Sex and Power
2008
Contents
Progress: a snail’s pace 5
留學生dissertation網Sex and Power 2008 Index: Women in selected ‘top jobs’ over the last five years1 7
A squandering of talent 11
Aspiration gives way to frustration 15
Not just a women’s issue 17
Women’s representation in Parliament: the international perspective44 20
Change brings wider benefits 21
Notes 24
Contact us 29
 
Five years on from the first Sex and Power report, the Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes its first survey on women in positions of power and influence. Part of the Commission’s Working Better project, the Sex and Power report reveals:

Women hold just 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships and only 19.3 per cent of the positions in Parliament.

This year, there are fewer women holding top posts in 12 of the 25 categories for which figures are available. In another five categories, the number of women remains unchanged since 2007’s index. Women’s representation has increased in just eight areas.

The report traditionally estimates the number of years it will take for women to achieve equality in key areas at the present rate of progress. This year’s report indicates it will now take 15 years longer (55 years in total) for women to achieve equal status at senior levels in the judiciary, and women directors in FTSE 100 companies could be waiting eight years longer (73 years in total).

If women were to achieve equal representation among Britain’s 31,000 top positions of power, the Commission estimates over 5,600 ‘missing’ women would rise through the ranks to positions of real influence.

A snail’s progress...
A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, just slightly longer than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament

200 years
for women to be equally represented in Parliament

At the current rate of progress, it will take...

Another 27 years to achieve equality in Civil Service top management.

Another 55 years (up from 40 years) to achieve an equal number of senior women in the judiciary.

Another 73 years (up from 65 years) to achieve an equal number of female directors of FTSE 100 companies.

Around 200 years – another 40 elections – to achieve an equal number of women in Parliament.

 Progress: a snail’s pace

The annual index of women in positions of authority and influence in Britain is in its fifth year. Yet the trend that is emerging is one of reversal or stalled progress, with only a few significant increases.

This year, in 12 of the 25 categories for which figures are available, there are fewer women holding top posts: Westminster MPs, Cabinet members, Members of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, editors of national newspapers, people in public appointments, senior police officers and judges, health service chief executives, local authority chief executives, trade union general secretaries and heads of professional bodies. Although most of the decreases are small, and in some cases attributable to one or two women leaving their posts, they are disappointing. In another five categories, the number of women remains unchanged since 2007's index: UK Members of the European Parliament, top media bosses, directors of major museums and galleries, chairs of national arts companies and holders of senior ranks in the armed forces.#p#分頁標題#e#

Women’s representation has increased in just eight areas. There are more female members of the House of Lords, FTSE 100 company directors, chief executives of national sports bodies and voluntary organisations, local authority council leaders, principals of further education colleges, vice-chancellors of universities and top managers in the civil service. But in six of these eight categories, the proportion of women doing these top jobs has increased by less than one percentage point –which, while welcome, is a tiny change.

Looking back over the full five years Sex and Power has been published, the picture is equally worrying. In six categories there are fewer women than there were in 2003’s index. In 13 of the categories, the increase has totalled less than five percentage points.

In recent years, Sex and Power has also projected forward, suggesting the number of years it will take – on current rates of change – for women to achieve equality in key areas. Worryingly, this year's report indicates that the wait for equality for women in the judiciary has crept up by 15 years, and women in FTSE 100 companies will be waiting in the wings a further eight years.

To say that things are changing for women at the top at a snail’s pace seems about right. We all know snails aren’t very speedy –with the record holder among them clocking in at just two minutes to cover 13 inches (32.5cm). Yet a snail could crawl nine times round theM25 in the 55 years it will take women to achieve equality in the judiciary, from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again in the 73 years it will take for equal numbers of women to reach the top of FTSE 100 companies, and the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, only slightly longer than it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament.

Sex and Power 2008 Index: Women in selected ‘top jobs’ over the last five years1

 %women
 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007/8
Politics                                                                    Women’s
average
representation 26.6%
Members of Parliament2 18.1 18.1 19.7 19.5 19.3

The Cabinet3 23.8 27.3 27.3 34.8 26.1
Members of the House of Lords4 16.5 17.7 18.4 18.9 19.7

Members of the Scottish Parliament5 39.5 39.5 39.5 38.8 34.1

Members of the National Assembly forWales6 50.0 50.0 50.0 51.7 46.7

Local authority council leaders7 Figures not available 16.6 16.2 13.8 14.3#p#分頁標題#e#

UK Members of the European Parliament8 24.1 24.4 24.4 25.6 25.6

Sex and Power Index continued
 %women
 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007/8
Business                                                                   Women’s
average
representation 12.5%
Directors in FTSE 100 companies (executive and non-executive)9 8.6 9.7 10.5 10.4 11.0

Small businesses with women the majority of directors10 12.3 14.4 12 14 Figures not available
Media and culture                                                     Women’s
Average
representation 17.6%
Chief executives of media companies in the FTSE 350 and the Director General of the BBC11 7.4 4.3 9.5 10.5 10.5
Editors of national newspapers (including Glasgow Herald and Western Mail)12 9.1 9.1 13.0 17.4 13.6
Directors of major museums and art galleries13 21.1 21.1 21.7 17.4 17.4

Sex and Power Index continued
 %women
 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007/8
Chairs of national arts companies14 27.3 27.3 33.3 33.3 33.3
Chief executives of national sports bodies15 14.3 6.3 6.7 6.7 13.3
Public and voluntary sectors                                  Women’s
average
representation
23.9%
Public appointments16 35.7 35.9 35.0 35.5 34.4
Local authority chief executives17 13.1 12.4 17.5 20.6 19.5
Senior ranks in the armed forces18 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.4 0.4
Senior police officers19 7.5 8.3 9.8 12.2 11.9
Senior judiciary (high court judge and above)20 6.8 8.3 8.8 9.8 9.6
Civil service top management21 22.9 24.4 25.5 26.3 26.6
Chief executives of voluntary organisations22 45.2 45.4 45.2 46.0 46.4
Head teachers in secondary schools23 30.1 31.8 32.6 34.1 figures
not
available

Sex and Power Index continued#p#分頁標題#e#

 %women
 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007/8
Further Education college principals24 25.8 28.0 27.5 30.7 31.4
University vicechancellors25 12.4 15.0 11.1 13.2 14.4
Health service chief executives26 28.6 27.7 28.1 37.9 36.9
Trade union general secretaries27 18.3 16.9 22.4 23.0 20.7
Heads of professional bodies28 16.7 25.0 33.3 33.3 25.0

Note: The statistics in this index have been selected to represent positions considered to have power or influence in Britain. As far as possible these statistics relate to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, with the obvious exceptions of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. For each statistic included, the percentage of women has either been taken directly from the source or calculated from the actual numbers of women and men. A summary index has also been calculated for each of the four main areas: politics, business, media and culture, public and voluntary sectors. The summary shows women’s representation in each area, calculated as a simple average of the most recent percentage figures for each indicator within the area.

A squandering of talent

So, five years on from the first Sex and Power report, does it matter if women still aren’t in top posts? If it does, then why? And what will help accelerate the pace of change?

It matters because it means Britain is failing to get talented women into these positions – and losing out on what they would contribute. Girls now out-perform boys at many levels of secondary education, and nearly three out of five recent first degree graduates arewomen.29 In 2008, 14.3million women are in the workforce alongside 16.9millionmen,30 and we are moving to a position where women could eventually make up more than half the work force.

In short, women no longer work for ‘pin money’. They are essential to our country’s economic success and in many families share the responsibility for bringing in enough money to make ends meet.

Against this back drop, we might expect to find women taking on more responsibility and rising through the ranks. So what is happening? In some workplaces discrimination still occurs and stereotypes hold women back. In other cases, young women are pointed towards traditionally female occupations at the expense of opening up a variety of opportunities. But a fair portion of the blame must also be attributed to our rigid, inflexible approach to work.
73 years
for gender equality in FTSE 100 companies

A snail’s progress...
A snail could get from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again in the time it would take for equal numbers of women to reach the top of FTSE 100 companies

Missing women

If women hope to shatter the glass ceiling and
achieve equal representation we would need to#p#分頁標題#e#
find over 5,600 women ‘missing’ from more than
31,000 top positions of power in Britain today.

These include:
2,921 missing from among 18,781 public appointments
436 missing from among the 1,119 directorships in FTSE 100 companies
225 missing from among the 745 members of the House of Lords
214 missing from among the 916 Civil Service top managers
198 missing from among the 646 Members of Parliament
160 missing from among the 448 council leaders in local government
92 missing from among the 243 senior police officers
80 missing from among the 198 senior judges

Note: Missing women equal half the total number of posts minus the number of posts held by women.

Workplaces, political systems and other parts of society – forged in an era of ‘stay at home mums’ and ‘breadwinner dads’ – have failed to keep pace with the reality of modern women’s and men’s lives. For women at every level of work, this failure leads to a squandering of talent, the most glaring example of which is the lack of women in positions of power.

Before the arrival of children, 85 per cent of working women are full-time. That falls to just 34 per cent of working mothers with preschool children.31 A 2004 survey of part-time workers showed that just over half had had previous jobs in which they used higher qualifications or skills or had more management/supervisory responsibility.32

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying al women have to work outside the home. For some, being full-time mothers for part or all of the time their children are under or of school age is a genuine choice.

But for too many, moving to part time work or leaving the labour market altogether is the result of limited choices. Often, women experience a draining combination of out dated working practices and a long hours culture alongside the absence of appropriate high quality affordable childcare or social care. Similar situations arise when a family member’s age or disability requires more time and energy to ensure they are receiving appropriate care.
 
The final straw can be the expectation that primary responsibility for the well-being of other family members and the running of the household rests with one person – mum. It all becomes too much and the solution for many women is to take a less challenging role or leave employment altogether.
 

Aspiration gives way to frustration

Ask young women today what they want, and one thing becomes clear. They are not short on aspiration. In a 2004 Equal Opportunities Commission survey of year 10 pupils, 86 per cent of boys and 88 per cent of girls said that choosing a career with long term prospects was very important to them.33 A 2006 survey found that over 90 per cent of young people surveyed, both boys and girls, wanted to balance career and family life in the future.34

Yet women wanting careers and a family are too often sidelined. Though many employers increasingly embrace the benefits of flexible working, others offer time off for raising a family and flexibility linked to childcare and caring grudgingly, as concessions that are a burden to business and those who seek them as not committed to the company.#p#分頁標題#e#

Given women’s experience, it is not surprising that fathers –who increasingly want to spend more time with their children than was typical 40 or even 20 years ago – are reluctant to take paternity or longer parental leave or to seek flexibility, because of the career penalty or career death that may result. This means that, whatever a couple want to do, greater responsibility ends up being left to mothers, who in turn experience more of a penalty at work.

With a reluctance to embrace flexibility – despite the fact that in the hands of the most innovative employers this has been shown to support modern ‘24/7’ business – employers are relying more and more on long hours working. Even though men want to spend time with their children, they often end up working longer hours after they have a child. This perpetuates a model of work that is almost impossible for women to see as allowing them to combine a fulltime job with family life – and comes at a real cost for fathers.

Ethnic minority women

The glass ceiling is low for most and lower for some:
There are only:

15 ethnic minority MPs, including two women.35
28 ethnic minority peers, including eight women.36
1 ethnic minority AM, who is male, and
1 ethnic minority MSP, also male.37
46 directorships in FTSE 100 companies held by individuals with non-European ethnic backgrounds, including eight women.38
3 ethnic minority High Court judges, including one woman.39

Not just a women’s issue

The one thing the newly-created Equality and Human Rights Commission would like to make clear – the first year it publishes Sex and Power, produced previously by the Equal Opportunities Commission – is that this is not just a ‘women’s issue’. The Commission believes that while the absence of women from these powerful positions is important in itself, it is also an example of a wider failure. We have to ask ourselves in what other ways are the old-fashioned, inflexible ways we’re working preventing us from tapping into talent?

How we can work better is the subject of a current investigation by the Commission. The fact is, the world of work – and the range of skills we’ll need to tap into to power our economy – is changing and it’s time for employers to catch up. It is estimated that:
• between 2009 and 2014women will fill five out of 10 of the increase in new jobs in the UK40
• by 2020 two out of five people in the work force will be aged 45 and over41
• between 2001 and 2005 ethnic minorities accounted for over four-fifths of the growth in the working-age population of England42
• between 2001 and 2008 the employment rate for disabled people of working age increased from47 per cent to 51 per cent.43
 This has significant implications for The way Britain works, but our workplaces and the way people make it to the top posts in the index have not caught up with this reality. Our out dated model makes assumptions about whether people can or cannot do particular jobs, based on assumptions surrounding demographic characteristics such as gender, age, disability, ethnicity, religion and belief and sexual orientation. Some groups are especially disadvantaged by this stereotyping, such as women of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and African-#p#分頁標題#e#
Caribbean origin.

And to be frank, our public policies sometimes make assumptions about who does the caring and who should pay the ‘price’. For example, there has been a dramatic change in leave for new mothers in recent years and the Commission welcomes that. But the exclusive focus on increasing maternity leave without more leave for fathers in their own right, or the right to parental leave that gives parents real choice about who does the caring, may well have had an unfortunate unintended consequence of entrenching the view that only mothers look after children. It has also, in some cases, made women an easy target for more unscrupulous employers who steer clear of hiring women of childbearing age.

This is not about filling quotas or positive discrimination – appointing people just because of the group they belong to. The Commission wants to see people appointed to top jobs on merit. But merit and talent are not the exclusive preserve of one section of the population or another. Instead, we are failing to adapt the way we work to the realities of people’s lives and ignoring the talent that exists within the population.

By contrast, genuine equality of opportunity looks beyond the stereotype and asks what someone is good at. It also removes unnecessary barriers to participation, for example, through changes to working practices such as reasonable adjustments for disabled people and flexible working to enable everyone to combine their paid work with life outside.

Alongside this, good childcare and social care policies and services are essential if both women and men are to have a genuine choice about the extent to which they can be parents or carers as well as paid workers.

Women’s representation in Parliament: the international perspective44

The UK currently ranks 70th and is outperformed by Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of women’s representation.

• UK: 70th, 19.3%
• Canada: 59th, 21.3%
• USA: 83rd, 16.8%
• Argentina: 5th, 40.0%
• Rwanda: 1st, 48.8%
• Sweden: 2nd, 47.0%
• Russian Federation: 97th, 14.0%
• Afghanistan: 29th, 27.7%
• China: 59th, 21.3%
• Iraq: 35th, 25.5%
 

Change brings wider benefits

Changing the way work is organised would not only enable women to continue in their chosen career after having children, but also fulfil the aspirations of:
• fathers to be active parents
• disabled people to have careers
• workers to combine education and work to gain new skills, and
• older workers to remain in work of their choice longer.

Government policy and business practice are gradually acknowledging the positive impact of modern, innovative, flexible working arrangements, both on business performance and on the ability of individuals and families to fit their work and the rest of their lives together. But British business is often stubbornly traditional and the pace of change is slow. And the laws of unintended consequences have meant public policy has not always hastened the social revolution in our workplaces.#p#分頁標題#e#

The danger is that we simply overlook or waste talent from our economic, cultural and political life. Instead, Britain’s employers and politicians need to make a determined effort to ‘work better’. We have to make sure that:
• our political institutions and workplaces reflect the reality of the modern workforce – whether workers are parents, disabled people, younger or older – by looking at ways to challenge the inflexible, long hours culture of far too many workplaces and putting in place public policies that give men and women real choices.

In turn, we at the Equality and Human Rights Commission will listen to real people, using innovative techniques and new technology to drive a 21st century consultation that tells us what people really want and what will make a difference for them. For example, we are engaging parents via a joint campaign, ‘The Home Front’, with Mums net and Dad. info. We will listen to experts, and look at what we can learn from other places around the world. We will do all we can to encourage employers and politicians and to provide practical advice and guidance on how to achieve these changes. And – finally –we will map out our vision for the future with the publication of a major report in the New Year, looking at how we can ‘work better’.

Britain cannot as an economy afford to go on asking people to fit their families around the demands of ever-more intense ‘24/7’ global competition, and marginalising or rejecting workers who fail to fit into traditional and inflexible working arrangements.

Only when we get this right will we see women as well as men making it into the positions of real power and influence. And we want that to happen at more than a snail’s pace.
 

A snail’s progress...
A snail could crawl nine times round theM25 in the 55 years it will take women to achieve equality in the judiciary

55 years
for women to achieve equality in the judiciary

Notes

1 Indicator values for 2003–06 repeated from Equal Opportunities Commission (2007) Sex and Power: who runs Britain? 2007, except for amendments to entries for small businesses and senior police officers. See notes 10 and 19 for details.
2 UK Parliament (2008) Members of Parliament by gender: numbers, updated 25 July 2008.
3 UK Parliament (2008)Her Majesty’s Government, updated 11March 2008.
4 UK Parliament (2008) Breakdown of Lords by party strength and type of peerage, updated 2 June 2008.
5 Scottish Parliament (2008) Female MSPs: Session 3, updated 10 January 2008.
6 National Assembly for Wales website (2008)Member profiles, accessed 10 June 2008.
7 Keystroke Knowledge Ltd; COSLA website, accessed 16 April 2008.
8 European Parliament website (2008) Your MEPs by country and political group, accessed 10 June 2008.
9 Sealy, R., Singh, V. and Vinnicombe, S. (2007) The female FTSE report 2007.#p#分頁標題#e#
10 IFF Research Ltd (2008) The annual survey of small businesses’ opinions 2006/07 (ASB 2006/07), BERR URN 07/389. These statistics relate to businesses with employees and show the percentages of businesses either led by a woman or having a management team made up mostly of women. The 2005 entry has been amended from 18 per cent to 12 per cent for consistency with earlier and later surveys. The 18 per cent referred to majority female ownership of SMEs as opposed to female leadership (owners, partners and directors).
11 Websites of media companies in the FTSE 350 and the BBC, accessed April 2008.
12 Websites of national newspapers, accessed April 2008.
13 Websites of British Library, museums and galleries sponsored by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, accessed April 2008.
14 Websites of the English National Opera, Royal National Theatre, Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company, South Bank Company, Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Rambert Dance, accessed April 2008.
15 Websites of national sports bodies, accessed April 2008.
16 Cabinet Office (2007) Public bodies 2007.
17 Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government; COSLA website, accessed 16 April 2008.
18 Defence Analytical Services Agency (2008) UK regular forces rank structure at 1 January 2008.
19 Bullock, S. and Gunning, N. (2007) Police service strength England and Wales, 31March 2007 (second edition), Home Office Statistical Bulletin 13/07. Scottish
Police Forces websites, accessed 29 July 2008. Earlier data for senior police officers in Scotland have for consistency been replaced with data published on The Scottish Government website, accessed 27 June 2008.
20 Judiciary of England and Wales (2008) Statistics –women judges in post as at 1 April 2008.
21 Civil Service website (2008) Monitoring diversity, accessed 8 April 2008.
22 Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, full members at 24 April 2008.
23 DCSF (2007) School work force in England (including pupil: teacher ratios and pupil: adult ratios) January 2007 (revised), additional information added November 2007;Welsh Assembly Government (2007) Schools in Wales: general statistics 2007; Scottish Executive (2007) Teachers in Scotland, 2006, Edn/G5/2007/2.
24 Association of Colleges; Association of Scotland’s Colleges website, Colleges’ contact information, accessed 15 April 2008.
25 Universities UK website, list of university heads, accessed 7 April 2008.
26 Websites of Special and Strategic Health Authorities in England, NHS Boards in Scotland (including Special), Local Health Boards and National Public Health Services in Wales, accessed April 2008.
27 Trades Union Congress, Britain’s unions, accessed 4 April 2008.
28 Websites of Engineering Council, General Council of the Bar, General Dental Council, General Medical Council, General Optical Council, General Social Care Council, General Teaching Councils for England, Scotland and Wales, Law Society, Law Society for Scotland, Faculty of Advocates, accessed April 2008.#p#分頁標題#e#
29 HESA (2008) Higher education student enrolment and qualifications obtained at higher education institutions in the United Kingdom for the academic year 2006/07, HESA SFR 117. Cheltenham: HESA.
30 Office for National Statistics (2008) First Release: Labour market statistics, May 2008.
31 Paull, G. (2008) ‘Children and women’s hours of work’, The Economic Journal, February 2008.
32 Darton, D. and Hurrell, K. (2005) People working part-time below their potential, Manchester: Equal Opportunities Commission.
33 Fuller, A., Beck, V. and Unwin, L. (2005) Employers, young people and gender segregation (England),Working Paper series no. 28,Manchester: Equal Opportunities Commission.
34 Bhavnani, R. and Performance through inclusion (2006) Ahead of the game: the changing aspirations of young ethnic minority women, Moving on up series, Manchester: Equal Opportunities Commission.
35 Operation Black Vote website, accessed 25 April 2008.
36Operation Black Vote website, accessed 25 April 2008.
37 BBC News website (2007) First ethnic minority AMelected, 4May 2007, accessed 24 April 2008. BBC News website (2007) First Asian MSP goes to Holyrood, 4May 2007, accessed 24 April 2008.
38 Sealy, R., Singh, V. and Vinnicombe, S. (2007) The female FTSE report 2007.
39 Judiciary of England and Wales (2008) Statistics –minority ethnic judges in post as at 1 April 2008.
40Wilson, R.,Homenidou, K., and Dickerson, A. (2006)Working Futures 2004–14,National report. Wath on Dearne: Sector Skills Development Agency.
41 Madouros, V. (2006) Labour force projections 2006–20. London: Office for National Statistics.
42 Office forNational Statistics (2007) Population estimates by ethnic group 2001–05 (experimental). London: Office for National Statistics.
43 Office for National Statistics (2008) Labour Force Survey Historical Quarterly Supplement – Calendar quarters, accessed 27 August 2008.
44 Inter-Parliamentary Union (2008) Women in national parliaments as of 31 July 2008.

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Published September 2008
ISBN 978 1 84206 065 0