International Women’s Day: breaking down bias in the workplace

The odds are still stacked against women in the upper ech­e­lons of the busi­ness world. For Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD), four female busi­ness lead­ers break down the biggest chal­lenges they’ve faced in their careers so far. 

The theme of this year’s Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is ‘break the bias’, but whether it’s moments of every­day sex­ism, the gen­der pay gap or the lack of women occu­py­ing top posi­tions in com­pa­nies, women still face many bar­ri­ers in the work­place. 

This is reflect­ed in the sta­tis­tics, with just nine female CEOs in the top role at FTSE 100 busi­ness­es. Bias is a key con­trib­u­tor, accord­ing to Dr Joan­na Abeyie, CEO and founder of exec­u­tive search firm Blue Moon, who was speak­ing at a Racon­teur round­table for IWD.  

“There’s bias that we’re all aware of in the recruit­ment process, in the way that busi­ness­es pro­mote with­in their organ­i­sa­tion and the devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties giv­en to par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als,” she said. 

Through run­ning her exec­u­tive recruit­ment busi­ness, Abeyie has become famil­iar with many of the bias­es that influ­ence people’s judge­ments when hir­ing for lead­er­ship posi­tions. These can range from an individual’s sex­u­al­i­ty, mar­riage sta­tus or even their age. Women are often con­sid­ered too old or young for a role, she said.  

“You could be incred­i­bly dri­ven, com­pe­tent and capa­ble but in your mid-30s and some peo­ple will say that’s far too young to be hold­ing a lead­er­ship posi­tion. Or equal­ly, peo­ple may think you’re at the end of your career, in spite of you feel­ing that you have anoth­er decade of ideas, ener­gy and enthu­si­asm to give.”  

Changing the game 

The issue of bias in recruit­ment is some­thing that Kel­ly Sim­mons, Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (FA) direc­tor of the women’s pro­fes­sion­al game, has faced in her career. Work­ing in an indus­try that has been dom­i­nat­ed by men for most of its his­to­ry has made it par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing.  

“Research shows that peo­ple like to hire in their own image and I sit in a lot of rooms where peo­ple look the same – foot­ball has pre­vi­ous­ly been dom­i­nat­ed by a lot of white old­er men,” she said. 

Con­fronting this cul­ture has been the biggest chal­lenge for Sim­mons, who has often had to deal with gen­der bias head on. One of her favourite anec­dotes came from a recent women’s foot­ball match. A ques­tion­able off­side deci­sion was giv­en by the ref­er­ee and a man sit­ting next to her in the crowd turned to her and pro­ceed­ed to explain the rul­ing. “He lat­er asked if I was there to watch my daugh­ter,” Sim­mons added. “To which I said: ‘No, I’m the direc­tor of the women’s pro­fes­sion­al game.’ At that point they shut up very quick­ly.”

These tired, sex­ist atti­tudes remain the real­i­ty for many women in busi­ness. Despite run­ning her own com­pa­ny, Abeyie said there can still be an assump­tion from oth­ers that women are not as com­pe­tent when it comes to num­bers or under­stand­ing the breadth of a busi­ness deal and the terms of ref­er­ence.  

“I’ve had accoun­tants say, ‘You’re not like a typ­i­cal female entre­pre­neur; you take risks like male entre­pre­neurs do.’” There have even been instances where she’s been advised to “go full glam” ahead of attend­ing busi­ness meet­ings with men. 

Balancing dual demands 

Of the nine blue chip CEOs, the major­i­ty have risen through the ranks of their organ­i­sa­tions. For Pen­sion­Bee CEO Romi Savo­va, this sug­gests that the exec­u­tive pipeline at many organ­i­sa­tions is still exclud­ing women.  

“The real­i­ty is, when you look at the women that are just below exec­u­tive direc­tor lev­el, they are in a rel­a­tive minor­i­ty com­pared to men,” she said at the round­table event. “That con­trasts with what we see in the very ear­ly career stage where women are fair­ly equal­ly rep­re­sent­ed with­in their peer group. So what that tells me is that some­where in the mid­dle, women are falling off for some rea­son.”  

Becom­ing a moth­er can be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to this dis­crep­an­cy, she believes. Savo­va thinks that tak­ing time out of the work­place can cre­ate anx­i­ety. Then, on their return, moth­ers have to face the “dou­ble jug­gle” of being a suc­cess­ful busi­nessper­son and a good moth­er.  

Accord­ing to recent research com­mis­sioned by Voda­fone, moth­ers are almost twice as like­ly to say they take on the major­i­ty of child­care pres­sures; a quar­ter spent less time on paid work as a result.  “It’s around that time that a lot of women do tend to step back or move into self-employ­ment,” Savo­va added. “It may not be every woman, but it is def­i­nite­ly more than among the male pop­u­la­tion, which is why the ranks tend to thin out and those effects prop­a­gate them­selves over time.” 

Abbie Miran­da, founder of women’s lin­gerie com­pa­ny Bei­ja Lon­don, has felt the same pres­sures in her pro­fes­sion­al career. “You go from hav­ing a scream­ing match about hair clips straight into a seri­ous finance meet­ing,” she said. “The dif­fer­ence between those sit­u­a­tions is so vast and it all hap­pens with­in three min­utes, but you’re still expect­ed to present as a cool, calm and col­lect­ed busi­ness­woman.” 

The inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty of busi­ness lead­ers is also an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. None of the nine CEOs are from a BAME back­ground. Peo­ple from a work­ing-class back­ground or with dis­abil­i­ties are also still under­rep­re­sent­ed at the top lev­els of the cor­po­rate world. “We see the same sto­ries con­stant­ly being repeat­ed, which makes it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to look at an indi­vid­u­al’s skills and capa­bil­i­ties in iso­la­tion, instead of try­ing to make deci­sions on who you are as a per­son out­side of the work­place,” Abeyie said. 

If busi­ness­es are to become more rep­re­sen­ta­tive and break down pre­ex­ist­ing bias­es with­in their organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture, busi­ness lead­ers will have to stop ele­vat­ing only those they iden­ti­fy with. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly at the moment, if you don’t fit in, that bias over­rides,” Abeyie added.