What’s a woman to do in a man’s world? Whatever she wants, Mrs R

IT’S easier for a man in my position to pick up the phone to his customer and organise a golfing day or whatever. There is an advantage there.’

“I don’t play golf therefore am not visible and you would feel under pressure to pick it up.”

Two women speaking. Two middle managers, quoted in a study designed to further our understanding of the barriers faced by women trying to get to the top. The study, by Christine Cross, a lecturer in the University of Limerick, is one of several examining the problems of businesswomen included in the just-published 2005 edition of the Irish Business Journal, issued by the Cork Institute of Technology.

“Despite the rapid increase in female participation in the paid labour-force across the globe, considerable evidence has been gathered that documents a scarcity of women in executive level positions,” writes Cross. “Since the 1970s female participation in the Irish labour force has grown from 28% at the start of the 1970s to over 50% in 2001. Despite this unprecedented growth, a recent Irish report conducted by the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (IBEC) highlights that the gender gap remains a significant feature of organisational life in Ireland, with only 8% of chief executives and 21% of senior managers being female.”

The study specifically examines two possible contributors to the “glass ceiling” inhibiting women’s upward mobility in business. Those two factors are reconciling work and family conflict and networking.

The first of these surfaces constantly. Any reasonably successful woman in business or politics with a partner and offspring inevitably finds herself asked the “how do you balance work and family commitments?” question. The answer, for a woman who believes in equality, is: “Of how many men have you asked that question?” because if we claim equality, we shouldn’t answer questions that assume we buy into inequality and assume, into the bargain, nothing has happened in the last 30 years to the traditional roles of men and women.

If we’re ideologically committed to equality, as is Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, we should use the question as an opportunity to address the trailing relics of familial inequality, not dribble on (as she recently did) about having a supportive husband. Supportive? Like a push-up bra? Equal partners don’t talk about the support of their husbands because they don’t assume only one member of the duo requires support.

Once you relinquish the concept of equal responsibilities, you’re on the slide right back to the feminine mystique and in no time at all are agreeing to share your recipes for Christmas pudding and be photographed in the kitchen.

The term “supportive husband” requires some translation. It usually means he puts out the rubbish, fixes punctures and fuses, stoutly promotes (at dinner parties for which he has cooked one of the courses) his wife’s right to have a career of her own and shares the transporting of the kids to the crèche/playgroup in the morning. Of course, the rubbish goes out once a week and punctures don’t happen that often. It has been estimated that, whereas even the most supportive husbands work (between the office and home) between 55 and 65 hours a week, their heavily-supported wives somehow manage to put in up to 90 hours a week, are expected to get out of the office early enough to collect the kids and avoid all business trips that require overnights away from home.

That last issue is one of the most ignored factors in women’s failure to make it to the top ranks. One woman who HAS made it to top management in one of our biggest state-sponsored bodies told me this week that she has no doubt her progress was aided by her willingness to do off-site work when asked.

“Of course management make a judgement when a woman says she can’t take on a trip,” she said. “They make the judgement that the woman and her partner don’t see the woman’s career as being as important as the man’s. It’s a perfectly legitimate judgement to make. Because if their careers are equal, and their responsibilities to their children are equal, then it’s up to them, as a couple, to manage the issue in a way that doesn’t diminish the woman’s contribution to her employing organisation.

“More importantly, conferences, seminars and other off-site tasks are golden opportunities for networking, and if you don’t take those opportunities, you are, effectively, choosing to move onto the slow-track in terms of promotion.”

HER comment brings into sharp relief the popular - and shallow - perception of “networking.” Networking for women tends to be presented as an issue of business-card swopping. You measure your networking success by how many cards you’ve given or received, giving yourself bonus points if you’ve managed to write a personal observation about the card-giver on the card.

This is matched in popularity by the notion that women’s progress to the top is halted by their inability to drop everything, grab a golf-bag and bond with colleagues on the third tee. The fact that a lot of women believe this doesn’t mean it’s true. A lot of us believe that the bad news delivered by the bathroom scales this morning is caused by us having big bones, but if we believe it too strongly, we’ll find ourselves wearing size 18 suits as our bones get bigger and bigger.

Women who really want to make it to the top generally do so, if they have the competence. Women who only THINK they want to make it to the top generally don’t do so, despite their competence, but at least have the comfort of explanations including the golf-as-exclusion methodology one, the childcare deficit one, the stereotyping one and the office politics one.

Women who start out thinking they want to make it to the top and then change their mind are exercising the choice the 1970s liberationists fought for. Which is why it is so astonishing our former President, Mary Robinson, should confess herself “worried” by the trend in the US for women to get good degrees while planning to retreat immediately into marriage and motherhood.

Where’s the cause for worry? Some schools of medical thought would hold it as better for women to have babies in their 20s than in their late 30s and 40s, so the MA Mother approach would have health benefits. In addition, growing economies like our own are increasingly committed to seducing women back into the workforce after they’ve done the child-rearing thing, so these women can, if they want, have a late-onset career.

Mrs Robinson seems to be suggesting the function of education is to prep you for a job and it’s your duty to get one to pay society back for educating you.

The inescapable inference to be drawn is that a good degree is wasted when it comes to raising a family.

The hand that rocks the cradle should be ignorant.