Historically, in the legal profession, you get to a high position because you are a good fee earner and that comes from developing client relationships. A lot of that is out of hours, networking and corporate hospitality, and in the past that has largely been very male-dominated.
We’ve done a lot of work on transparency, so people coming through the business understand what their career path looks like and that it’s not just about fee earning, it is what else you bring to the table.
Katy Allen, chartered financial planner at One Four Nine Group
My industry has always been very male-dominated. I’m a mum and I’ve
two very young kids and to be able to do all the out-of-hours stuff is just not feasible at this phase in my life.
I’m not saying that men aren’t good parents because they obviously are involved, but typically it does fall a lot more on women. So, male counterparts excel and progress quite quickly and you’re doing everything that you can within the short amount of time that you do have, but it feels a lot harder.
When you’re constantly faced with the narrative that it’s really hard, you can start to absorb that and it can feed your internal dialogue.
I’ve been in the industry just shy of 13 years and I have noticed a shift and that has been really good. I am now more rewarded for the things that make me, me. That promotes you to be more authentic.
Maybe when you’re younger and enter a male-dominated workplace and see success looking like a certain thing, you adjust yourself to be bit more like that. You think, ‘That equals success therefore, I have to model that.’ As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that is not what success is to me.
In terms of improving the number of women in more senior positions, it is about making people believe in themselves. Mentoring has a role to play.
Hamera Bano, chief executive at 24hr Healthcare
The glass ceiling is there. We are now seeing visible female leaders but what stands out for
me is that they’ve achieved it despite this barrier being there.
In 20 years of being in business, I’ve seen a very, very slight change. Females will make certain decisions but the ultimate sign-off comes from the managing director and those positions are usually male-dominated.
Change can happen and it can come from ourselves at home. Having a partner who is understanding and being able to balance the
responsibility of looking after the children can take away certain glass ceilings.
I’ve achieved success in my industry because I’ve had a male partner who’s been able to take on certain responsibilities. The government support that opened up childcare helped women to break down certain barriers that existed, but the ceiling remains.
We are still limited to how much we can succeed. Changing the situation has to be a joint effort.
Business has to create the opportunities, education has to put the ambition in and we’ve a role to play educating our own children. It’s letting my son see that his mother is out there, working.
Within my company women can work flexibly to achieve what they’re doing. And they’re doing it because of the challenges I’ve had. It is also about visibility as a woman, so people can see stronger leadership in women going forward.
Fehmeeda Saddique, HR director at BAKO Group
The organisation I’m in is male- dominated. Even though I’m at exec level, which I’ve had
to work hard to get to, I’m the only female at
that level. The board is all male-dominated as well, so I’ve not quite cracked it yet.
I’ve had to work harder than male counterparts and I’ve been very lucky to have had support at home.
There are different challenges for women. We try to put processes in place to help women move up within our organisation. We recently promoted our first female transport assistant manager, which is great.
It is about changing mindsets in industries where there is a very male dominated environment. It is about educating people and emphasising that women have a different perspective which can add value to the business. That’s the bit they don’t see.
There needs to be a lot more partnership between schools and businesses, that should be a key focus. Young girls in schools need to see role models and we need to show them that they can go into industries that have not commonly been open to women.
That is something we started about two years ago at BAKO through work experience with the Education Business Partnership, giving young people the full view of the whole business.
Going into schools and colleges, talking with students and being visible and showing what you can do as a woman. I do think that’s important.
Continued on Page 42 People, and women in particular, need
to see women in higher roles. The saying is ‘you can’t be it if you can’t see it’. We need visible role models
Miranda Barker, chief executive at East Lancaster Chamber of Commerce
We’ve do have a growing wealth of really strong females in family businesses in Lancashire.
The value of having female representation on their board is something that businesses often don’t realise. They think that it is something that they should be doing because there is a quota or because they are being looked at from the outside, rather than realising that businesses with women on their boards make more money.
That’s because women have a wider
perspective of how to do things, a wider way of reasoning how to do things, a wider ability to collaborate. We need to showcase this from a commercial point of view. When it comes to maternity and paternity pay and leave, you have to have the policy in place but then people have to see it being used, so they know that this is now the norm.
We need to make sure that when Lancashire is being seen regionally and nationally in terms of its potential that the women in the county are visible. The Lancashire Business Board and Economic Panel, both of which I sit on, are predominately male. So too are the voices and faces going to Westminster. So we need to make sure we are pushing the strong female characters forward in order for everyone to see them. We have to set a good example.
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WOMEN IN BUSINESS
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