Equalities @ EECS – Page 18 – Queen Mary University of London

Female FTSE Board Report 2015

Dr Elena Doldor, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at QMUL’s School of Business and Management is co-author of the Female FTSE Board Report 2015.

Excerpt from executive summary from The Female FTSE Board Report 2015:

This year we have seen significant progress on FTSE 100 boards. All-male boards have totally disappeared with Glencore, the last, appointing a woman to its board. The percentage of women on FTSE 100 boards is 23.5%, almost exactly where we predicted in last year’s report. This puts us on track to hit the 25% target by the end of 2015. The percentage of women in executive directorships on FTSE 100 boards is at an all time high of 8.6% with 24 women holding such roles.

FTSE 100
In the FTSE 100, Diageo and Intercontinental Hotels Group plc tie for first place with 45.45% women on their boards. Forty one companies in the FTSE 100 have now reached the 25% target. An analysis of 12 different sectors highlights both companies who have reached the 25% target and companies who have not, indicating that sector is not a barrier to the appointment of women directors.

FTSE 250
The percentage of women directors on FTSE 250 boards has also risen to 18%. Sixty five FTSE 250 companies have reached the 25% target but 23 still have no women on their boards. There are now 8 females holding Chairmanships of FTSE 250 companies. The percentage of women holding executive directorships has fallen back to 4.6%, the level we had in 2012.

March 2015	FTSE 100	FTSE 250
Female held directorships	263 (23.5%)	365 (18%)
Female executive directorships	24 (8.6%)	25 (4.6%)
Female non-executive directorships	239 (28.5%)	340 (23%)
Companies with female directors	100 (100%)	227 (90.8%)
Companies with at least 25% female directors	41 (41%)	65 (26%)

Strategies to Ensure Success in Meeting the 25% Target
The UK now ranks fifth in Europe and the world in terms of the percentage of women on its top corporate boards. We are on track to make the 25% target this year. Following interviews with senior business leaders, executive search firms and other subject experts, future action needs to focus on the following:

1. Build a sustainable pipeline of executive women.
2. Develop an agile working culture in which real meritocracy is nurtured.
3. Extend greater robustness and transparency in the board appointment process. Look at the suitability of women candidates outside of the corporate sector.
4. Ensure that women make more headway not only as NEDs but as Chairs, Senior Independent Directors and Heads of Nominations Committees. More work is needed on the development of board directors.
5. Many Chairmen champion gender diversity. This needs to be extended to CEOs and senior managers to develop the female pipeline.
6. Champions of change outside of business are also needed, such as the equivalent to the Davies Committee, the Government, media and researchers, to ensure that progress continues.

NYTimes Video: The Necessity of Failure

Nancy Dubuc, chief executive of A&E Networks, speaks to Adam Bryant about lessons learned from important failures—www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000003577203/the-necessity-of-failure.html

NYTimes: Fewer Women Run Top Companies than Men Named John

This 2 March 2015 article in The Upshot section of the New York Times by Justin Wolfers shows just how much women are outnumbered by men in many important decision-making roles in the US.

The article introduces the Glass Ceiling index as a measure of the under-representation of women in decision-making roles. The index is defined as the ratio of the number of men named James (Jim), Robert (Bob), John, or William (Bill) in these roles to the number of women in similar roles.

CEOs of large firms have a glass ceiling index score of 4.0. If Hilary Clinton were to be elected US President, the glass ceiling index for US Presidents would be 15.0. Republicans in the US Senate have an index of 2.17, while Democrats in the US Senate have an index of 0.3. The US Supreme court has an index of 0.33.

Extending the study to academia, and looking at Economics departments at Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, full professors at the economics departments of these institutions have a glass ceiling index of 1.12. The index remains unmoved even when accounting for the international nature of faculty membership by considering also Jaimes, Robertos, Juans, and Willems.

Guardian: Academics Tackling Everyday Sexism in University Life

Source: www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/24/sexism-women-in-university-academics-feminism

Quotes:

“Our universities are highly sexist institutions. Women are outnumbered and relegated to junior posts. More than 60% of academics are men, and about 80% of professors. Official statistics show that more women are on temporary contracts than men.”

“Behind the numbers lie depressing examples of everyday sexism. … A new survey by the Royal Historical Society (RHS) shows that female academics,… are exploited and marginalised by “macho practices and cultures”.”

“not that women are somehow less able to cope when aggressive behaviour is aimed at them… It is rather that aggressive behaviour can heighten women’s feeling that they do not belong, by reinforcing the masculine nature of the environment within which they work and study.”

“When women do engage in combative debate …, we receive no kudos: what is assertive in a man is arrogant in a woman. … many academic men can’t deal with female equals.”

“Increasingly, universities fail to advertise prized permanent academic jobs, simply filling the post with their favoured candidate – invariably a man. … lazy stereotyping means men are assumed to be “brighter” than women; assertive polemic is taken as evidence of intelligence.”

“As one woman complained, “I have been asked if I was married, while my colleagues have been asked what they think”. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked by male academics have asked me if I have children. My husband, also a university lecturer, can’t recall ever being asked this.”

“… the RHS survey found that many women “get stuck mid-career”, often overburdened with administrative tasks.”

“Most men questioned by the RHS regard their university’s gender equality policies as “good”, but most women consider them “poor”.”

WISE@QMUL: Prof. Gina Rippon on Neurotrash, Neurosexism, and Neuronews

Prof. Gina Rippon (Aston University) will deliver a lecture entitled “Neurotrash, Neurosexism, Neuronews – their role in understanding gender differences” to take place 5pm-6pm on Wednesday, 25 February 2015, in the Fogg Lecture Theatre, free and open to all (RSVP: http://goo.gl/f5D6eG).

What is the difference between male and female brains?

Do we contribute to “neurotrash” by asking the wrong questions in the wrong way?

There is a long history of debate about biological sex differences and their part in determining gender roles, with the “biology is destiny” argument being used to legitimize imbalances in these roles. This tradition is continuing, with new brain imaging techniques being hailed as sources of evidence of the “essential” differences between men and women.

But there is good research—neuronews—where brain imaging can make positive contributions to the saga by informing the real story. Are there really any differences in male and female brains, how fixed are these differences, can we “better” or “change” our brains?

This talk aims to offer ways of rooting out the neurotrash, stamping out the neurosexism and making way for neuronews.

Guardian: Female academics face sexist bias in student evaluations

Source: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/feb/13/female-academics-huge-sexist-bias-students

Quotes:

“The strength of this unconscious bias is quite astonishing – even for a relatively objective measure such as promptness, students rated a “female” professor 3.55 out of 5 and a “male” professor 4.35, despite the fact that they handed work back at the same time.”

“The implications are serious. In the competitive world of academia, student evaluations are often used as a tool in the process of hiring and promotion. That the evaluations may be biased against female professors is particularly problematic in light of existing gender imbalance, particularly at the highest echelons of academia.”

“… statistics obtained in 2013 by Times Higher Education revealed that only about one in five UK professors are female, with the percentage of female professors at some universities as low as 8 or 9%.”

“Set alongside the unconscious bias of academic recruiters themselves, as well as the difficulty of juggling parenthood with the demands of research, the apparent sexism in student evaluations provides yet another hurdle for women in academia.”

Schmidt’s Data Visualisations of Gendered Language in Teacher Evaluations

Source: benschmidt.org/profGender

NYTimes: Women Doing Office Housework

In a NYTimes article (6 Feb 2015), Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant write on women doing “office housework”.

Quotes from the article:

“Women help more but benefit less from it. … When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. … When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is “busy”; a woman is “selfish.””
:
“In a study led by the New York University psychologist Madeline Heilman, participants evaluated the performance of a male or female employee who did or did not stay late to help colleagues prepare for an important meeting. For staying late and helping, a man was rated 14 percent more favorably than a woman. When both declined, a woman was rated 12 percent lower than a man. Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn’t help.”
:
“Men can help solve this problem by speaking up. In our previous article, we observed that men have a habit of dominating meetings and interrupting women. Instead of quieting down, men can use their voices to draw attention to women’s contributions. Men can also step up by doing their share of support work and mentoring.”

Full article at www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/sheryl-sandberg-and-adam-grant-on-women-doing-office-housework.html

NYTimes: Speaking While Female (Why Women Stay Quiet At Work)

Source: www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/speaking-while-female.html

Quotes:

“When a woman speaks in a professional setting, she walks a tightrope. Either she’s barely heard or she’s judged as too aggressive. When a man says virtually the same thing, heads nod in appreciation for his fine idea. As a result, women often decide that saying less is more.”

“Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence. When female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings.”

“When male employees contributed ideas that brought in new revenue, they got significantly higher performance evaluations. But female employees who spoke up with equally valuable ideas did not improve their managers’ perception of their performance. Also, the more the men spoke up, the more helpful their managers believed them to be. But when women spoke up more, there was no increase in their perceived helpfulness.”

“when women challenged the old system and suggested a new one, team leaders viewed them as less loyal and were less likely to act on their suggestions. Even when all team members were informed that one member possessed unique information that would benefit the group, suggestions from women with inside knowledge were discounted.”

“The long-term solution to the double bind of speaking while female is to increase the number of women in leadership roles. (As we noted in our previous article, research shows that when it comes to leadership skills, although men are more confident, women are more competent.) As more women enter the upper echelons of organizations, people become more accustomed to women’s contributing and leading.”