Editor's blog: Why the Davies Report won't make much difference to gender equality at work

29 Mar 2011 | Melanie Stern

Typical. Send a man to do a woman's job. In this case, Lord Davies, who was asked by the government to examine the low percentage of women on the boards of British businesses and has, in his findings, not recommended quotas – as was feared – but instead given guidance on how many women businesses should aim to have on their boards in two and four years.

A whole lot of guff, hyperbole, spin and complete crap has been written about the topic of female representation in business. The commentary on Lord Davies's report has generated a handsome contribution in its first 24 hours of publication. Longstanding claims of outright sexism holding women back from the corridors of power abound to the extent that we've considered "positive" discrimination (quotas) to replace emotional responses with legally bound ones.

In the end, Lord Davies recommended that FTSE-100 chairmen "should aim for a minimum of 25 percent female representation by 2015 – and we expect that many will achieve a higher figure". He add that chairmen of FTSE-350 companies "should set out the percentage of women they aim to have on their boards in 2013 and 2015". FTSE-100 chairmen "should announce their aspirational goals" by September 2011, and all quoted businesses will be required to disclose annually the proportion of women on the board and in senior executive positions as well as female employees in the whole organisation. He asked the Financial Reporting Council to amend the UK Corporate Governance Code "to require listed companies to establish a policy concerning boardroom diversity, including measurable objectives for implementing the policy, and disclose annually a summary of the policy and the progress made in achieving the objectives".

That's something, but it doesn't tackle what I see as the one fact guiding the way the business world, and society in general, looks at the issue. Until men have wombs, women will drop out of the workforce with increasing regularity the further up the food chain you travel. To me, that has long seemed an indisputable fact that completely eludes the guff-gathering debate on why there are so few women on the boards of British businesses.

I'll let you into a secret that I hope will explain why I think this is the case. I speak as a 31-year-old woman professional, ten years in my trade, having started at the very bottom and risen to a reasonably senior level of management. I am not yet ready to have children, but I know that I want to at some stage and I've given plenty of thought to how I could progress professionally while having a family. I've failed to find a solution so far. Kicking ideas on the future around – perhaps be an owner of a business in another decade or a senior executive within a large business. Maybe I'd like to be an adviser to other companies at the same time. I'd certainly like to travel with work.

First, to the practical issues. It would be my wish that I could devote myself completely to being a mum for the first crucial years of my child's life, not have to slot it in between shifts and meetings as so many women incredibly manage to do. So this means my partner will probably need to be the sole breadwinner for a few years. Alas, I've always been the one with the earning power. I don't know what the cost of raising a family is, but I'll presume it's not cheap as there are so many families where both parents work full-time (and I imagine they'd rather not if they could afford not to). So I may have no choice but to work part-time while starting a family, as most of my friends with babies have done.

Now, to my professional concerns. Whatever job you do, business moves fast, and competition is strong and constant for the better roles. If I were to remove myself from the workforce for a few years to enjoy being a mum, I worry that I would simply be forgotten by my market. At any rate, contacts may move on, I may not hear from them as I used to, and I'll have no recent work to show a prospective employer.

I'd be wanting a role at the level or above the level of my current job, so I'd be looking at a job that involves a lot of sustained pressure, long hours, constant meetings and calls, a lot of time to think, possibly travelling, and a lifestyle that leaves little room for myself, let alone a family. That has been a fact of corporate life for aeons – the very best on British boards are energised and find their creativity and value boosted by this environment, no doubt – and it necessarily attracts individuals who enjoy it, even if it stresses them out and accounts for divorce rates. It isn't going to change. So I'd have to accept that and most likely subjugate my own needs and those of my family to give my work the attention it needs, to demonstrate that I bring as much value as a man who may not be juggling these things in the same way.

Juggling depends on organisation and on the success of the structures around you. But life doesn't work that way, so it is bound to be even more stressful to juggle work and babies than to do one or the other. Returning to that after a few years out could be very difficult. The risk of seeming out of touch with the reality of my market by the time I'm returning to work – having to juggle school runs, mumps and fevers and half term with being at every meeting and hitting every deadline, presentations, exploiting every opportunity and delivering every time – is high. You have to be seen and heard to be remembered, and I fear that being out of work to be a mum could prove, for me, at odds with that necessity of business life.

If only my partner could give birth to our future child! I could operate as men of my dad's generation did, kissing the baby goodbye for a week as I sail off to a conference in some far-flung locale, with goodnight phone calls, and lots of hugs and kisses from my family on my much-awaited return. If my partner was devoted to full time parenthood, I could devote myself to full-time work at a high level, and have the Holy Grail: everything I want on a silver platter.

But my generation doesn't think this way and neither does my partner. I know lots of hard-working mums: all of them chose jobs that were less involved, closer to home and part-time on their return to work. It is just the accepted next step if you need or want to come back. No one starts looking for a more stressful job with even more time demands than a straight 9-to-5, because they must – and want to – look after their children, be there to pick them up from school at 3.30pm, be there to care for them when they get measles, entertain them in half term, and so on.

I can think of two women I know who returned to their previous jobs after having children; they were managed out swiftly, the thinking being that the job could not be done on a part-time basis, but the law did not allow the company to say that out loud. It's not fair, but it is business. If you want to succeed as a woman in business, you must learn to be flexible to the state of play while constantly defending your position, rather than viewing instances like that as discriminatory and simply getting nowhere. It's hard enough without children: perhaps women see that and, as their work becomes more demanding, they choose their family and having a life over their subjugation. Men have never had to make that choice, so I imagine Lord Davies won't be able to get under the skin of that kind of thought process.

As for me, I'm no nearer to a solution. I know of two group FDs running quoted businesses who are female and had their first children in the last year. I asked both what it was like to manage work and children. Neither complains, neither seems stressed; perhaps both have nannies or outside help. One came back to work quite soon after having her children in the middle of a financial crisis and talked about relying on her finance team more; the other said that business carried on as usual because she conducts regular meetings as conference calls from her home some two and half hours from her work.

It can be done, and done effectively. But the issue Lord Davies' report tackles is not one of discrimination, as women who are capable, professional, determined and talented will always be able to make it to the top if they want to. The issue is one of choice, time and biology. I don't want to juggle forever and ever. I want to devote myself to being a mum when the time comes. If I do, do I risk becoming irrelevant in my market over the time I am away and finding it hard to compete on my return? And any weakness, real or perceived, is a risk to both sexes in business.

There is only one gender that can have children at present. Women carry that burden and privilege alone; they cannot all simply hand over their progeny to a wet nurse five minutes after giving birth to stride back in to the boardroom among the bulls and the bears without making big personal sacrifices. And this is not just "women's problems". Business is losing out on precious skills, ideas, talent and value-creating ability at a time when our economy desperately needs much more, because there is no easy solution to the aforementioned problem. Men suffer too: they want to be involved in their children's lives, but they remain clear on the expectation that they will not make any less contribution or be any less visible for having dared to have a family. They are often juggling too. And for many men, being the breadwinner remains important. Women too now face those precise issues. But why do we still see child-rearing as essentially a woman's preserve when repopulating the earth is a game of two sides?

We need government to push the agenda for change, not simply guide us on what is nice to have. Flexible working has become more common among businesses but it has hit the glass ceiling at the partner and board level. The current working week is still too inflexible, and attitudes to what constitutes value from a senior individual are still too old-fashioned. Why must flexible hours apply just to parents (most often women), effectively stigmatising them? The structures around working life are a generation or two behind the shape of the modern family, the modern man and the modern woman. Quotas would only add to any stigma women face in competing for board roles, because it must be a fiercely competitive, gender-less process to carry any credibility.

Asking the FRC to write diversity guidelines into the corporate governance code is fine, but it casts women in a role as "The Other", or even as The Second Sex that Simone de Beauvoir wrote about in 1949. Restructure the way society looks at working hours and working life for all, not just women, and you'll be on the road to emancipation. Think like a first-world country, don't just talk like one. If women and men can take time off to be with their kids or to be with their DVD collections with equal ease and without guilt or pressure – and if we can trust that most of the workforce can responsibly handle this – we may have a more enlightened, productive workforce prepared for the challenges of the 21^st century. And chairmen may not be required to do even more pointless box ticking.