and most importantly, can explain science to mere mortals. But science isn't accountancy, and finance always comes first - as the credit crunch should well have taught us all. All charities have to file their accounts with the Charity Commission. The mere fact that their accounts and annual return for 2008 were filed three months late speaks of poor internal governance, and the Trustee's report discusses issues around their finances.
Digging deeper into the return brings up the page with the Staff Costs, drilling specifically down to the employees earning over £60k. It doesn't take a genius to figure out where the Director falls. Earlier pages also show the Director's Office expenses, with another ~£207k to it's name.
The Ri says that they can no longer afford the post of Director, hence it - and she - is being made redundant. But do those numbers add up? Or is it really a matter of personal actions: she spent too much money, they were too narrow-minded to take any more of her supposed drama (the tabloid interested in Greenfield's marital affairs was particularly uncalled for), and so it was inevitable that this would be the parting of their ways.
It's one hell of a way to make a point - fire her, logic would say, don't stop yourselves from being able to have a director altogether. While I'm sure that they could construe a new position that does half the job (with half the salary) with a new title to avoid the issue of filling a redundant post, it's also the type of behaviour that gives the corporate world it's bad name. Following suit seems unwise.
If this all is a personal matter, as Greenfield claims, then the Trustees and Executives will have to move fast to restore their balance. It's a shame to loose Greenfield, but it would be a far greater loss to lose the Ri altogether. In proving the Ri wrong, she may well hammer the final nail in their coffin - and that's without sex discrimination tagged on.
Ironically enough, as I wrote this, I received an email from womenintechnology.co.uk inviting me to their next event, 'Women of Substance: Inspiring Women in STEM', hosted by none other than the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Wonderful timing. I wonder if this will increase or decrease the size of the audience?
“Basically, all my life I’d been told you can’t do that because you’re female. So I guess I just didn’t pay any attention.” – Shannon Lucid
Almost every male-dominated scientific discipline I know has a 'Women in...' group to go along with it. Women in Aerospace was established over 20 years ago, unsurprisingly in the US, to support the American women who were fortunate enough to take advantage of the industry spawned by NASA.
Women in Aerospace Europe was only founded earlier this year, when some enterprising women noticed that while there were some organisations which actually had very good gender ratios - around 50:50 - they still had the issue of low number of women in senior leadership positions.
I'm not sure that this is something that an organisation like this can fix. Their mission and vision are delightfully generic:
- Be a networking platform for women in leading positions in aerospace and other technological areas.
- Foster and promote the interests of women working in aerospace.
- Promote and improve the access of females to technical areas and the space sector.
- Advance aerospace education in schools and universities.
- Advocate the further investment in space projects in the political environment.
- Cooperate for the improvement and stabilization of the position of women in the aerospace profession.
- Be an ambassador for space in society, culture and philosophy.
I don't disagree with any of it, and I believe the first three points are definitely what it's all about. The other four are nice, but I'm not sure how they fit in as part of this network's remit. They obviously are useful in that they form solid things for the network to focus on, and they can use these points as conduits for the women that they engage. But part of me thinks that there should be someone else - a greater body, with men and women - that focus on these things, and act as ambassadors that educate, and also happen to support each other.
I'm often asked where the men's network is, and I usually flippantly reply 'look around you'. But, in truth, what I want is a people network. I want to see us get to a point where all people that are aspiring for progression, that want to get involved in development programmes in schools, that want to speak out about their experiences, have this available to turn to.
It's sort of happening already in some areas, where you have the chartered institutes acting as the umbrella organisation, and sometimes there are committees within that, and that seems to make sense. So that raises the question: when do independent women's networks become redundant?
“Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness.” Ola Joseph
Diversity in investment banks is a contentious issue. I tend to focus my attention on graduate recruitment, because it's the easiest way to see what the demographics of the future workforce will be like.
I have a friend that joined the technology graduate scheme of one large American bank a couple years ago, and was part of an intake that was at least 70% white male. My friend, a white woman, joined the most unexpected team in that firm.
The team was founded by another woman. This woman went on to build her team, and after a couple years, when my friend had joined, this was the breakdown:
| Count | Disability | Ethnicity | Sexuality | Gender |
| 2 | dyslexic | White | straight | women |
| 1 | White | straight | woman | |
| 1 | dyslexic | White | straight | man |
The next incarnation of this team involved the man relocating to New York, and a new graduate coming on board. Yes, we have arrived at an all-women team - in IT!
| Count | Disability | Ethnicity | Sexuality | Gender |
| 2 | dyslexic | White | straight | women |
| 1 | White | straight | woman | |
| 1 | Chinese | straight | woman |
And guess what - the best is yet to come. Because my friend, that 1 white woman, is moving on. Let's introduce her replacement, as well as this year's new graduate.
| Count | Disability | Ethnicity | Sexuality | Gender |
| 2 | dyslexic | White | straight | women |
| 1 | Chinese | straight | woman | |
| 2 | White | gay | men |
There's something fantastical about this team. Shouldn't there be a token straight, white man?
It's easy to understand how it started, because it comes down to the key problem with diversity: everyone wants to hire people like them. This is not out of malice or (reverse) discrimination, it's because we generally feel more comfortable with people that have something in common with us.
Dyslexia's an interesting thing to appear in this mix, because it's a fairly hidden disability - given that it's estimated that 10% of the population is dyslexic, there should be thousands of such people employed by all of these large firms, and yet I'm sure most people aren't aware of their dyslexic colleagues.
And that leaves us with women and gay men. There are many, many variables at work, but given that women and gay men are few and far between on technology grad schemes, it's interesting to watch them gravitate into this specific team. Is it the job? The manager? The team? For once, I'm interested in the flip side: why are the stereotypical straight, white men not ending up here?
“The Problem is Really in the Environment” – Anthony Greenwald
I started a new job a couple months ago and had to undergo diversity training, as is the norm for all new joiners. While the session was fairly typical, the discussion on bias versus prejudice led to our instructor telling us to Google the Harvard Implicit Association Test to see what our individual bias is like. She said that while she had thought that she knew how she was biased, she was surprised by how strong the test showed her responses to be.
Of course, I took a look. I went straight for the Gender - Science IAT demo which tests for a relative link between liberal arts and females and between science and males. Ten minutes later I was told, "Your data suggest a slight association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts." I even got a pretty graph to go with it:
The FAQs tell me a 'slight' effect is one that is noticeable in statistical analysis, but you may not have been aware of it. I'm not sure if this makes it better or worse. There are two reasons why implicit attitudes don't agree with explicit attitudes (and I hope at this point it isn't unreasonable to assume that my explicit attitude is that women are just as likely to be associated with science as men - that is, I believe I have a neutral attitude: neither gender is better nor worse):
- The person is unwilling to admit their implicit attitude, e.g. out of embarrassment.
- The person is unable to admit their implicit attitude, because they are not aware of their implicit negativity.
So I'm either lying, or my subconscious just spoke up.
I took the time to think about it properly a couple days after taking the test, and as horrible as it is to admit, I think it may well be the former. It's not that I think that men are more naturally suited to science, it's that the world we live in grooms them for it and they get the advantages that women don't. The reality is that the adult men I know tend to be more proficient at science and technology than the women, because they have had a lifetime nurturing that ability, while the women have had the opposite. Here's hoping that changes!
“DailyCandy’s subscriber list can be taken as the Holy Grail of e-commerce” – NY Magazine
I was recently introduced to DailyCandy, when a friend forwarded me an email with the subject Lower Eastside Story. It informed us that the Lower East Liquor Bar and Bistro had opened in Canary Wharf, where we happen to work. The review was short, frivolous, mouth-watering and even included a 50% off offer. We were sold in seconds.
I'm one of those people that never knows where to go for food, always finds out about a sale after the clothes that would actually fit me are gone, and loves cultural things but finds that keeping up to date on them takes up too much time. So a newsletter-style website emailing me the tidbits of information I need sounds like a good idea - it's like GOOP, but useful.
(Not that I have anything against GOOP, of course. But when even Gossip Girl is mocking Gwyneth Paltrow's creation, you have to wonder what exactly she thinks she's providing. I'm all for women learning to leverage the power of the internet, but it's all about the product.)
Nevertheless, I am for successful businesswomen, so I went to find out more about DailyCandy's. It was founded by Dany Levy, a former New York magazine editor, with a stellar background of private school and Ivy League education. DailyCandy went from Levy generating all the content herself from her bedroom in 2000 to a $125 million purchase for Comcast in 2008. The staff has grown, as DailyCandy has expanded from New York to a range of cities across the U.S. and even across the ocean to London.
Unfortunately, it seems that even with a woman at the helm, some stereotypes persist. New York magazine published an article about the company in April 2006 with the following quote:
The Website depicts a comely staff of 28 (all three forlorn-looking males hold IT positions).
A quick check shows that not much has changed in over three years. The number of men in the organisation has risen, with them holding finance and administration positions, but they haven't let go of the title of web developer in the process.
Not that it's theirs to let go: it's DailyCandy's to hire. Still, I have to wonder why this happened as it did.
- Perhaps there were only male applicants.
- Perhaps the women that applied weren't good enough.
- Perhaps DailyCandy hired through networks and so the type of woman that is employed to write for such a magazine doesn't tend to have technically minded friends.
- Perhaps the average technical woman doesn't want to work for a website that is generally about the shallower things in life and doesn't even have a girly techy section to show off the latest gadgets.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps we'll never know why, but I fear that it's a mix of the latter points. We live in a society that is, unfortunately, an extension of high school: the girly girls go to Selfridges, the geeky girls go to the Apple Store, and ne'er the twain shall meet. The girly girls will assume that IT is a man's job because they don't have the inclination to make sense of it, and the geeky girls mock the women that can't have a conversation without bringing up clothes or men.
So it all comes back to diversity. After all, if women can't succeed with women at the helm, then we really don't stand a chance with men.
“Not everyone can be Gandhi, but each of us has the power to make sure our own lives count” – Jeff Skoll
Like most early career professionals in the city, I've contemplated whether to do an MBA. My friends and I have a running joke about how the only people that get into Harvard are those that have run off and built a village in Venezuela. Despite having not done that, I decided to go to the Harvard Business School presentation last Thursday, and followed it up with Stanford's Graduate School of Business presentation on Tuesday.
Of course, the first person I met at the latter said that she had been worried that she would be late, because she had forgotten how the tube worked, having been out of the city for the past nine months working on a microfinance project in Honduras. Good for her.
And yes, the first person I met at the Stanford presentation was female. In fact, every person but one was female, because they held a specific women's presentation. Our host, admissions officer Lisa Giannangeli, opened by explaining the reason behind it as nothing but the obvious: look at the world around you, then look at business. Where are the women?
On Tuesday night, they were sitting right there, in a welcoming atmosphere at McKinsey's Piccadilly Circus office. Everyone I met was clever, articulate and widely travelled. I don't have the figures to back it up, but I assume that the reason that there aren't more women in business school is because they don't apply, so if events like this increase the application pool then that in itself is a good enough reason to hold it.
Of course, men aren't excluded. Stanford is holding three events in London this week, and the other two are open to all.
The nice thing was that apart from Lisa's initial statement, there was no mention about women (or the lack thereof) until a potential candidate asked the question during the panel Q&A. It was a standard presentation. The only difference was the audience.
Harvard didn't do that. As far as I'm aware, they only held the one presentation, unsurprisingly at Goldman Sachs’ Fleet Street office. There was a much greater ethnic minority audience than I had expected (proportionally speaking), and many women - at least, enough that I didn't notice a lack or abundance either way.
Which was better?
Unfortunately, only having women at Stanford's presentation meant that they were restricted to finding female alumni in London. That seemed to hamper them slightly, and so the panel consisted of four women and one husband (also a Stanford alum). One of the women was a consultant turned stay at home mother, which is fine in principle, but I'm not sure it provides the right motivation to do an MBA. All of them were originally from the US and moved to the UK either pre- or post-MBA.
It dampened my enthusiasm at the time, because part of what I'm looking for as an international student is a truly global school that has networks that reach right back to my home country. All of the panelists were able to speak enthusiastically about how the network affects their lives day in and day out in London, but the evidence simply wasn't in front of me.
In comparison, Harvard had a panel of six alumni, all of whom were in careers that actively used their MBAs and some were actually British, having lived here since birth. They were joined at the end by another seven or eight current students, who were presumably carrying out internships in London. There were two women on the panel, and that was all I needed to see.
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” – Alan Turing
Another day, another list. Today it's the third Financial News 100 list of the most influencial women in finance. I was pleased to see the names of three women from my current firm, and another three from my former employer. That's good representation, even if the soundbites for all are a bit short. Financial News have stated their criteria for choosing these women up front, but the blurb about them could be taken from LinkedIn for all that they tell us about what each woman has achieved above and beyond the normal course of work. Why are they listed instead of their peers? Or is it perhaps the case that these are not the top 100, but the only 100?
Seeing I can't focus on any of those women as a shining example of why women should be in the workforce, it feels appropriate that the spotlight should be on a man for change.
I'm sure a lot of people didn't know who Alan Turing was a mere week ago, but having studied computer science at university, I was promptly introduced to his name. It must be said that 'The History of Computing' rarely touches on homosexuality, so that part of the story was left unsaid. But the brilliance of Turing, all that he accomplished and contributed was covered in more detail than most of us found necessary. I studied finite state automata, artificial intelligence and cryptanalysis and there he was in all of it.
The Number 10 petition was the first time that I became aware that he was more than the name behind those dreaded Turing machines, universal or otherwise. I never believed that anything would come of it, having seen many petitions come and go, so it was a great surprise when 10pm last Thursday night rolled around. The Twitter traffic alone kept me up for far too long that night, and it was even more pleasing to see Dr Sue Black being corralled by the media for many interviews on Turing, and by proxy, his work at Bletchley.
I focus on women in this blog, because that's what I know and care about, but it's fundamentally necessary to acknowledge and include all people, no matter what the difference in question is for us to move forward. Yes, the actions taken against him were in line with the law at the time. But that doesn't make it right or any better to ignore. Some critics want a broader apology, to each and every individual who suffered in prison or with the effects of chemical castration, but I think the statement was just right as it was.
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better.
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