Treating the disease of macho boardrooms
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http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/26/treating-disease-macho-boardrooms Version 0 of 1. The doubling in the number of women on FTSE 100 boards since 2011 (Nils Pratley, Power sharing, 25 March) represents a great step forward in achieving gender equality in the workplace. However, there is still much work to be done. Equality will come through nurturing talented women in the earlier stages of their career; boards must work on counteracting the loss of females in the executive pipeline and invest in female staff at chair and executive level. Equality won’t come by forcing companies to put women into executive and non-executive roles – this comes across as tokenism. The progress Lord Davies’s report shows (FTSE 100 near to target of 25% female boardrooms, 25 March) must not be put in jeopardy through artificial mechanisms. Diversity is not only a key component of good corporate governance but also of successful business. Every board needs the right balance of skills, experience, independence and knowledge. The key is to be brave and ambitious. If firms aim high and appoint those most able to add value to the company, business success will follow.Sue O’BrienChief executive, Norman Broadbent • Making a little progress on getting more women into senior positions is laudable, but much more needs to be done – particularly because enacting gender equality is far from the only issue at stake here. Looking at the evidence, you’re faced with the conclusion that organisations with more women in higher roles consistently outperform their more male-dominated counterparts – and the difference between good and bad leadership is about a 50% return over five years. On top of that, the changing nature of many industries and businesses does not favour the traditional macho, pyramid structure of corporate control because company boundaries are becoming far more fluid. Take Apple: there are some 180,000 app developers who earn their living – and in many cases make Apple money in the process – through iOS, but who are not employed by the company and are not going to be told what to do. This makes company leaders more akin to orchestrators than sovereigns, implicating a more collaborative approach to leadership. And that applies not just to the very top but throughout the organisation: leadership needs to be spread widely, not contained, in order to maintain company performance over the long run. That’s what’s better for business, and the UK economy. So let’s have more women in leadership positions: it’s fairer, and they seem to be better at it. But let’s also work on changing the macho culture of leadership in the west, since that will make the lasting difference. Treating the disease, not the symptom.Colin PriceChairman, Co Company • If we are to recruit more women to the most powerful executive jobs wouldn’t it be a good idea to first ensure that enough women are being recruited into roles that may one day lead them there? On the same day as the good news about this very small number of female executives was reported, Young Women’s Trust was launching its report highlighting how hundreds of thousands of women spend a lifetime in insecure, poorly paid jobs after a period not in education, employment or training (neet). Many more young women than young men are neet, and they are being written off at 18 because they left school without the right qualifications or ended up training for jobs that don’t exist. They need a second chance because we need their talents, and not just in the boardroom.Dr Carole EastonChief executive, Young Women’s Trust • Although I accept that the list was the order of highest percentage women in parliament, surely the title of Jane Dudman’s article (The UK has a lot to learn about gender equality, Society, 25 March) demanded that Andorra, with 50% female MPs, would be the highest ranked?Philip GreenBrentwood, Essex |