Last week, this site featured research by Rowena Lewis into the “reinforced glass ceiling” in the voluntary sector, which suggests women are still under-represented at chief executive level – only 46 per cent, out of a workforce of 68 per cent women.
Lewis proposes two main reasons why women are under-represented: the motherhood penalty, and various forms of discrimination.
Lewis herself favours the discrimination argument. The sector, she says, is systematically set up to do women down. It has a glass ceiling. It is failing women.
I think the numbers show it’s mostly the motherhood penalty.
First, according to the Workforce Almanac, 45 per cent of female sector staff work part time, compared with 22 per cent of men, almost all of them out of choice. The NCVO says that only about a tenth want full-time work, and historically this figure has been much lower.
Within the voluntary sector, an unusually high number of chief executive posts are part time, but it’s still far from the norm. So most of these women are ruling themselves out of chief executive jobs by preferring to work part time.
That drops the ratio of women to men likely to be able to take a chief exec job down to something like 60:40.
Then there’s the amount of experience it takes to be a chief executive. This Economist article says the average age of a chief executive is 54, and that it takes 24 years of working life to get to the top.
If we assume a future chief exec starts work aged 23, following degrees, postgrads, gap years, and so forth, this suggests they will usually take up their post around 47, and retire around 61.
Now let’s assume that the average woman has two children, and that she takes a career break of four years to look after them.
This is a fairly large assumption, because I couldn’t find great data to show what the average career break is. (This American article suggests it’s 11 years, but I’m a bit sceptical.)
Our average obviously has to include women who go straight back to work, and those who take a 10 or 15-year career break and return when the kids are in secondary school.
Also, we’re looking at a particular group: highly-skilled, intelligent women with the ability to be chief execs. Are they likely to take shorter breaks than average because they’re more driven? Is that cancelled out because talented women are more likely to be married to talented men, who are likely to make more money, which means they can afford to stay at home with the kids?
If we assume that men and women need an equal amount of experience to become chief execs, but that as a result of kids, women attain it four years later, this suggests men are likely to become chief execs around 46 and continue for 15 years, while women are likely to become chief execs around 50 and continue for 11 years.
This longer tenure for men would reduce the ratio we ought to expect to around 53:47.
But women are only 46 per cent, not 53 per cent.
So what causes that?
It’s not lack of ability among women. This article suggests that among workers under 30, women earn eight per cent more per week, and the pay gap only really comes into being after childbirth. (Incidentally, it also found that men actually work more hours than women, which may explain some of the pay gap, and that many more men than women were unemployed, but that this usually isn’t accounted for in studies of average earnings).
But of course the obvious answer is the one Lewis chooses: discrimination.
If this is true, how does this manifest itself? Is it the recruitment process? Job structures? Recruitment consultants?
Or is it down to individuals?
In the voluntary sector, where almost half of chief execs and chairs are women, and more than two thirds of the staff, men aren’t exactly in a position to gang up on women. So either women are joining in the process of doing themselves down, or men discriminate and women don’t.
If this is the hypothesis, it suggests that the average man must be nastier, more prejudiced, and less respectful than the average woman.
I have to say that this isn’t my experience of men in the voluntary sector, but maybe I’m just looking at my fellow men through rose-tinted spectacles.