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 If we reframe the discourse which pits feminists against transgender rights  it is easier to see why so many women and men are concerned about the proposed changes to the GRA 2004 and the replacement of the word sex with gender identity.   Of course trans people are entitled to rights and they have these under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act 2010,  but further demands like self ID come at  the loss of rights of women and girls. The current debate has become so toxic that  feminists who even ask questions about trans gender issues are vilified as ‘transphobic’.

It is unprecedented to have such fundamental changes such as the removal of the categories of M/F from administrative forms, the demand that male bodied trans women can use spaces reserved for the female sex for their physical safety, the removal of women’s toilets to mixed sex, the changes in language, the change in what we can wear, without any public debate about the consequences to women and girls allowed.  Yet that is what has happened. Until now.

Many women and some men are concerned about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. If passed the new law would allow trans people to self-identify to their preferred gender without the need for any objective assessment, medical or otherwise. Currently a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is required, together with some medical assessment and a two year period of proof of living in the other gender. So far fewer than  5,000 people have gone through the process which trans groups claim is proof that the process is too burdensome. Most feminists do not have a problem with simplifying the process. But many do have a problem with blanket self-identification without any objective assessment at all and where this may lead.

There are  real conflicts of interests between women and trans women which are not being explicitly considered.

What began some years ago as a movement to protect the rights and safety of a small number of transsexuals has now expanded into the beginnings of a fundamental transformation about how we categorize ourselves in society and the consequences are far reaching particularly for women. The GRA 2004 was passed in response to a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2002.

This ruled that people who had transitioned to the opposite sex should be allowed to marry even though that would de facto mean marrying the same sex. This was at a time when same sex marriage was illegal and people who were trans were still legally their birth sex with no way of changing that.   So the UK had to make changes in the law, basically creating a legal fiction whereby a man who transitioned to living as a women, could obtain a new birth certificate. This enabled transsexuals to marry. There was a lot of confusion around the words sex and gender during the debate of the bill, and basically it was fudged by using the word gender for a transition and recognition certificate whilst the result was to change the sex on their birth certificate. There were some concerns about the consequences of this expressed during debate but these were dismissed because Parliament said it would affect very few people – they estimated approximately 5000 transexuals. Little did they know.

Since then fewer than the estimated 5000 have applied for a Gender Recognition certificate. Already people are free to change their identity, including their names, driving licenses and many other papers without a certificate. And of course it is now legal for two people of the same sex to marry. So the need for a GRA is arguably less.

Fourteen years after the GRA of 2004,  estimates range  between 200,000 and 500,000 for the number trans people in the UK. There is a much broader meaning of trans today than there was then and these figures would include other non gender conforming, non- binary and even cross dressers, according to Stonewall’s definition.  Even so, taking the top end of this estimate, this means that social changes to accommodate less than 0.5% of the population impact 51% of the population, who have not been consulted.

The focus of feminists has been  to voice our views about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 during the government’s consultation process, which ends at the end of this week but the debate has become toxic and the reciprocity that is vital for democratic discussion has broken down.

A major cause of this breakdown has been the way in which the debate has been framed as being only about trans ‘rights’ and ‘equality’ –  two words that trigger guilt and a knee jerk reaction to being rightly ‘supportive’ in most liberal minds, but also positions any opposing voices to the ‘unsympathetic, bigoted, prejudiced’.  But rights have to be  negotiated  in society and this debate requires input from non trans people, (99% of the population) and from those particularly whose interests and rights may be compromised – women. What we should be discussing is how can the rights and welfare of trans people be upheld without impinging on or endangering on the hard won rights of women and girls.  The other major question boils down to “who should be defining what it means to be a woman? Women themselves or 0.5% of the population?”

And so this is a  much broader and complex debate than just, should trans people have rights?  The shift from sex to the category of ‘gender identity’ is already happening, regardless of any potential changes to the law. But whether it is called gender or sex, the categories of men and women are to most people fairly fundamental – in research, health and social policy and in the context of public spaces, in sport, and particularly safety for women.  Hardly a day goes past when we read of male and female public lavatories being replaced with ‘gender neutral’ ones – for that read ‘mixed sex’. The YHA is the latest to be ‘advised by outside agencies’ on trans policy and have changed their wording from sex to gender so as to allow transwomen to share dormitories with women.  This is not in keeping with the law  or social practice as we know it but it is happening under the guise of ‘trans inclusive’ policies by well-meaning organisations.

Schools are changing their cloakroom facilities for the one or two youngsters who may decide they are trans (whatever this means at primary school age),  and changing their uniform policies. Ironically women fought hard for girls to be allowed to wear trousers in public places including schools and there are now schools where the girls have to wear trousers – a unisex uniform designed to make the school’s transgender students feel more comfortable.

Primary schools do not teach feminism but many now teach a trans ideology often under the guise of LGBT  anti- bullying training by lobby groups. There is certainly evidence to suggest that a social contagion is causing the monumental increase of young girls turning ‘trans’, a worrying trend of a 4000% increase over five years. Authorities tried to suppress Lisa Littman’s article on this phenomenon called, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Meanwhile,  Stonewall the LGBT pressure group is advocating that 16-18 year olds should be able to self-identify. Young people are impressionable, often confused about their sexuality particularly during puberty and how they may want to express themselves should have nothing to do with changing sex.  A brilliant speech by Michele Moore sums up the dangers of self-ID and young children and what is taking place in schools that have succumbed to the trans orthodoxy.

Organisations including the government are taking advice from charities and pressure groups (like the very influential LGBT campaign group Stonewall as well as smaller agencies like Mermaids,  and GIRES),  whose ideology is extreme and arguably out of step with society.  These charities receive government funding, and Stonewall is particularly well funded with close ties to many businesses. All these organisations, public and private,  take women’s equality seriously and public organisations have a public duty to do so, yet they have failed to consider the implications of their policies on women and girls. For a measured and informative critique of the GRA consultation process so far read this article by  Professor Kathleen Stock.

On October 8th, Ruth Hunt, Chief Executive of Stonewall, spoke on Radio 4 and was asked about the opposition many women and men and some trans people have about the right to self – identify, one of the key proposals for the repeal of the GRA Act 2004.  She defended Stonewall’s stance and likened the current hostilities to previous struggles of gay and lesbian rights. This was disingenuous. These are not comparable to the current trans demands as they did not directly conflict with other people’s rights or impact their lives apart from perhaps upset ethical or religious sensitivities. The new demand for changes in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 framed as  ‘trans’ rights demands, do impact others’ rights…. over half the population’s rights. The half that historically has been subjugated and ignored. The half that is currently celebrating 100 years of women’s (partial) suffrage. You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the irony of this.

Hunt also insisted that she believed that trans women are women, claiming erroneously that this was already enshrined by law. It is not. But, by saying it often enough there are thousands of organisations that already believe it, or are too scared to challenge it.

Amidst the ridicule and disbelief expressed over the misuse of language like “pregnant people”, and “people with a cervix” and the decision to make Mother’s Day cards gender neutral so as not to upset trans people, there is alarm among women at the redefining and even erasure of the word woman

Last week on Newsnight  a trans woman told a male interviewer that feminists should not be offended by the word womxn which the Wellcome Collection used instead of women – to be more inclusive.

It is ironic that the trans activists are dominated by trans women many of who are married and have fathered children but are now telling women what it means to be a woman. And a couple of weeks ago a poster with the dictionary definition of woman, which was put up near a debate over the GRA repeals, was ordered to be removed because it was considered transphobic.

There is also controversy over the phrase  ‘the gender assigned at birth’ to denote  birth sex. No one has to assign a gender or sex  to a baby unless it is intersex and requires a decision to be made by a doctor as to male or female. It is from there that the phrase is originally derived. The rest of us are born boys or girls. But this is now the absurd language used by public organisations and the media.

Language is important. Language is power, which is why subordinated groups have struggled to name themselves rather than be named. Transgender people have chosen transgender rather than the former identity of transsexual, which they consider demeaning and too much based on the biological. However as well as naming themselves, trans activists insist on demoting all biologically born women into a sub category. They are trans women and 99.9% of all other women must be called ‘cis women’. This is domination by any other name and women are not going to accept it.

There is also widespread public concern about allowing male bodied people who identify as women entering women-only spaces, and similarly being allowed to compete in women’s sport, and go onto women-only shortlists. This is already happening and it is understandable that many women  would like their voices  to be heard. The kernel of this whole  debate is of fundamental importance to feminism – it is the right of women to define themselves. The category of woman within the political community of rights and obligations based upon the rule of law is under threat.

Gender And Sex

Trans activists  prioritise the concept of gender identity over biological sex  for obvious reasons. You do not have to have a body of a woman to be one.  Stonewall has stated that it even wants gender identity to replace gender reassignment as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010.  It is unclear how this concept could be legislated for given as we all have a gender identity of some sort. The term, gender identity, itself has yet to be adequately defined and is based on a subjective view of oneself in the context of stereotypical attributes of masculinity and femininity. Although gender and sex are used interchangeably these days, they do  not strictly have the same meaning. Sex is being biologically male or female and gender is more of a social and cultural construction. Indeed most dictionaries defines gender thus

“Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones”. Oxford English Dictionary.

Historically the  concept of gender  has been useful for feminists who sought to challenge the notion that women are born to be a certain way which justified their secondary position in society (essentialism).Certain characteristics and behaviours which were attributed to men and women as being innate and based on biology could be challenged as being social and cultural and therefore could change.  Biology did not necessarily make women ‘passive and nurturing’ in all areas of their lives, but cultural expectations and socialization may have encouraged it.  Indeed stereotypical gender attributes are challenged on a daily basis. Up until recent times, women were considered too weak for sport, their brains too small for education, and that their role was solely to raise children. Distancing the biology from the social and cultural was necessary for these limiting attributes to be challenged.  Men too, have struggled against the restrictions of a dominant masculinity, and now we accept that they can be caring and nurturing and women can be adventurous and leaders.

The idea that gender was much more fluid than merely two opposing corners of pink and blue was welcomed by feminists.  Feminism has always fought against these stereotypes but now some trans activists are embracing them and using them as proof of innate sex difference! We are back to pink and blue.  Stereotypes trap us all. Playing with dolls and wearing pink does not mean a boy wants to be a girl! An article which will dismay all feminists was published in PinkNews, claiming just that.

Feminists have responded with the claim that biology does matter. After all our bodies are the main signifier of whether we are men or women. Women all over the world experience rape, violence and abuse by men  because of their biology and sex. Now perhaps we have to emphasize this as being the only certain differentiator if gender is up for grabs. The response to trans gender people has so far been… you can identify as men or women but that does not make you one. There is the material fact of a body. There is also the socialization that girls go through – Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote “One is not born a woman: one becomes one” refers to the ways in which girls learn how to become women. This varies in time and place but adult men transitioning to women have been socialized as boys.  Whether you define woman as being a gender or a sex, the issues and problems trans women and women face in society are different and cannot be ignored. Biology and the socialisation of women matter. Women would not think to represent trans people’s issues yet somehow it is considered appropriate for a trans woman to speak on behalf of all women. The Labour Party elected Lily Madigan, a young trans woman to be its Women’s Officer whilst at the same time suspending women members who questioned the practice of Self- Identification.

But we have a situation now where men can claim that their biology or socialization does not preclude them from being women. Not trans women but women.  The trans lobby are years ahead of feminists, who have been caught off guard. There is a lot of money behind the US trans movement  and perhaps more research is required to see what underlying interests are served here by the trans ideology. Change on the scale and speed we are seeing today only happens when there is power behind it. And usually that means money.

The decline of much meaningful feminist theory and political action  over  a period of twenty years is a consequence itself of the identity politics and influence of post structuralism that has produced the belief that sex, like gender is a product of social discourse and has no universal or essential meaning (see Judith Butler’s work e.g. Gender Trouble 1999).  There is too much to say on this here but the philosophical climate has provided the perfect fertile ground for what may be seen as a kind of attack on women’s rights through the destabilization of the word ‘woman’. Historically when women have progressed socially, a backlash has followed. And rarely in the same way.

Women silenced

So far the debate has been shaped solely by a set of very dominant activists who have shown no concern  as to the consequences of their demands on other parts of society. This is identity politics at its worst.  Any opposition to the concept of self- ID is described as trans phobic, and  even suggesting a debate attracts accusations that feminists want to deny trans people’s existence.  If ever there was an argument to banish hate crime to the realms of history, the playing out of this particular one is it.  Police have been called out on many an occasion including to people who have posted statements on social media like ‘women do not have penises’. The Labour Party has suspended members, included Jennifer James for saying similar. Linda Bellos, a socialist feminist who has done more for women’s rights in this country that most, has been taken to court by a trans activist for a supposed ‘hate’ crime. There is sadly a long list of women (and now some supportive men too) being targeted, losing their jobs, and being personally abused online. Most recently Ann Henderson, rector of Edinburgh University has been accused of transphobia for tweeting details of a meeting about the GRA and women’s rights.

Very, very, few public figures – even the outspoken Labour feminist MP’s like Sarah Champion and Jess Phillips –  have spoken out against this and supported women. Actually it is a struggle to name any politician at all that has specifically called out the trans activists’ hostile behaviour or acknowledged the tension between trans’ demands and women’s everyday lives. However on October 10^th  Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, a Conservative peer, chaired a meet for Woman’s Place UK. This was hugely welcomed.   And on the 16th October, women’s groups met with 50 MP’s brought together by David Davies, Conservative MP to discuss concerns they have over the GRA  proposals. But some MP’s requested that their names were not made public which tells us how undemocratic the process has been. They are fearful of abuse and backlash against them.   Even the Women’s Equality Party – the feminist party, has not taken the side of feminists and it actually parked the issue at their conference this year. Fear of not being considered ‘progressive’ has sadly created an environment that is more reminiscent of fascist and communist regimes than of the western democracy we are supposed to inhabit. There has been nothing progressive about the silencing of women we have witnessed over the past year.

Regardless of the outcome of the government consultation on the GRA reforms, changes in the way we organize ourselves are occurring and in the process is contributing to a slow erasure of the category of women. Biological men can already call themselves women, are admitted into women’s refuges, boys can go into the girl guides, into women’s prisons (with some frightening results), onto all women shortlists, enter women’s sports. Organisations are changing sex to gender in their equality statements despite the fact that it is sex not gender enshrined in the Equality Act 2010.   Adopting Self ID will just make it easier to change sex and harder to challenge those that do. So to those who see it will not impact the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010, of course it will.

Conclusion

As a society we should address the question of what is fair and reasonable and  enables  transgender people to live dignified lives, without eroding the hard won rights of women and girls.

This may mean accepting changes to the GRA to simplify the process for trans people wanting a certificate.

But this may also mean putting in place measures that prevent male bodied people, whatever they are called, from accessing women’s sports, women’s prisons, places of safety and refuges, and women only shortlists. We may have to use new language like male- bodied to get round the problem of male- bodied trans women having access to these as self- identified women.

This may involve introducing a sliding scale of external verification of self -ID where stricter assessment may be required in certain situations where the safeguarding of women or girls applies.  Allowing anyone to declare themselves the opposite sex and to automatically enjoy every  access to that sex’s spaces opens the door to abuse of the system. And this also does a disservice to trans people the majority of whom want to get on with their lives without prejudice and discrimination. The extreme ideology of the activists and their abusive response to feminists  could have  harmed the trans population more than helped it.

It should be possible to challenge some of the views of the agencies advocating trans rights, who are currently advising government and other organisations, without being called transphobic.   This is an issue of democracy and reciprocity and change happens through give and take, not by attempts to dominate and annihilate those who disagree.

Resources

Information and guidance by

https://fairplayforwomen.com/

https://womansplaceuk.org/

https://www.transgendertrend.com/

https://manfridayuk.org/

Journalists writing sense on this topic are Janice Turner and Lucy Bannerman  in The Times, James Kirkup in the Spectator,  and Andrew Milligan in the Sunday Times.

An excellent resource is the seven essays published by The Economist giving views from all sides. https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/06/29/transgender-identities-a-series-of-invited-essays

In January this year, Professor Jordan Peterson discussed the gender pay gap with Channel 4 News’ Cathy Newman, an interview that has been watched more than seven million times online. It wasn’t her finest hour and that detracted somewhat from the massive flaws in his argument. In it he argues that whilst prejudice may exist he does not believe it is the major factor.  Accepting that women are segregated from men in the labour market in both horizontal and vertical ways he explains this segregation and the ensuing pay differentials as being  largely a natural reflection of differences between men and women.

He also maintains that the dominant explanation put forward by others (particularly feminists which he says with an emphasis denoting disapproval) for the gender pay gap is that it is caused by oppression and the oppressive patriarchy .  First things first. No one who works in this area thinks that there is a single cause of the gender pay gap. I agree as he says so often particularly when he gets a difficult question – it’s complicated. He also fails to understand that patriarchy as a concept describes a system of social relations that enables men to dominate women … not that all men do this or that all women are victims. In short he displays a poor understanding of the history of women’s employment and feminism.

Now Professor Peterson is incredibly influential and has a huge following among young men.  These young men seem hungry for the kind of advice on life Professor Peterson is dishing out. Much of it is common sense and hard to disagree with e.g. the kind of things a good parent would say, like clear up your bedroom and take responsibility for yourself. If young men lap up his views on life it is important to hear what he is saying about men and women. It is also important to challenge him. I will only discuss the gender pay gap in this post but his explanation for this reveals his attitudes to gender relations more widely.

Those of us in the business and all those who worked so hard to measure the pay gap for their reports know full well that it is a fairly basic measure of a complex picture. And it is being discussed in the media  as if it is the be all and end all of equality in the workplace. It isn’t. It is a useful tool to analyse the position of men and women at work using specific organisational data.

My main criticism is that Peterson draws  on psychology to provide his explanations and his approach lacks a historical and cultural context.  Explaining men and women’s differences in their position in society and the workplace through the discourse of psychology and biology fails because it leaves out power and the social and cultural impact of men’s power over women since time began.

Firstly Peterson accepts the concept of work as being neutral. There are neutral workplaces and men and women go into them. But huge amounts of research have shown just how gendered the very concept of work is as well as workplace cultures.  (Hearn 1992, Collinson and Collinson 1989, Rutherford 2011) We cannot look at the gender pay gap without acknowledging that men and women are situated differently in the labour market as well as in wider society. The public world of work has been developed around men’s lives and has largely remained unchanged despite women entering the workforce in huge numbers over the past forty years.

A second criticism following this is, as I wrote above, his lack of historical and cultural context.  His mistake is to assume that men and women started out at the same place and that the natural order or biology  makes men do certain jobs and women others and that is why the pay is different.  But women have only had the vote for one hundred years.   Women have only been allowed to graduate from universities for a similar amount of time. Women were barred from all the professions until the 1920’s and were only allowed on to the Stock Exchange floor in 1973.  Virginia Woolf wrote about women’s exclusion from the public world fifty years ago. Working class women  had to work to survive and different rules applied. But middle class women, once they were allowed to work, had to give it up when they married.  The marriage bar was not removed in certain professions until the late 1950’s and teaching until the early 1960’s. If anyone has any doubt about the resistance to women entering the workplace it is worth reading some of the accounts in Parliament at the time. What jobs women do and don’t do, can and cannot do has less to do with what they choose and more to do with the development of a labour market that has exploited their availability and lower social status. Let’s not forget that in 1970 before the implementation of the Equal Pay Act in 1975 it was legal to pay a woman less than a man for the same job… so the gender pay gap then was 48% – does Professor Peterson put this down to women’s choice?

Because Peterson argues that the uneven distribution of men and women in the workplace is a  matter of choice – ““Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them alone to do it of their own accord. We’ve already seen that in Scandinavia. It’s 20 to one female nurses to male… and approximately the same male engineers to female engineers,” he explains.”

The cultural attachments of work as male and female are incredibly powerful but they too can and do change and vary from culture to culture.  Women are now bus drivers – unthinkable only a matter of twenty five  years ago. When their work was required during the First World War women took over all manner of male jobs only to be pushed out of them at the end of the War. Men were secretaries before women were allowed to work. In India low caste women work in construction on the roads. There are some jobs which require physical strength which may suit men more than women but many of our ‘divisions’ today are pretty artificial and are more to do with cultural meanings and historical hangovers  than any real rational reason.

Skills are not neutral either, they are gendered and we value some over others.  So if we gauge  value by how much people are paid, in this country we value refuse collectors and train drivers more than we do cleaners and nurses. Why is this? Peterson seems to accept that being an engineer is a higher status job and therefore better paid than nursing but doesn’t ask why?

Why, if men and women are actually drawn to different types of work, is it  that men’s work is almost always better paid than women’s. Is it that women’s lower social status attaches itself to work which then assumes that lower status? When women enter highly prized areas of work dominated by men in great numbers, the status of that work will usually go down. 

What the gender pay gap did rather well was break down the quartiles making visible how heavily male the top of almost all organisations were. Professor Peterson suggests this is also a choice and  that women do not want to rise to these levels. How does he know this? Why is he accepting that long hours are a necessary part of the work itself and not just a cultural barrier which does a good job at keeping women out? In the 1970’s and 1980’s long hours as such didn’t exist like they do now but then there were other barriers more structural to keep women out of well-paid management positions.

Our working patterns have developed around the lives of men who had and still do have the ‘other side of life’ looked after for them. Women’s choice to have a family or a good career is not a choice. It is presented as one because the terms of the discourse have been set by men. Senior men can only do these jobs if the ‘other side of life’ is picked up by their partner or wife. If a woman has a partner who takes main responsibility for family and domestic life then she really does have a choice.

He also cites women’s predisposition to agreeableness, one of the  Big Five personality traits as a reason they are not in more senior positions at work. He sees this agreeableness  as conflicting with organisational hierarchies where people (men) with less agreeableness are better at negotiating and demanding higher paid and more powerful positions. So women remain in lower positions in an organisation.

There is another way of looking at this.  Peterson  says that women’s nurturing instincts which required her to be on demand and agreeable twenty four hours a day  for the first nine months of a baby’s life possibly tuned her nervous system which whilst suitable for the unspoken demands of a baby  made her less suitable for the demands of business and dealing.

If we use the biology discourse then how about  we also say that a woman’s programming for looking out for her young may make her much better at multitasking, time management and forecasting  future risk in business, some things men are not so good at? Indeed there was a flurry of academic research on this particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It was contended that women balanced out men’s tendency to exaggerate, be impulsive, be too blinkered and speculative.  I have argued elsewhere that the skills women learn at home are invaluable to being a good manager. Yet they are still rarely acknowledged or valued.

Academics  have questioned the value placed on status seeking and risk taking in business – masculinity here could be problematized as being an impediment to success, rather than women not fitting the mould.   Emphasising women’s difference to men is fraught with difficulties as it tends to be used to justify women’s inequality and leads to essentialism. In the end it is not about difference it is about what is valued.

I think women have changed more than men.  Today men are having to adapt to a world where women are  learning beside them, working beside them, competing with them and there seems to be some resistance. Instead of pandering to youthful  male insecurities which fans the flame of resentment  by blaming feminism,  Professor Peterson would help his young fan base so much more by imploring them to open up, talk about their  concerns and learn to embrace women as their equals.

 

This morning’s reaction to the poor excuses made by some of the FTSE 350 leaders as to why they had no or only one woman on their boards is a good reminder of how far thinking and action on gender in the boardroom has actually come. Some of the views expressed by leaders, which may have been  acceptable ten years ago,  have been condemned as pitiful, sexist and patronising.

I was lucky enough to become a non-executive director of a FTSE 250 company nearly fifteen years ago. So I recognise all the excuses in the report, as well as some that leaders would probably not utter to an interviewer today.

The timing of my appointment in 2003 was not a coincidence.  The Higgs Report on the Role and Effectiveness of Non-Executive Directors had been published the year before in 2002 and it recommended that companies cast their nets wider for their non-executive roles.

An enlightened headhunter had heard about me and approached me for a position. To be honest at the time it wouldn’t have crossed my mind as I certainly didn’t  have the ‘right’ sort of career path to get on to a board. So I was grateful to Derek Higgs, the timing and of course the lovely headhunter. But I was also lucky that the small board I joined were welcoming and appointed me despite my ‘different background’.  There was a risk in that and I know that the headhunter worked very hard in persuading the directors that I was going to be an asset to them.  My research has showed that men’s attitudes to sharing power with women is an important factor in determining how many women can progress in an organisation.

The headhunter  warned me about why I may not get a position and it wasn’t my lack of management experience. ‘You will be  considered too  young, and too pretty,’ and another  ‘Luckily you are married as they don’t want anyone who is divorced’. I had to keep very quiet (even to the headhunter) as I was about to embark on a very messy divorce at the time.  I certainly heard a member from my own board when recruiting another non-executive, say ‘we don’t want another different person’ clearly meaning they already had one! And then he looked across at me rather apologetically as he realised what he had said!

I don’t hold any grudges at all.  At that time I and other women were  breaking into a cosy all male club which isn’t comfortable for either side. I understood that. I learned from them and am extremely grateful for the experience.

The Davies Review, which introduced targets and the threat of quotas if they were not met by 2015 has resulted in boards finding women who were invisible to them before.  Importantly since 1999 there has been a consistent annual monitoring of women on boards  by  Professor Susan Vinnicombe’s team at Cranfield School of Management aka the Female FTSE 100 Report.  This keeps the pressure up and we know that what gets measured gets done.

Today’s report says that 10 of the FTSE 350 companies still do not have a single female board member. However this is a vast improvement since the Davies Review on Women on Boards published in early 2011 when  over one half of them had no women in the boardroom at all.  In 2011 only 7.8% of all main board directors were women and this increased to 21% last year. Acknowledging progress is as important as highlighting areas that still need improvement. Attitudes take a while to change but in this area I would say that they have changed pretty quickly. The executive  positions are a different matter and quite rightly attention is being turned to improving figures there.

 

Professor Jordan Peterson faced little opposition to speaking at the Oxford Union last week. In fact by all accounts he was welcomed  at Oxford University despite his very public and consistent criticism of aspects of trans activist ideology . This is in stark opposition to leading feminists who have been no platformed in other universities for similar views. And to the violent protests that met women meeting in Oxford recently just to debate the consequences of any changes to Gender Recognition Act.

Professor Peterson has been in trouble at his own university in Toronto, Canada because of rejecting a rule forcing him to use particular pronouns of someone’s choice. In fact it was this suspension that made him something of a global star. He argues pretty persuasively that we do not choose our identity – it is something that is negotiated in society and is constantly in flux. Using gender identity as a social category rather than sex has led to 31 different gender identities being recognised in the state of New York and he says it is absurd and unworkable. And that it is undemocratic for a tiny percentage of the population to impose changes in language which everyone else is forced to  use. He sees it as an attack on free speech.

Yet even questioning the right of biological men to claim to be a woman (self ID) ‘I am a woman because I say I am’ has been enough for a number of well-known feminists to be barred from speaking publicly about anything!  Germaine Greer, whose work was life changing for many women of my generation,  faced fierce opposition to  speaking at Cardiff University and still faces abuse because of her views (she is speaking though at Oxford Union next month) ; Julie Bindel, a campaigner against male violence was no platformed by Manchester University  and  Linda Bellos, a lifelong feminist activist was banned from speaking at Cambridge University. All three are critical of the transgender ideology, particularly of self ID. Why  is that  Professor Peterson, who  is  dismissive of  feminism, was applauded almost unreservedly  at Oxford yet women who have been activists and done huge amounts to promote the equality of women are being silenced because of views that they actually share with Peterson? Is it because he has an adoring fan club of mostly young men?

 

The last minute and presumably reluctant release of their gender pay gap reports earlier this month by the majority of companies with over 250 employees warned us that there would be some difficult reading.  No doubt hoping theirs would be buried in the swamp of thousands of others if they left it to the last day shows that leaders know full well some of the inequalities that still exist in their organisations. I know that in some instances PR consultants as well as lawyers have been hauled in to restore any brand reputational damage.

Yes the gender pay gap is a clumsy measure. To know that there are more men at the top of almost all organisations is nothing new to us, but it is still uncomfortable to see this uneven representation when it is laid out in statistics. And as well, to see this vertical segregation of men and women result in some huge pay disparities. But the exercise is useful because by looking closely at the figures we can also use them to see where more work or even some work needs to be done.

Vertical and horizontal segregation

The publication of the quartiles is revealing and these numbers are invaluable to companies in any gender audit. In the vast majority of organisations   women dominate the bottom two quartiles and it switches for the next higher two.  Looking at ways to promote women into more senior positions is on most companies’ to do diversity list and efforts can be redoubled. The missing statistic which I am sure companies may have themselves and should also look at it is in which divisions in the organisation men and women are working. Horizontal segregation is as important as vertical segregation. Who works where and what is the impact on gender pay differentials? Are women over represented in certain departments? Which departments are most valued? This should provoke a debate on the meaning of value and whether it is time to address some of the assumptions that dictate levels of pay.

A further line of questioning for organisations is this. Is there a correlation between the highly paid parts of an organisation and their cultures? Does the culture operate to exclude and/or marginalise women from the most highly prized parts of a company?  In my experience this is very often what happens and my survey is designed to capture this kind of exclusion / marginalisation.

 A useful measure of success of diversity initiatives

The gender pay audits can be used as a measure of success of gender diversity initiatives. Organisations are part of a wider labour market with its own inequalities and that itself is part of wider society where there is still gender inequality. So  there are limits on what can be done. But some organisations have worked hard over many years to achieve better representation of women throughout their organisations and it is interesting for these companies to see when and to what extent the work has paid off. Certainly a company like National Grid which has invested in many years of diversity work shows that even a numerically male dominated organisation can still achieve good results in gender parity.

Women at National Grid make up less than a third of the bottom quartile but are still nearly a quarter of the top quartile – a far less differential than in many female dominated companies. And the pay gap is much smaller than the average with women’s   median hourly rate being only 1.9% lower than men’s.

A female dominated company, Marks and Spencer also started implementing equal opportunities policies years and years ago like other retailers with predominantly female workforces.  Women’s representation throughout the organisation is fairly consistent and two thirds of the top quartile are women with 75% in the lowest quartile. The median pay gap is very low at 3.3% (mean 12.3%)

However some organisations have found it difficult to achieve good results despite a focus on gender equality and diversity. Goldman Sachs has been noisy enough about gender equality over the years. It has even won an Opportunity Now award a few years  for its initiative 10,000 Women  which  aimed to provide  microfinance for this number of women in Africa. However closer to home it is struggling to get women into senior positions. Only 17% of the top quartile are women whilst 62.4% of the lowest quartile are. Women’s mean hourly rate is 55.5% lower than men’s and median rate 36.4% lower.

The bonus gap

Almost everywhere I looked, whatever the size of the median hourly pay gap, the bonus gap was way, way bigger. Goldman Sachs, renowned for its huge remuneration packages, published a whopping 72.2% mean bonus pay gap (67.7% median).

And in organisations where the pay gap hourly rate figures were ‘good’, these were often not matched by similar size bonus gap figures. At Marks and Spencer  although more women  (76%)  than men (66%)  received bonus pay the bonus pay gap is vastly skewed in favour of the minority of men, with the gender gap shooting to 53% mean (15.9% median) lower for women. I do think the mean is important to look at when talking about bonuses because these large gaps mean the figures are being skewed by some very large numbers at the top, an important part of the story.

Ernst & Young, another organisation with an exemplary history of diversity and inclusion work, reported a 15% pay gap with 35% of women making up the top quartile. Yet when it came to bonuses a similar pattern emerged. Women’s mean bonus pay was 43.5% lower than men’s and women’s median bonus pay is 35.2% lower than men’s.

McKinsey has been consulting on and researching the benefits of gender diversity for a number of years now, publishing their reports Diversity Matters annually. The management consultancy had reasonably good statistics for women in the top quartile… 35% were women compared to the bottom quartile where 60% were women and the median hourly rate was a little below the average at 14.3%. However these relatively good figures get blown out of the water with the publication of their bonus figures.  Women’s mean bonus pay was 76% lower than men’s and 52.5% lower than men’s (median).

Whilst companies sought to explain differences in pay by the fact that there were not enough women in senior positions they were pretty silent on the bonus differences.

Comment

The pattern I see in these reported figures is consistent. It is that whatever the demographic of the organisation, or how evenly distributed men and women are throughout an organisation, there exists a top most senior group of predominantly men whose pay is so high it skews the figures dramatically (you can tell this from the mean averages of bonuses as against the median).

It is to be applauded that bonuses were included in the reporting requirements as one of the biggest obscurers of pay is the bonus culture. The accepted use of the bonus system to pay men disproportionately more than women needs to be challenged.

The glass ceiling is in fact very flexible… it shifts like cling film to protect the most elite, the most powerful and the best paid in any organisation. Yes, we are talking at this level about the kind of salaries few of us would dream of, but the exposure and analysis of this is important when addressing the lack of women in leadership roles.

Gender Pay Gaps –   further reflection on the BBC pay debacle

I have been spending time looking at some of the 2017 Gender Pay Gap Reports  in some detail and will be writing on them shortly but so far I have not found anything that has disappointed me as much as the huge gender pay chasm that was revealed in the publication of the BBC’s most highly paid stars last July.

However that may be because none of the companies have voluntarily published any actual earnings figures which is how what got the BBC into such trouble.  The interesting fact is that despite the BBC UK having a relatively low gender pay gap of 9% (published following its equal pay audit last year), and nearly half its employees being women almost throughout the organisation, this huge gender disparity of pay in the highly paid quartile can still occur. So we would probably be equally disappointed by actual earnings disparities if other companies did publish them.  Judging by the size of some of the reported pay gaps, these senior male executives must be paid very well indeed to skew the results so heavily, even in female dominated companies.

I bring up the BBC pay revelation of last year because it needs ongoing attention, shining a light on what may be happening elsewhere. I found the article written by Sarah Montague in the Sunday Times this week quite heart wrenching. On the face of it this was gender discrimination of the most odious kind.  This is not a cut throat profit driven investment bank but a publicly funded organisation that likes to think of itself as politically correct in every way. Complicated remuneration packages have made it very difficult to compare salaries, making inequality of pay hard to establish. But to sit side by side with someone ostensibly doing the same job for so many years only to find he is valued at nearly five times more than you are must be devastating. I will not reiterate her experience but I am glad she has written this   and as she says there will be literally thousands of women who are being underpaid compared to their male colleagues without them knowing. It is only by insisting on further transparency than the current gender pay reports require that any of us can know.

Postnote: BBC Worldwide (as opposed to just the UK) published their Gender Pay Gap Report  and the gap measured nearer 17%.

Diary of a gendered world – February 20^th 2014

I have in front of me two pieces of research on gender at work and the lack of women in senior leadership both published by large influential corporates. The first one is McKinsey’s latest  report, Moving Mindsets on Gender Diversity and the second one is  Winning Hearts and Minds – How CEOs talk about gender parity  published by Kings’ College and written by Elisabeth Kelan with the support of KPMG.

I have  also just  been listening to Radio 4 PM on the radio and hearing the horrific account of a twenty year woman in Northern India who has been gang raped by thirteen men at the request of a village elder. She is in an acute condition in hospital and of course there is discussion now in the media  about the high incidence of rape and sexual violence in India – a discussion that only really began eighteen months ago following the brutal gang rape and subsequent death of a young physiotherapist on a bus in New Delhi….

Much as I believe the sincerity of the two corporate reports and the desire for change within organisations, only when we as a society begin to make the link between these and the gang rape in India will any meaningful change take place….

 

postnote…I still believe this to be true. We must try to link the macro picture of women’s lives everywhere with the micro we focus on when it comes to working for gender equality.

Frances McDormand got right to the nub of it with her acceptance words last night at the Oscars in Los Angeles.  Asking every woman who had been nominated for an Oscar to stand up  and then saying to the rest of the audience… look, women have their own stories, give us the finance to make them!

Sexual harassment is but a symptom of the core problem in the film industry which McDormand exposed last night. Power and money behind the scenes determine the movies, both in what is made and how it is made and who is in them.  And this background picture is very male. The concentration of this power in the hands of men has resulted in the abuse, exploitation and arguably over sexualisation and stereotyping of women in film. This is the #timesup story now.  Women need to make their own movies, tell their own tales.   A recent study conducted by San Diego State University, looked at the top 250 films at the US box office in 2017 and found that women make up only 11% of the directors. This has risen from a mere 7% in 2016. And 83% of all films had no female writers at all. For all its liberal polish Hollywood is still back in the dark ages when it comes to women’s equality.

Perhaps uniquely the film industry has the ability to contribute to ideology in a way few other industries can. What we see on screen not only mirrors but shapes what we see in society. It is almost always men’s standpoint we see when we go to the cinema no matter what gender the actors on the screen.   Only one woman director, Kathryn Bigelow has ever won an Oscar (The Hurt Locker). Greta Gerwig got the fifth ever Oscar nomination to a female director this year for Ladybird (in the award’s 90 year history).  Actresses with enough clout are now  producing their own films and TV series as  they find the choice of parts limited and/or stereotyped.   Recent female led productions like Big Little Lies, produced by Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon and Margot Robbie’s I Tonya among others are telling stories through women’s eyes…   The celluloid ceiling is now being challenged and it is high time.

Further interesting statistics can be found here.

Other commentators have talked of men feeling victimised so it is not just Matthew Parris. I suggest that the discomfort that men and indeed some women are feeling about the current stories involving men’s behaviour to women is actually a profound discomfort with women’s anger.  Because the #MeToo and #Times Up movements are  not a joined up feminist campaign with a strategy but symptoms of women’s anger and women do have a lot to be angry about. I first discovered that it was ok for women to be angry when I read Mary Daly’s extraordinary polemic Gyn/Ecology at university many moons ago. I also learned quickly that angry women are punished culturally so it is not surprising that we have seen so little of women’s anger expressed in history… the suffragettes and the second wave feminists certainly but both were described/ dismissed as harridans, harpies and generally disgraceful examples of women at the time.  But in the face of how women and girls are treated at the hands of men all over the world is there any other reaction that is more appropriate than anger? This is righteous anger and because it has been repressed for so long sometimes it may not look pretty.  Women are not used to being angry and men are not used to seeing it.

Several years ago I took part in a group analytical weekend on Gender, Sex and Power. You can guess that there were not many men on it but those that were, were all supportive, pro-feminist men. On day three a woman recounted that she had been followed and threatened by a man on her walk home the evening before. This had the effect of bringing out comments from other women about men’s behaviour they found upsetting. The anger of women in that group was being expressed quite cautiously but was palpable. Of all places this was a therapeutic setting and should have felt safe. However the men were deeply unsettled and felt attacked (sort of like Matthew Paris). One man even jumped up and left the group, followed by a couple of others. The male facilitator lost control of the group and the women were left with their angry feelings now mixed with that familiar feeling of guilt at having caused men to be angry. Yes it is complex and difficult. I suggest that this is what is taking place today. We do not have sufficient language and experience of discussing these issues. I understand it must be hard as a man to hear how your own sex behaves towards women, and to want to distance yourself from it, but the lid is off and we know that blame can no longer be put at the feet of a few perverted men. Sexism and misogyny are enmeshed in the fabric of most cultures in different ways and must be worked through for us all to move forward.

I like Matthew Parris; I like a lot of his work even if I don’t always agree with him. He has got a bit obsessive over the Brexit decision which I can only think has tainted his usual intelligence and empathy. Or else feminism really has got an awful lot of work to do. It is worrying for women if a ‘liberal minded’ man of considerable intellect has failed to grasp even the basics of feminism. His particular complaint aired on the Today programme this morning is that there has been too much media coverage of women and women’s issues and many men like him are beginning to feel victimised. This is astonishing and particularly disappointing at a time when women are celebrating 100 years of having the vote. And to talk of being victimised in the light of readily available statistics showing that women are still murdered by their partners or ex partners at the rate of two a week, domestic violence is rife as is rape and sexual harassment – is frankly narcissistic as well as disrespectful.

The Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson did all women proud with some brilliant responses to Matthew Parris’s complaints.  So engrained is our masculine bias in all things cultural that when women dominate any platform even once, it feels strange and can provoke cries of ‘unfair’ from men. But it is women now who are saying they are fed up with the years of domination everywhere and in many forms by men. It is not a coincidence that Today has a female editor, Sarah Sands and her touch on the programme’s content is evident and welcome.  I know that many men are threatened by the increasing independence and voice of women but I would never have counted Matthew Parris as one of them. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, so Matthew hang on to your hat, there is a lot more to come.