The 101st International Women’s Day was cause for both.
In Britain, a woman will face the prospect of at least 14 more general elections before women equal men in the Commons.
In Qatar, a woman will be six times more likely to go to university than the man next door. Iceland has the greatest equality between men and women, taking into account politics, education and health indicators. The UK comes in at 16th place, down one since 2010. The worst is Yemen, and the most dangerous is Afghanistan.
Our recent workshop, Women in Leadership, has reconfirmed that there are reasons to celebrate and there are also plenty of reasons to despair when it comes to being a woman in IT and in marketing, in the UK.
We heard evidence around behaviours that ranged from completely ignoring women in the board room, to exclusion from corporate decision making, corporate hospitality and worse, blatant and inappropriate practices, all in the name of the ‘boys club’.
Interestingly, the group faced up to the fact that they didn’t often help themselves with their own behaviours. ‘Women keep their head down and do a good job’, a member of the group said, ‘they fail to tell other people what successes they ‘ve achieved, unlike their male counterparts.’ Another member of the group said, in her experience as an HR Director, women tended to undersell themselves quite badly. Our guest speaker, Tanya Castell, pointed out that unconsciously women often don’t deploy the right language. ‘Here’s an example’, she said, “I recently coached a woman about her CV in which she stated that she had worked with XYZ company. She should have used more positive language such as: ‘I’ve advised XYZ company”, which has more impact.
Certainly the discussions around the issues were cathartic and the group listened quite intently to the insights and contributions made by others. Perhaps the best insights were those that moved the discussion to actions that the group could take to start positively affecting the profile of women in IT Marketing. ‘It’s all about networking, coaching and mentoring with and for other women” the group agreed unanimously. They also agreed that they were not only in a position to help positive change happen, but it was unquestionably everyone’s personal responsibility to do so.
The ‘elephant in the room’ was voiced by Adrian Hardy, Director-Owner of Marketingmoves when he asked about the group’s feelings about how maternity leave affects the work place. There was mixed reaction. Some of the group sympathised with the employer viewpoint that maternity leave, while a legal entitlement, can also put a strain on delivering business objectives and may lead to an unconscious bias against women of child bearing age. On the other hand, other members of the group championed the fact that it was a women’s responsibility to bring up the next generation and that was the cost of doing so.
As a matter of interest, Norway is the world’s best place to be a mother, with low risks of maternal mortality and Sweden and Iceland compete for the best places for maternity benefits.
The session ended on a high note, with a call to meet up again to work together on this and other issues.
