Men still win at work, so why the pushback?

Opinion

Equality within the workplace benefits both people and profit — yet there is push for tides to turn back towards traditional roles.

The most puzzling part of the current backlash against further progress in gender equality at work is that men are still winning so emphatically.

What’s more, it is the under-30s who are most likely to say, “things have gone too far” and would welcome a return to more traditional roles.

I have personally benefitted from changing attitudes

As a woman who was the first in my family to go to university and has enjoyed a career littered with “first woman to…” moments, I find this advocacy for predetermined roles based on the accident of birth sex maddening and slightly bewildering.

As a child I bore witness to my mother’s profound disappointment with the paucity of opportunities available to her and benefitted from her encouragement and belief that it would be better for me.

And it has been.

I made it to Girton College, Cambridge to read economics only 30 years after the university started giving women degrees. That achievement was foundational for everything that followed for me.

My career has been full of the twists and turns typical of anyone who is challenging the perceived natural order of things.

After having achieved the accolade of being the first woman promoted to the board at the ad agency I worked in, I was subsequently fired whilst I was on maternity leave.

Following the discovery that I had post-natal depression, and without any discussion with me, the predominantly male board resolved it was best for me if I didn’t return to work.

That led to me founding my own marketing consultancy before returning to mainstream employment, as my children grew older, at big corporates like BT and Aviva.

The opportunity to reinvent and start my own business was thanks to women being able to open their own bank accounts and enjoy financial independence courtesy of the Sex Discrimination Act passed just 20 years earlier in 1975.

A piece of legislation that also meant I was paid according to the value of my role in the business, independently benchmarked, regardless of my gender or whether I had children or not.

I witnessed the oppression of my mother

Whilst it wasn’t without its setbacks, I have enjoyed a very different life to the one afforded to my mother.

Born in 1924 and one of twelve children brought up in a vicarage in a Lancashire mining town, the segregation of the sexes began with the attitude of her parents.

Her eight brothers were encouraged to go to university and imagine any professional role would be open to them. In contrast she and her sisters were told the options were to “teach or go into the factory”.

Needless to say, having done well at school, they all chose the teaching route. But I remember my Aunt Jean, who became a deputy head at a London state school, wistfully recalling how much she had wanted to be a journalist.

And my mother, who was an accomplished artist, explaining she would have chosen to be an interior designer.

The only way my mother could break away was to answer an ad in The Times and take on a teaching contract in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

My grandfather was horrified but she was determined to break free and travel.

When she got a holiday job as a stewardess as an ingenious way to travel around South America her headmistress intervened and stopped her, saying it would “bring the school into disrepute”.

Once she had children she stopped teaching, as was the custom of the time, and occupied her time by fuelling her own children to have bigger lives than she had been able to.

Her advice was to go as far as I could with my education, avoid getting married, have children late and imagine I could be Prime Minister — if I put my mind to it.

Progress, but not enough

Today we have significant numbers of women in leadership roles in politics, business, academia and almost every walk of life.

Yet, men continue to hold large advantages in the workplace, despite decades of focus on gender equality.

This includes higher pay, more access to high-status positions, and greater accumulation of wealth, even as women work more unpaid hours in domestic labour.

I recently attended a lecture given by Professor Cordelia Fine at Kings College, London University. She offered an insight into her latest book, Patriarchy Inc. What we get wrong about gender equality and why men still win at work.

Fine explained that finding a way to divide labour in an organised way is known to increase efficiency across all human societies. But she asks, how do we decide who does what, and why is this division of labour so often organised by sex?

She discussed two dominant frameworks that are often used to explain gender inequality in the workplace and society: the biological case and the business case.

The argument of the biological case

This posits that gender inequality is rooted in the biological differences between men and women.

Proponents argue that men’s and women’s different roles in reproduction, coupled with innate psychological traits and abilities, explain why men are typically more suited to leadership roles, competitive environments, or high-stress jobs.

It suggests men are naturally more driven by competition, assertiveness, and risk-taking, while women are inherently more nurturing, cooperative, and suited to caregiving roles.

Whilst easy to relate to, Fine argues this thinking is not only based on misinterpreted science but fails to recognise that gender roles are socially constructed.

From toys and games to educational expectations and career aspirations the way society shapes boys and girls into particular roles feeds into the patriarchal structure.

And yet this kind of sex-based fundamentalism in thinking about who does what at work is on the increase — especially with younger people.

The argument of the business case

Alternatively, the business case, typically put forward by diversity and inclusion professionals, is driven by the idea that gender equality benefits businesses and the economy.

Advocates of the business case argue by having more women in the workforce (especially in leadership positions) not only is it morally right but it also makes good business sense.

The business case highlights research that suggests companies with diverse leadership teams perform better, are more innovative, and have higher profitability.

It promotes gender equality as a strategic move that can lead to more efficient, productive, and competitive organizations.

Fine argues this argument is too focussed on the bottom line, reducing gender equality to a tool for profit rather than a moral or social imperative.

Women aren’t motivated to make companies more profitable

Giving women equal opportunities because it is more profitable hardly gets passions aroused.

When I compare it with the chants to “burn your bra” of the women’s liberation movement of my childhood it certainly doesn’t stack up.

I think we are in danger of forgetting the simple truth of how oppressive the patriarchy is for women and men.

It harms everyone, and breaking free from it benefits both men and women.

It is time for older men and women to talk to people under the age of 30 and help them to appreciate how terrible it would be for all of us if we go backwards instead of forwards.

Work is still needed across all generations to challenge the societal norms that perpetuate the system.