Management is no longer a male preserve. Assertive and highly qualified women are taking over at the top says Simon Howard
Being a boss used to be easy. You just sat behind a big desk, smoked cigars all day and said things like ‘take a letter Miss Jones’. But times change. Now the desk’s a laptop, cigars are unhealthy and you do all your own typing.
Oh, and Miss Jones is probably the boss.
Five years ago I made the mistake of suggesting we should be less preoccupied with the glass ceiling but think more about a glass escalator to describe how more women were on their way to the top. For some reason the feminist lobby took exception to this and I was variously vilified as being a misogynist fearing for his own position, or someone who underestimated what a tough time women had breaking into management roles (not guilty on either charge).
The idea of the escalator is simple enough: the majority of people (men) on the boards of companies are between 50 and 60 years old.
That means they started work in the 1950s and 1960s when (to take just one indicator) only 5% of the graduates starting work were women. But that has been changing since the 1970s up to today where more than 60% of graduates entering work are women.
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’s only a matter of time before we see more women at the top. Which is why I disagree with the campaigning group Women Directors on UK Boards, but not because I disagree one iota with what they are campaigning for. I disagree with treating women as if they are some form of underprivileged minority.
In fact, if there is one underprivileged minority that should be campaigned for, it has to be the young British male who, at nearly every stage of development, is now outshone by women (criminality being the only area where he still comes out a top performer).
Just last week a report from Henley Management Centre showed that among under-35s in the workplace, women outstrip men in terms of determination and commitment to succeed. As Michael Hulme, the project director, put it: “Man’s traditional territory and preserves have been taken away from him and he is not showing the ability to adapt.”
In other words, it’s all very well for 300,000 years of evolution to have equipped man as the hunter-gatherer, but in an age of service industries and a growing focus on customer service, it’s the soft communication skills that count and there’s no great demand for hitting galloping zebras with primitive spears.
What’s more, the psychologists are seeing the same trends. “Men under 30 look wet, come across badly and have lost the more macho male characteristics of previous generations,” comments the occupational psychologist Robert McHenry, chairman of Oxford Psychologists’ Press.
“However, women under 30 make themselves sound much more aggressive and assertive, suggesting they have more in common with their fathers than their mothers,” says McHenry. “We suspect this represents a longer term trend - it is a real social phenomenon where young women feel they are liberated from traditional stereotypes.
“It also means they are more honest in appraising their own capabilities, perhaps because in their upbringing there has been more emphasis on the need to succeed.”
The trend could also be linked to men’s disappearing from the workforce.
In 1993, 13% of the male working population was unemployed while roughly the same number were inactive, in other words not working or seeking work. Today, only 5% of men are unemployed but 16% are inactive.
More worryingly, while only 6% of those with degrees are inactive, that figure rises to 30% for those with no qualifications.
Like it or not, the trends are going in only one direction. Women are gaining more qualifications than men, their skills are more appropriate for the workforce of the future and, anyway, with in vitro fertilisation and sperm banks, man’s fundamental role has all but disappeared. So it’s not shrinking Violets we should be worrying about, more the declining Davids and fading Philips.
n Simon Howard is a founder of Work Communications and writes the Jobfile column for The Sunday Times.
Being a boss used to be easy. You just sat behind a big desk, smoked cigars all day and said things like ‘take a letter Miss Jones’. But times change. Now the desk’s a laptop, cigars are unhealthy and you do all your own typing.
Oh, and Miss Jones is probably the boss.
Five years ago I made the mistake of suggesting we should be less preoccupied with the glass ceiling but think more about a glass escalator to describe how more women were on their way to the top. For some reason the feminist lobby took exception to this and I was variously vilified as being a misogynist fearing for his own position, or someone who underestimated what a tough time women had breaking into management roles (not guilty on either charge).
The idea of the escalator is simple enough: the majority of people (men) on the boards of companies are between 50 and 60 years old.
That means they started work in the 1950s and 1960s when (to take just one indicator) only 5% of the graduates starting work were women. But that has been changing since the 1970s up to today where more than 60% of graduates entering work are women.
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’s only a matter of time before we see more women at the top. Which is why I disagree with the campaigning group Women Directors on UK Boards, but not because I disagree one iota with what they are campaigning for. I disagree with treating women as if they are some form of underprivileged minority.
In fact, if there is one underprivileged minority that should be campaigned for, it has to be the young British male who, at nearly every stage of development, is now outshone by women (criminality being the only area where he still comes out a top performer).
Just last week a report from Henley Management Centre showed that among under-35s in the workplace, women outstrip men in terms of determination and commitment to succeed. As Michael Hulme, the project director, put it: “Man’s traditional territory and preserves have been taken away from him and he is not showing the ability to adapt.”
In other words, it’s all very well for 300,000 years of evolution to have equipped man as the hunter-gatherer, but in an age of service industries and a growing focus on customer service, it’s the soft communication skills that count and there’s no great demand for hitting galloping zebras with primitive spears.
What’s more, the psychologists are seeing the same trends. “Men under 30 look wet, come across badly and have lost the more macho male characteristics of previous generations,” comments the occupational psychologist Robert McHenry, chairman of Oxford Psychologists’ Press.
“However, women under 30 make themselves sound much more aggressive and assertive, suggesting they have more in common with their fathers than their mothers,” says McHenry. “We suspect this represents a longer term trend - it is a real social phenomenon where young women feel they are liberated from traditional stereotypes.
“It also means they are more honest in appraising their own capabilities, perhaps because in their upbringing there has been more emphasis on the need to succeed.”
The trend could also be linked to men’s disappearing from the workforce.
In 1993, 13% of the male working population was unemployed while roughly the same number were inactive, in other words not working or seeking work. Today, only 5% of men are unemployed but 16% are inactive.
More worryingly, while only 6% of those with degrees are inactive, that figure rises to 30% for those with no qualifications.
Like it or not, the trends are going in only one direction. Women are gaining more qualifications than men, their skills are more appropriate for the workforce of the future and, anyway, with in vitro fertilisation and sperm banks, man’s fundamental role has all but disappeared. So it’s not shrinking Violets we should be worrying about, more the declining Davids and fading Philips.
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