It’s almost 40 years since US management consultant Marilyn Loden coined the phrase “the glass ceiling” to describe the sometimes-invisible barrier to success many women come up against in their careers.
n 2022, the term should be redundant, but according to the CSO, only 13pc of CEOs in Ireland are women, so there is still a long way to go.
“The reality of the situation is that the difficulties faced by women have not diminished despite the focus on equality, diversity and inclusion,” says Professor Christine Cross of University of Limerick. “Attempts by multinationals to address gender imbalance have been successful in that what gets measured gets done.
“When there are very specific targets, great strides have been made. But there has been very little progress in the last 10 to 15 years [when it comes to the top jobs]. Compare this to the UK, where they are now at over 30pc due to very strong influencing factors for publicly quoted companies to ensure targets are met.”
While women head marketing and human resources departments, says Prof Cross, they rarely hold either of the two senior roles — CFO and COO — that are most likely to progress to CEO.
“It goes all the way back to education choices,” she says. “Girls are shying away from economics at Leaving Certificate and very few take economics at university.”
Another factor is “the leaky pipeline”.
“Girls and boys graduate from third-level in roughly equal numbers,” Prof Cross says. “They start their careers at similar roles and salaries, but 15 years later, women have fallen behind. One of the reasons is that the burden of caring responsibilities still falls mainly on women. In a relationship, if one person is to take time out, it’s going to be the person with the lower salary. This links back to the fact that when women are in a salary setting, they don’t negotiate for a higher salary against their male colleagues. Hopefully, the gender pay gap reporting requirement will make a difference here.”
Averil Power is CEO of the Irish Cancer Society, where 50pc of the senior leadership — and the majority of staff and volunteers — is female. It’s very different to when she was one of only two women in the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party.
“It’s almost as if we have the opposite problem,” she says. “In the charity sector it can be a challenge to attract enough men. I’m passionate about diversity of all kinds in the workplace; it makes the decision-making better. It must be led from the top. It’s important to be vocal about it and to match the talk with action, not just a token IWD event once a year.”
Cathy Kearney, VP operations at Apple in Ireland and head of its Cork Campus, agrees, saying: “We believe diversity spurs innovation.”
Globally, Apple’s workforce has seen an 89pc increase in the number of female employees since 2014, with 47pc of open leadership roles in the past year filled by women.
Irish Rail is part of a traditionally male-dominated industry, with just 11pc of its workforce female. In senior roles that rises to 17pc, with 60pc of the board female. The company runs a Women in Rail network, facilitates Lunch and Learn sessions with senior managers and is proactive in developing a range of programmes to assist women in their career progression.
“We have three leadership programmes specifically aimed at women at different career-stages,” says talent management executive Sinead Keelan. “The first two are stepping stones towards our year-long Women in Leadership Programme, which involves masterclasses and one-to-one coaching to support career planning.”
Another business with initiatives to support women in their careers is Aldi, which offers the highest rates of pay in the supermarket sector and pays all employees equally, based on their role and length of service.
The Irish Wheelchair Association is led by CEO Rosemary Keogh; its board is 43pc female and its senior management team 44pc female. The organisation acknowledges that “while our stats stack up quite well with more work to be done, it’s a continuous improvement journey”.
“We don’t believe we can stand still,” a spokesperson says. “Led from the top, we aim to foster a culture of personal growth and supported development where everyone can continue to deepen their knowledge, skills and impact at all stages of their career journey.”
At employment website Indeed, Glenda Kirby, vice-president of client success, leads the Women at Indeed group.
“Although cracks are appearing in glass ceilings across the world, there is still much work to be done, especially when it comes to breaking down traditional, male-centric leadership strategies in times of crisis,” she says.
“The pandemic has taught us that traditional leadership styles can be ineffective. Right now, it’s clear that the world, and business, needs compassionate leadership.
“One way companies can help encourage women in leadership is to platform their voices at every stage. The goal of Women at Indeed is to increase awareness of the barriers women still face in the workplace and introduce corporate accountability.
“We measure success by reviewing the impact our resource group is having on the business. Our hope is that it gives women a platform that elevates them into future leadership roles.”
LinkedIn has a range of initiatives to ensure women are equally represented in leadership roles, and moved away from a “one-size-fits-all-model when it came to addressing the challenges of the pandemic.
“The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report published last year highlighted that Covid-19 took a harder toll on women’s careers than men’s,” says Sharon McCooey, head of Linked-In in Ireland.
“In many cases, lockdown saw women step up to take more responsibility for children at the cost of stepping back at work. Our own LinkedIn data showed a slowdown in women being hired into leadership roles during the pandemic, a particularly worrying development when you consider their influence on steering an organisation’s long-term progress towards gender equality.”
UL’s Prof Cross says: “In the wake of the pandemic, women feel pressured into managing working from home plus all the caring. They are being squeezed. Pre-Covid, they had to leave the house at a particular time to get to work, they couldn’t do domestic tasks during the day. Now if they have 10 minutes between calls, they are expected to put on a wash or get the dinner ready.”
Ms McCooey of LinkedIn says: “Plans for a post-pandemic business world cannot simply focus on reopening of offices. Companies must ensure that diversity is hardwired into their plans and culture also. This means engaging with their staff to develop progressive policies that are fair and empowering for women; investing in programmes to boost the representation of women in senior roles in an organisation; and tackling the root causes of inequality in the workplace.”
For Prof Cross, who spent two decades in industry before joining UL, it is frustrating that so little has changed since her own experience of the glass ceiling.
“I was at the receiving end of discrimination at the time and didn’t realise it,” she says. “It’s only when we look back that we see it. Now we assume girls know all of this stuff, but they don’t. They still have equal expectations and don’t understand why they need special treatment. They don’t foresee the problems associated with being women.”
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