Alison O'Connor: The price of being female is that we are undervalued in workplace

A male acquaintance who is self-employed says women don’t value their own time in business.

When negotiating an hourly rate, or similar, women fold in naming a price for their time, he says.

Discomfort at putting a proper price on your time is a discussion I’ve often had with female friends.

We acknowledge, as a gender, that we’re not good at it. But we didn’t lick this financial inferiority complex off the ground.

We see the lack of value in female toil and talent reflected back at us by society all the time.

So how are women expected to value themselves, and their time, if their contributions are not financially valued by society?

The latest establishment manifestation of that came this week, with the news that 13 Irish stock market companies have no women on their boards.

Read something like this and your first thought is: What are these blokes afraid of? Do they think they might catch periods or something, if they have a few women scattered around the boardroom table?

Are women only for the role of the corporate wife, suitably bejewelled and attired to reflect the success of their corporate man’s career?

How can the attitudes of these cavemen survive? Do they have any daughters; do they wonder what signal they are sending? Do they care an iota?

The “serious gender imbalance” in these companies that trade on the Euronext Dublin has emerged from a Government-ordered review.

The first report of Balance for Better Business noted the percentage of women on the boards of the 51 companies trading on Euronext Dublin as of the beginning of March this year.

Six months later, there have been some improvements, but the all male boards, as the latest report notes, “continue to be stubbornly resistant to change.”

This week, the second report showed that the 20-biggest publicly quoted Irish companies have met the interim target of 25% female board members, but, at these other listed companies, “virtually no progress” has been made.

As of September, only 12.4% of directors at other listed companies are female, a figure that is almost unchanged from six months earlier.

Irish companies still rank 17th out of the EU 28 for representation of women on boards.

This number has not changed since 2018.

The listed companies with no female directors are Amryt Pharma, Applegreen, Donegal Investment Group, Falcon Oil & Gas, Great Western Mining Corp, Mainstay Medical International, Malin Corporation, Mincon Group, Open Orphan, Ormonde Mining, Ovoca Bio, Petroneft Resources, and Providence Resources.

The upcoming Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality would be an ideal place to discuss this puzzling aspect of Irish business life.

The report mentions it as a place where the various factors might be examined.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to invite the male bosses of those 13 companies to appear and explain their rationale.

Shaming should not be the first weapon of choice, but given the “stubborn resistance” that is in evidence, then perhaps a more blatant approach needs to be considered.

After all, these men have already been asked very nicely to open their eyes and see the error of their gender ways.

Significant structural factors impact women’s full and equal representation in Irish business leadership.

The report cites the lower rates of female participation in the labour market, the continued occupational segregation within the labour market, and the lower percentage of women with STEM qualifications.

A key factor is the high cost of childcare, in both absolute terms and by comparison with other EU member states.

Unconscious bias, among both women and men, and gender stereotyping, also rank highly.

What better way to tackle this bias than to get going with unconscious bias training, not just for men, but for women, also.

No matter how much of a feminist you consider yourself, this can be a factor.

We are all products of the environment in which we grow up. One of my own particular gender under-representation bugbears, for instance, is that there are not more female presenters on radio and television.

We are often told of ‘research’ (though I have yet to see it) apparently showing that the general public does not like the female voice, finding it too high-pitched.

To my mind, this comes down to the public just not being used to the pitch of the female voice, so saturated are we from the male voice.

This presents an extra obstacle, in terms of women being seen, or heard, as good presenters.

In time, though, if there were enough women on air, in those sort of roles, our ears and our minds would simply register it as the norm.

But no more than radio and TV station bosses, CEOs and company leaders are the ones who need to face their own unconscious biases about women at board level.

The report does show that, in the last six months, there was a small, but welcome, increase, from 8.3% to 9.1%, in the number of female executives on ISEQ20 boards.

ISEQ20 companies are the top-20 stock echange companies listed on Euronext Dublin.

Other listed companies have shown some improvement in the number of female non-executives — 13.4% to 14.6% — but an actual decrease in the percentage of female executive directors — 9.2% to 8.1%.

Balance for Better Business had set targets of at least 33% female directors for ISEQ 20 companies by the end of 2023, and 25% for all other Irish-listed companies.

The group has set interim targets for each year, so that companies can measure their progress against concrete annual milestones.

They also set a target that, by the end of 2019, no company traded on the Euronext Dublin markets would have an all-male board.

So, as we approach the end of 2019, we can see the progress is painfully slow and, in some instances, even going backwards.

We can call for, and even implement, all of the initiatives mentioned in the paragraphs above, but, ultimately, the only thing that will make real change, and in real time, are gender quotas.

I’m not sure what the fuss or the hesitation is — after all, they have already been unofficially in place forever for middle-class, middle-aged, suit-and-tie wearing white men.