Lee's random blog

A few of you have asked what I said at my talk earlier in the week.  Here are some of the themes.

Women make up 60% of all graduates in Europe and the US this year. In January 2010, for the first time, there were more women in employment in the US than men.  Women have become the majority of the workforce. Yet, only 12% of FTSE 100 directorships are held by women.  This is clearly not because there are no women working that can rise to be leaders or because women are not bright enough to do the job.  Britain also just became 74^th in the world in terms of the percentage of female MP’s, behind countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and recently overtaken by Nicaragua, the Philippines and Uzbekistan.

Why is this? We know a lot about the barriers to women progressing which exist within organizations.  Women still bear the burden of childcare so can work fewer hours if they have to pick up children from school, etc. A lot of opportunities go to people who can schmooze in the evenings and, as many women are essentially doing a second shift when they get home, they cannot attend these events. Women ‘step out’ of work to undertake the social service of producing more consumers yet are penalized for this unpaid service when they get back to work.  Work is set up for an old fashioned male paradigm when the workers and professionals were supported at home by unpaid help, (women) so they could work all the hours possible and get ahead.  And women were (perhaps) happy to be at home looking after children, when the mans wage covered all the costs.  This does not match the reality of our countries aspirations today.

There are also internal barriers to women excelling as leaders.  Women tend not to celebrate their successes in quite the same way as men do.  One client of mine expressed her dismay as her male colleagues went running to the boss to crow about what they had achieved on a shared project as she just got on with the work. Of course, those men then got promoted as they were noticed, whilst she did not. Women are not as canny about what it takes to get on in a masculine corporate culture, nor do they want to do what it takes when it conflicts with their values.  Women wait to be invited to run for public office for example, according to Marie Wilsons research at the White House Project.

One of the most telling pieces of research that the White House Project did was on perceived leadership characteristics. They sat a test group in front of small screens with a dial, and showed them clips of men and women speaking.  The test group were asked to dial up when the speaker displayed leadership characteristics and dial down when they displayed characteristics that were not associated with leadership. When the women came on screen people dialed down.  Our very concept of the term ‘leader’ is masculine. We do not internally regard women as leaders so we have a great deal of work to do to meet the masculine ideal.  This is why a lot of women’s leadership programmes are about training women to be more like men.

As far as politics goes, women largely don’t want to get involved because of the way that female MP’s are treated.  Remember Jacqui Smiths cleavage being of more interest to the media than her words as the new Home Sec?  That kind of reporting is pathetic and childish, frustrating and nearly impossible to relate to.  Also, generally speaking, women do not profess an interest in politics per se but will express an interest in issues, such as education, health and community relations. These things are the domain of politics but your average woman in the street does not see herself as having much to say about ‘politics’ because it has become synonymous with economics and defense.  Topics that traditionally men think of when they relate to politics. Of course, that is why we need both genders in politics, attending to both groups of issues.

Of course, this is not a crime that has been perpetrated on women.  Far from it.  We have been complicit in this set of arrangements.  We have accepted the status quo, we have left work in our droves when it got too hard.  We have not led in a way that made a difference to our culture.  It’s time to do so.  We need to step up and bring our voices to the table, for the sake of the women coming along behind us and for the children of the nation. We need to put ourselves forward for public office, stand an MP’s run for local council, as that is the only way that we will reach the tipping point necessary for the culture to change to something more female friendly.  Nobody is going to do this for us, we need to do it ourselves.

(This last bit of my talk wasn’t so popular…)

20 years after attending my first political conference, I find myself sitting in the audience for the launch rally at the Lib Dems spring conference.  After being welcomed by a plethora of prospective parliamentary candidates, a quarter of whom I gladly noted were women, the big guns of party come out to inspire us, to rouse us for the remaining short time before the election.

Paddy Ashdown came on first and appealed directly to our heads.  The country faces four great threats, he says and goes on to tell us why the Lib Dems are the party to address them.  The first one, the economic crisis, basically needs to be handled by Vince Cable.  Given the fact that Dr Cable predicted the collapse, we trust him to come up with some sort of way through the mess.  Yes, I can buy that and as he pointed out, you need to vote Lib Dem to get Vince Cable as Chancellor.

Paddy Ashdowns style, tone and rhetoric are all convincing and moved me to follow his logic calmly and sanely, to understand deeply that the Lib Dems are an option this election. Perhaps the only real option.  But for all his logic, and he was inspirational, it was Shirley Williams that captured my heart and made me want to act.

Dame Williams reminded the audience that we get involved in politics because we have a passion for a just society.  However we start, we share a desire to live in a country that is just and fair.  Right now, it is clear that we do not.  Though I can intellectually grasp this, Shirley’s words reached through to my heart when she asked ‘Why are we not furious?’ about the state of housing, our classroom sizes, the bankers bonuses.  Good question, why are we not furious? Because, she says, we have lost the capacity for indignation.  We allow so much to slide by us, to go un-noticed, unchallenged.  She reminded us that we are called upon now to step up and make a difference. As I listened to her I felt she was awakening our morality.

Both speakers had good points to make, though through appealing to different parts of me.  Great orators know this, that to fully engage with an audience takes more than a rational argument, it takes something that appeals to the heart, that stirs the spirit.  I think politics needs more of what Shirley Williams was offering, more of an appeal to that part of us that is more that just logic.  Just logic is what created the financial crisis.  Just logic is what produces poverty.  Its humanity that will be required to solve these problems. Humanity includes logic but logic is not sufficient.  More is required.  An ability to feel, to connect with another human being, to be moved to action by an individuals predicament, by the state of the world, that is what is required of us now.  This is what will engage people back in politics, the sense of making a difference.  We need to be more like Shirley Williams, ready to accept that we need to stand up and be counted, or there will be no-one left to do the counting.

By now you will have seen that India’s parliament approved a bill on Tuesday 9th of March to reserve a third of all state legislature and parliamentary seats for women.  You would think from reading the UK press that this is an exceptional move but actually around 40 nations have some form of quota system in place for increasing the percentage of female MP’s.  The UK as a whole does not advocate the use of quotas, although the Labour Party has used this fairly unpopular device for a number of years, which resulted in the UK briefly rising the global chart after the 1997 election.  The UK currently ranks as 73rd out of 187 in terms of the percentage of female MP’s, behind countries such as Uganda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.  We still fare better than the USA, which has 16.8%, and India which currently has only 10.8% female MP’s, hence the need for quotas.

Those that oppose the idea of quotas often appeal to meritocracy as an ideal for the selection and election of our members of parliament.  They say that to introduce quotas is to give women an unfair advantage and that they should be able to get elected on their own merits.  In fact some argue that the women that are selected using this method are less worthy than potential male candidates that could have occupied that space.  What can we say in response to this argument?

Meritocracy is of course something to aim for.  In an ideal world, female candidates for office would be assessed alongside men fairly and equally on their merits.  That seems logical.  The question is not so much is this happening or not, but ‘what criteria are being used?’ Just what is merited? Much has been written elsewhere on the different styles that men and women display when leading and the benefits that both styles can have on a business environment. It’s recognised in the business world that having women take part in the running of your company with drive tangible benefits. This information needs to be passed on to and fully understood by the selection committees of our political parties and to the British media who routinely scorn female MP’s.

However, that aside (and it will be explored more fully later), I wonder what else is at play in producing the UK’s disastrous results in female political representation.  We may see a reflection of ourselves in India. The Economist featured a piece this week on Gendercide, the murder of girl babies due to a preference for boys. I’m not talking about abortion as murder, I mean the actual physical murder of female babies when they are born.  This happens widely in India, and in other countries, as well as there being a large rate of abortion of female foetuses. The Economist article explains that this is causing a problem in China, as the large numbers of men are now unable to find wives and crime levels are rising due to the unchallenged masculine energy.

In the UK we do not sanction the killing of any babies and lets be thankful for that but I wonder what vestiges of this preference for the male over the female we still hold in our psyches.  When we judge female leaders on ‘merit’ are we actually holding up the male version of leader as the ideal? When we assess a women for the job of politician are we actually assessing her against men that can do the job of being available 24/7, with support at home, with no direct caring responsibilities for the family, with an ability to compartmentalise thoughts and feelings?  Are we deeply preferencing men when we choose our leaders?

I think that the percentages of female leaders in business and in politics speak for themselves. The cost of equality is giving up the idea that men are more worthy than women. In India and China giving up this belief would save lives. In the UK it would open up our power structures to women and enable them to make the contribution they are capable of making, for the benfit of the country and our future generations.

(Photo by handmadebymaria, CC)

You’ve probably read the interview in Total Politics with Sir Nicholas Winterton by now. Sir Nicholas was elected a Tory MP in 1971, the year I was born, which makes him a veteran of the party.  However, those at Conservative HQ are no doubt shaking their heads over his somewhat ill considered remarks about MP’s and expense paid rail travel.

“And now they want to stop members of Parliament travelling first class. That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class. So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats. And why are we going to waste our time when we can work on the train as we do. I’m sorry. It infuriates me.”

Well, I can totally see what he is getting at.  I travel a lot for work and if I am lucky enough to get to travel first class it does indeed allow me to get a lot more work done that if I am pressed tightly against someone in standard class, with loads of noise around me.  Fair enough, you’d think.  But then he digs himself into another kind of hole.

“They [standard-class passengers] are a totally different type of people  -  they have a different outlook on life. They may be reading a book but I doubt whether they’re undertaking serious work or study, reading reports or amending reports that MPs do when they travel.”

This, obviously, is a lot of rubbish.  Most people would choose to travel in First Class if given the choice.  Its quiet, it’s more spacious and they serve you tea and coffee.  Why wouldn’t someone want that?  There is nothing different about the people that travel in standard class other than they have paid less for their seat.  What is present in Sir Nicholas’ view is privilege and the mistaken idea that the reason you have something that others don’t is because they are different and somehow don’t deserve it.

Sir Nicholas’ view seems to typify the view of privilege held by many people in the UK.  Not that I grudge anyone decent stuff in life and a chair in First Class if you can afford it.  Lets just have a dose of reality alongside it.  He has the First Class seat because he can pay for it.  People have the privilege they have because they can afford it, be that through family money or their own hard work.  Lets not make the mistake that that simple fact makes them ‘better’ people than those travelling in standard class.  It only makes them better at having money and spending it.

What is problematic about privilege is the justification that arises in the minds of the people who posses it and their blindness to the reality of others.  The fact that Sir Nicholas really feels this way about the people who travel in standard class is frightening.  There is no ‘they’ that travel in standard class.  There is only the diversity of humanity in all its guises, each living a personal experience that Sir Nicholas cannot conceive of.  Surely we need to be able to embrace this truth in order to be a good public servant.  Otherwise the constituency you are serving is the constituency of yourself, from your own perspective, true only to your own needs.

(Photo by ThePatrick, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pftqg/, used under Creative Commons license, artist not connected with any opinions here given)