MY KITCHEN — Nothing like a Saturday morning read of the papers to generate a good old rant.
This morning I am caught by the Independent’s cover story on women in senior business roles in the UK. Have a read if you want numbers and even if you just want to read quotes from male executives that will make your blood boil.
There lots of good arguments for why there aren’t more women in senior roles in business. You can even try to make them compelling. You can call for new government policy, or new regulations to promote or “positively discriminate” against women. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we spend too much time finding reason why women can’t take senior roles — and not enough time putting them into the jobs.
There is no earthly way that some of the women I have worked with need any support or positive discrimination. They are on average better consultants and managers than most of the men I have worked with. They just need to be hired and promoted.
You can grab a piece of paper and start writing reasons why women aren’t being hired and promoted into senior jobs. But it is irrelevant.
There are many reasons why we should never have created a pension programme for people. There are good reasons why we should never have pursued manned air flight. There are millions of reasons not to get out of bed tomorrow. But we still did and we still will.
We’re a tiny business and we have senior people off on maternity leave. We have people on flexible hours. We’re not making a lot of money. But we strongly feel that we still don’t have enough women in the office. We’re trying to hire more.
If you have ever worked with people you don’t need to ask what it is that women add to business that men can’t. You know. You just have to go sit with a bunch of guys at the pub to know that boys have their limitations.
Let’s stop making excuses and just get more women into senior roles. Business, the economy, the country and society will definitely be better for it.
/df
