T
TALKING HEADS
What women (and men) want
e’ve tried every thing to
i m p rove o u r g e n d e r
representation and pay gap,
and nothing has worked,”
says the stressed asset manager on the
phone. “We don’t know what to do.” She
talks through the ‘everything’ (although
you may be able to guess).
Her company set a 2020 target for
senior women and missed it, appointed
a diversity and inclusion manager and
announced it in the annual report,
created a ‘women’s group’, extended
parental leave and brought in external
support for the transition to parenting
(“but only the women take it up”).
They also provided coaching and
mentoring for some women, introduced
a flex policy that a few junior women
are using, and invited some inspiring
speakers into the office. Their numbers
did not move. This has now become an
urgent issue as they’ve committed to
investing in companies that have positive
senior gender balance.
None of this is unusual. Two other
businesses recently confided that
they had to scrub their 2020 targets off
their websites and hope they’d gone
unnoticed. A team leader noted that if
they’d only looked at their pipeline they
would have known the targets were
impossible to achieve.
I question the asset manager about
her company’s working practices
and she describes a high-pressure,
long-hours, always-on culture, where
work and home lives intrude on each
“W
Christine Armstrong
What if your ‘women
problem’ isn’t about
women and isn’t the
real problem?
“Framing this as
‘a women’s issue’
assumes men are
happy with the
status quo”
other constantly. Little has been done
to understand how people want to work.
This is short-sighted because,
when you dig into what both men
and women really think, you’ll find the
difference between how they want to
work is minimal. Many male employees
are desperate to work more efficiently
but fear saying so will damage their
prospects. People who value their
relationships, hobbies, caring roles,
mental wellbeing or free time want to
do a good job and then stop.
YouGov data reveals that 51%
of workers in the UK report feeling
exhaustion or burnout in their current
jobs. Yet The Economist reports that the
average British worker is productive for
just 2.5 hours a day. These numbers
represent hundreds of thousands of
tired and frustrated people who feel they
cannot be honest about their desire to
work differently.
Instead, the issue shows up in the
women who leave their jobs, especially
after having children. Most simply accept
that working culture is the way it is. They
(rather than the men) tend to leave
because it is more socially acceptable
for women to step back from their
professional job.
Framing this as ‘a women’s issue’
assumes men are happy with the status
quo. But many feel that their household
depends on them working this way and
that there is no alternative. They admit to
resenting colleagues, for example from
dual-income households, who have a
better work-life balance.
A new dad in a large consultancy
sums up the issue perfectly: “My wife
works at a bank. My long days make it
more unlikely that she will stay in her role.
For women to do better and be more
senior, men have to work differently too.”
This isn’t a women’s problem, it’s an
hours problem. It impacts men, women,
productivity, retention and the ability of
businesses to thrive. If you don’t believe
me, start asking your team when no one
else is listening.
Christine Armstrong is author of The
Mother of All Jobs: how to have children
and a career and stay sane(ish).
58 // Future Talent