Problem,what problem?

Is there really a problem with midlife women achieving powerful positions? After all, we see them on our screens, hear them on our radios and watch them speaking at conferences. ‘They’re everywhere!’ screamed a recent media report. But let’s consider some brutal reality in this excerpt from my book, ‘Revolting Women: why midlife women walk out (and what to do about it’).

Take any sector, any organization, public or private, and senior female professionals will still be in the minority, commonly at a ratio of some 10:1, according to Catalyst, the global equality reporting organisation. More statistics… 17% of social media CEOs and 22% of museum and gallery chairs are women; 15% of sport governing bodies are led by a woman. 14% of US financial institutions are headed up by a woman and 12% in the global energy sector. And as for women of colour, in the UK they are simply missing from the highest levels in many sectors, and for other intersecting characteristics, such as disability, LGBTQI+ identity, class or religion, the data is, simply, missing. Just not collected, let alone published.

Yes, we’ve come far. There have been gender celebrations in the UK with the recent achievement of nearly 40% female representation in the boardroom. But is this really a ‘sea change’ for professional women? Yes and no. Whilst there is representation in the boardroom, less remarked on is the fact that most of the female positions around the executive table belong to Non-Executive directors (NEDs). Behind the statistics lies a plateauing number of full time senior female executives, which has flatlined at around 11% for some 10 years. And what does this have to do with age? Well everything. Indeed, it’s the sole factor that’s common to all senior positions across the world. The average age of someone in a senior position is 56 years, or 45 years for a senior manager.

So how is it that this discrimination has continue? My research exposed the reality that the middle-aged woman is systemically excluded within organisations in three ways:

1.     She is not young

2.     She is not male

3.     She is not always present (she might be working part-time).

That is, our organisations are designed to encourage younger people (think recruitment and training plans) with older women talking about their palpable frustration at the apparent limitations and myths surrounding the older professional women. In my interviews, women at the top of our organisations also discussed the notion of the ‘backslappy boys club’ at the upper levels of leadership, that often felt impenetrable, combined with the ridiculous full-on, full-time demands on any leaders.

I’d go so far as to venture that just as women are reaching the age when they’re coming into their own, realising their confidence, upping their leadership game and asserting their power, their hold on the management rungs becomes more slippery and the prejudice much louder. Perhaps it is just too easy to maintain the status quo through turning a blind eye to the problem, sidelining the issue or creating stories that place the blame for the problem firmly and squarely back in the hands of the individual woman.