A year on from the Davies report, which set out the 25% target, two-thirds of the women polled – from 30 corporate women’s networks representing 10,000 female employees – had seen no improvement in female advancement in their organisations. 80% believe it will take up to 20 years to reach 30% women on the board, and 20% think it will take longer than that. 66.7% believe that self-regulation is not enough, and that quotas may be necessary.

Averil Leimon, co-founder of White Water Group, said: “The women we spoke to don’t feel that change is going fast enough or far enough. Quotas may be a blunt instrument but they may be inevitable.

“However, we don’t believe that compulsion will be enough to create change and reap the benefits of a more diverse management team. Many women want more visible involvement from men, who will support the business case for more women in senior posts. This means mentoring, coaching, encouraging more female role models ,and improving fairness in working practices.”

Women account for less than one in three senior roles. (pic credit: istockphoto.com/sturti)

Women account for less than a third of senior management positions in Europe – and are penalised for putting childcare duties above work responsibilities, according to research from Mercer.

The report Women in Business – Analysis of Gender Representation in Executive/Management Roles Across Europe – says that the ratio of women: men in senior roles across Europe is 29:71. The UK averages 28%.

It says that corporate often forces women to choose between putting work first at all costs, or “deselecting” themselves from the culture that cannot accommodate work-life balance.

Sophie Black, principal in Mercer’s Executive Remuneration team, elaborates on this point: “For a gender comprising over half the global population, women’s representation in senior corporate roles is woeful. The cause is complicated. It’s cultural, social, in some cases it is intentional discrimination but it can also be unconscious – the desire to recruit people like you. This unconscious bias is hard to eradicate. The end result of all these issues is a creation of a ‘pyramid of invisibility’ for women in corporate life.”

She adds: “If the culture of a company is such that those holding senior roles are expected to act in a certain way or place work above family commitments, then women will often turn their backs on the corporate ladder.”

The question is how companies are going to hold onto senior women – as it has been shown in studies that companies with female bosses are more successful. Yet 71% of companies do not have a clear strategy for developing female talent and promoting women to the top roles.

The Mercer survey includes a league table showing the percentage of senior roles filled by women. Eastern Europe takes the lead over Western Europe: Lithuania has 44% and Bulgaria 43% – compared with 33% for Greece and Ireland, Italy 22% and the Netherlands 19%.

Black adds: “Anecdotally during times of recent economic growth, we saw many companies giving specific remits to headhunters for more female executives. This trend has fallen away as the economy has deteriorated which suggests that many companies view it as a luxury for the good times. This is short-sighted.”

Working mothers are happier than stay-at-home mums (pic credit: istockphoto.com)

Working mothers are happier than mums who stay at home, according to a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology. But going back to work after having children comes at a price, with research from the University of New Mexico revealing that mothers earn up to 14% less than their childless female colleagues.

The study Mothers’ Part-Time Employment: Associations With Mother and Family Well-Beingby Cheryl Buehler and Marion O’Brien from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, found that “mothers employed part time had fewer depressive symptoms during the infancy and pre-school years and better self-reported health at most time points than did non-employed mothers”. In other words, a healthy balance of work and family life makes mothers feel happier.

This excellent article from The Conversation, Work Keeps Mums Happy and Children Well-Adjusted, provides a balanced and insightful commentary on how mothers who work are more fulfilled – and counters the old-fashioned arguments that children of working mothers are somehow deprived. Drawing on John Bowlby’s attachment theory, it explains that children enjoy spending quality time with their parents, and feel happy and confident to explore the world and discover themselves as long as there is a ‘secure base’ to return to.

However, the downside of mothers going back to work is that they are likely to earn between 7% and 14% less than their female colleagues who don’t have children. This article in Forbes, Why Working Mothers Make Us Angry, highlights the uncomfortable truth that highly educated, accomplished women are subject to the ‘Motherhood Penalty‘, because often high-flying jobs in major corporations just aren’t compatible with family life. Or, bosses who employ mothers make the assumption that they will be unreliable, unproductive, and forever taking time off to care for a sick child.

So how is it that all the working mothers I know are organised and efficient at home and in the office, work extremely hard, and yet still manage to turn up to assemblies, sports days and performances? I guess it’s a matter of where you place your priorities.

The study of 2000 workers in 20 occupations found that men are twice as likely to take risks, and women are twice as likely to be careful. The findings suggested that risk-taking was a “distinctive feature” of gender, and could help explain the difference in leadership styles between men and women. The more cautious approach taken by women is therefore more effective during recession, said the researchers.

These different approaches to risk stem from the evolution of the species and the need to survive, but in the modern workplace this translates into having a balance of the adventurous and carefree with the wary and prudent – regardless of their gender.  Trickey added: ”Risk taking is necessary and desirable, but we need to reinstate the balance that ensured the survival of our ancestors. Whether this is best done by gender selection manipulation is arguable, but the aim should be to achieve a balance of risk types.”

Apparently it is some of her presentation choices – to deepen her voice and lower her hemlines – that women emulate when they want to be taken more seriously in the workplace. A survey from Business Environment says that 59% of London women have dressed more powerfully – ie with longer skirts and less cleavage on show – to get ahead in their careers. They will also lower their voice and yet wear more make-up

I’ve always dressed on the basis that the more flesh you show, the less you’ll be taken seriously in the workplace, and the more attention you bring to yourself for the wrong reasons. In fact, the survey says that dressing inappropriately is the most common reason among two-thirds of respondents for judging and disparaging a colleague.

However much modern women may emulate Thatcher’s sartorial choices, I doubt very much they will want to copy her management style, which was renowned for its rigidity. For a great view on this, read an article in Management Today, which questions whether women really want to be like Margaret Thatcher. I suspect the answer is no.

The analysis shows that between October and December 2010:

• 31,000 women took sick days citing stress, depression or anxiety, compared to 11,000 men.
• 74% of stress-related absences were made by women, with only 26% of absences taken by men.

This follows the DWP research report Health and wellbeing at  work: a survey of employers that reveals that just 17% of organisations provide stress management support and advice to employees. Plus, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2011 Absence Management Survey showed that stress is the second biggest cause of short-term absences and one of the leading causes of long-term absences.

Diane Buckley, managing director of Legal & General Group Protection, said: “Stress is one of the leading causes of long-term absence so employers should ensure that good quality support is available in the workplace to help women before they reach this point.” She recommends cognitive behavioural therapy as a key tool to helping stressed employees back into the workplace.

The company analysed its data on 117,000 start-up business quotes, and revealed that there is a 12% increase in female-run startups, and women account for 37% of all start-up businesses, up from 33% last year.

Creative and service-driven businesses – including cleaners, beauticians and hairdressers – are are the most popular choices, followed by pet minders, cake makers, market traders, caterers, teachers, accountants and financial advisers and lawyers. Complementary therapy has grown 16% year on year, education consultants by 61% and nursing businesses by 46%.

Jason Stockwood, chief executive of Simply Business, said: “With unemployment at its highest for 23 years, it is encouraging to see that more and more women are embracing the opportunity to set up on their own.”

Working mothers multitask for 40% of their waking hours. (pic credit: istockphoto.com/CareyHope)

I do love it when a study  proves what we already know – that working women are brilliant multitaskers, and do much more multitasking than men – but new research shows just how stress working mothers are as a result of all this juggling.

Working mothers in the US multitask in the home for more than 40% of the time they’re awake: they do 48.3 hours compared to 38.9 hours for men, which the Offer-Schneider study says contributes to gender inequality because women are carrying the burden of housework, childcare, as well as bringing in an income.

The research shows that women engage in tasks that are more onerous: 52.7% of multitasking for working women involved housework, compared with 42.2% of fathers (though I think this number is rather high). And 35.5% of multitasking for women at home involved childcare, compared with 27.9% for fathers.

However, the significant point in this research is that multitasking at home and in public is a more negative experience for working mothers “because mothers’ activities are more susceptible to outside scrutiny”.

Study co-author Barbara Schneider, the John A. Hannah Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University, said: “Mothers’ activities in  are highly visible to other people. Therefore, their ability to fulfill their role as good mothers can be easily judged and criticised when they multitask in these contexts, making it a more stressful and negative experience for them than for fathers, who face less normative pressures and are under less scrutiny when they perform and multitask at home and in public.”

She recommends that fathers “step up” and do a bigger share of housework and childcare. And she recommends that policymakers and employers should create more opportunities for fathers to be involved with their families, such as allowing time off for family/school events, and not bringing work home with them – so that there can be “more egalitarian norms” for parenting roles.

However, the conclusion is that trying to do it all – to be superwoman – just isn’t making working mothers happy.

That’s the finding of a study from Columbia Business School, which aimed to look at the underlying causes of the gender leadership gap rather than attributing it to discrimination during the recruitment and selection process. It carried out an experiment to isolate the effect of gender differences on female leadership, which involved men and women recalling their previous year’s performances, and choosing a group leader for financial reward.

The researchers found that both genders exaggerated their performances: women rated theirs 15% higher than it was, but men consistently rated theirs 30% higher. When both men and women had an incentive to lie, they lied even more the higher the incentive. However, while women lied as frequently as men, they didn’t exaggerate their performance to the same degree. Men’s overconfidence in their abilities led to women being selected for a leadership role a third less often.

So, what can we take away from this? Columbia Business School professor Ernesto Reuben said: “It’s not just a matter of telling men not to lie — because they honestly believe their performance is 30% better than it really is. Similarly, it’s not as if you can simply tell women they should inflate their own sense of overconfidence to be on par with that of men.”

However, understanding and acknowledging this tendency could help prevent firms overlooking women for top roles just because they haven’t bragged about their achievements. Recruiters should consider male overconfidence and ask for evidence or references to back up the exaggerated claims, rather than accepting them as proof of performance. Also, women could benefit from being coached into owning, celebrating and communicating their achievements in a confident – but not overconfident – manner.

Professor Alison Booth, who tested students’ attitudes to risk-taking in all-male, all-female and co-educational environments, found that women were less likely to make risky choices than men – which she concluded was down to culture and belief systems that inhibit women from taking risks. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex environment, women behaved in a similar way to men, and were more likely to take risks. Male behaviour was not affected by the make-up of the group.

Professor Booth said that the findings had implications for gender equality in the workplace. “Recent studies in experimental economics have shown that, on average, women are more risk averse than men. If much of the remuneration in high‐paying jobs consists of bonuses linked to a company’s performance, relatively fewer women will choose high‐paying jobs because of the uncertainty. This is why these findings are important. They show that risk-taking behaviour is not necessarily innate – it can be affected by the environment in which the individual is placed. Given that risk attitudes can be shaped by the environment, changing the educational or training context could help address under-representation of women in certain areas.”