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Mixing and mingling
I went to a Women's Business Council dinner last week at the BT Tower. Amazing views, great food and... yes, I'm showing off. I can't help it, but, the conversation was actually quite good as well. We finished with a couple of good ideas - or at least they seemed good by the end of dinner.
Before I share those gems, let me name drop a bit more... My table was chaired by the inspirational Helene Reardon-Bond, inspirational because she's supposed to be a civil servant but acts like an entrepreneur. The other guests included powerful delegates from such famous establishments as GSK, Deloitte, Friends Life, White & Case and of course, BT.
A glass of wine and a poignant video
Sitting at the top of the BT Tower with a chilled glass of Chablis is always going to facilitate a pretty lively and honest debate. Having Deloitte share its brilliantly powerful (maybe a bit too much for our polite British audience?) Respect & Inclusion video also helped...
We talked about the usual... then we got on to cougars
What a tragedy it is that we don't make more of all the female talent at our fingertips. What are the real barriers? What's more to blame - childcare, men or culturally embedded machismo?
I know, I know, I'm preaching to the converted but it's still fun. I made one point which fell on slightly stony ground... One of the "problems" is that intelligent ambitious women tend to marry similar men who are typically 3 or 4 years older. When it comes to career discussions, the men are already 3 or 4 years ahead. All things being equal it will often make more sense for him to carry on with his career rather than her. Encouraging more cougars might be just what society needs!
Shaking things up even further
As for the other idea, well it goes like this. Law firms are obsessed with measuring how many female partners they have. 20% is OK - 30% is aspirational. The problem is that the widely held view of how a partner in a big law firm should behave is all about being a go-getting businessman and a tough-as-nails negotiator.
The best employers have long realised that to really shift culture you need some of your leading men to hold up their hands as dads. There is another way to play the debate though. And this is when I started getting excited. Law firms might be dominated by male partners but equally the secretarial pool is dominated by women. It's a pretty good job being a legal secretary.
Why shouldn't more men do it? If you really want to fix your culture then have a target for the number of male secretaries you have to sit alongside your gender partnership targets. Now that would be real progress (and quite good fun for the first men who manage to break in!?).
Ben Black
