Why women's careers stall in their 30's

First results of survey show women are forced to chose between family and work.

Project 28-40, a research project  which aims to find out why women in their 30s fail to progress in their careers at the same rate as men, has released its first results.

Since November, 25,000 women and men have responded to an online survey aimed at learning more about women’s aspirations, the importance of role models, the usefulness of current career development opportunities and why women leave the workplace.

This, the organisers say, is the largest ever survey of women in the workplace to have been carried out in the UK. The idea is to listen to what women have to say and then take action to change the status quo.

The survey and analysis is being undertaken by Opportunity Now, a campaign run by Business in the Community to encourage better gender balance in leadership, a more flexible culture and unbiased recognition and reward  for all in the workplace. Opportunity Now is also one of the prime movers behind the Women on Boards campaign.

This project is focusing on women aged 28-40 because that is seen as the danger zone where the careers of men and women start to diverge and the pay gap starts to increase, Opportunity Now's director Kathryn Mawrockyi explained.

The first 10,000 responses have already been analysed - and initial results show that over 80 per cent of female respondents feel having children will affect their career progression.

Nearly 70 per cent believed that society expects women to put children before their careers, while two thirds believe work needed to be their number one priority if they wanted to succeed.

Over seven in ten felt conflicted to balance home and work and more than six out of ten felt under pressure to exceed in work and in the home.

Over 90 per cent believed that senior roles involved stress, long hours, pressure and high stress levels, while four out of five respondents believed that top businesswomen were portrayed as superwomen by the media.

Only 34 per cent believed that opportunities to progress are equal between women who have children and those who do not, and over 60 per cent believe flexible working still means working long hours.

However, nearly nine in every ten respondents believed that being a working mother enabled them to be a good role model to their children, provided balance in their lives and enabled them to provide a good life for their family.

In-depth analysis of the survey findings will continue until April. As part of this, between 11 and 28 February ten focus groups containing 8-10 participants will take place  in London, Leeds, Glasgow and Bristol, to explore the emerging themes of the survey in more detail.

Story published on Women's Views on News, February 20, 2014

Encouraging news for women in film

Films made by women 'more likely to make money', and help for female writers, directors and producers.

Employing more women in writing and directing roles makes sound business sense for the film industry, according to new research from the British Film Institute, BFI.

Analysis of the performance of UK films between 2010-2012 shows that a high percentage of the most successful and profitable independent British films had a female screenwriter and/or director.

But women are currently still under-represented in writing and directing roles in the film industry.

Of all UK independent films released between 2010 and 2012, just 11.4 per cent of the directors and 16.1 per cent of the writers were women.

However, 18.2 per cent of the directors and 37 per cent of the writers of the top 20 UK independent films over the same period were female.

And 30 per cent of the writers of profitable UK independent films were female.

Amanda Nevill, CEO of the BFI, said: “Women are creating stories and characters that resonate with 

audiences in the UK and around the world, and it’s encouraging, and absolutely no surprise, to see films 

from women writers in particular really making an impact.

“Frustratingly, overall the numbers of women in writing and directing roles remains low and there is still much work to do to ensure female voices can come through.”

Notable successes included Jane Goldman, with 'The Woman in Black' and 'Kick-Ass'; Phyllida Lloyd and Abi Morgan  and 'The Iron Lady'; Debbie Isitt  and 'Nativity 2', and Dania Pasquini and Jame English  with 'StreetDance 3D' and 'StreetDance 2 3D'.

A number of women also saw success on UK films which were financed by major studios in the USA, including Sarah Smith  and 'Arthur Christmas'; Susanna White and Emma Thompson on 'Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang'; Jane Goldman  with 'X-Men: First Class' and Lone Scherfig  and 'One Day'.

The research found that a number of successful female writers and directors were attached to more than one project, and many of the directors were also working in other media including television and theatre.

According to the BFI, this indicates that there is now a critical mass of women with established writing and directing careers.

The report also shows that films with female writers or directors were more likely to have female producers or executive producers, and have received financial support through BFI Lottery and BBC Films or Film4.

The report follows research from Creative Skillset, which showed that the number of women employed in the creative media industries grew by almost 16,000 between 2009 – 2012, with representation rising from 27 per cent to 36 per cent of the total workforce, reversing the decline seen between 2006 and 2009.

And Bird's Eve View, an organisation dedicated to supporting women filmmakers, has just launched FILMONOMICS, a business training programme consisting of six sessions on topics such as 'understanding audiences and building confidence' plus three months extra support from industry experts.

According to Birds Eye View, “The 21st century filmmaker needs to know about digital delivery, audiences, positioning and marketplace.

So participants on the FILMONOMICS programme 'will gain an understanding and knowledge of the business behind film, enabling them to make smarter, targeted and market aware decisions on all aspects of their own projects including areas such as positioning, collaboration with key practitioners, distribution methods and reaching audiences'.

FILMONOMICS is targeted at film teams of two, for example writer and director, producer and director or writer and producer.

Between them they must have a portfolio that includes production of a short film that has been screened at an international film festival or a feature film in development with a public funder or a published script and/or book. And either the writer or the director must be female.

Interested? The deadline for applications is 2 January 2014. To find out more, click here.

Story published on Women's views on News, December 4, 2014

Preview, Women in the Arts Festival

Three-day event in London to showcase female talent.

From 16-18 December the Women in the Arts festival will bring together women producers, writers, actors, poets, musicians, comedians, artists and directors to foster collaboration, build mutual support and to examine how we can help ourselves and each other to develop our work.

The festival, at the Tristan Bates Theatre, in London, will showcase 40 projects including staged readings, performances, showreels and arts installations.

Among them, performances of Request Programme, from the Siris Original Theatre Company of Sweden, starring Cecilia Nilsson and directed by Hedvig Claesson.

The storyline? Miss Rasch loves to listen to a radio show where people request music for their loved ones, near or far away. But who loves Miss Rasch?

Director Holly Maples will revive Rosanna Lowe's adaptation of the 1866 novel 'Madame Bovary' by French author Gustave Flaubert, with a rehearsed reading from Sarah Lawrie.

Both Maples and Lawrie said they were excited about revisiting and reworking this whirlwind of a script, which has such a well-drawn, complex female character, Emma, at its core.

Lowe writes, “Emma is far from a feminist character, but in her riding boots she does kick against the constraints of marriage and motherhood.

“She holds the reins at various points in the story, even if the story eventually carries her off to an ugly end which is, like her, messy, complicated, realistic.”

And there will be a performance of 'Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?' by Claire Dowie, a comedy about sexual stereotyping, well, ‘a fierce and subversive monologue about gender expectations and stereotypes, spoken by someone who doesn’t want to be a ‘girl’, doesn’t want to wear skirts, [but] does want to be John Lennon.

'What begins as frustration at the impracticality of the compulsory school skirt becomes an articulate and passionate invective against obligatory femininity.’

It was given SIX stars by the Edinburgh Evening News, which described it as “one of Fringe 2013 hidden gems ... hilarious, angry, empowering, political, confused, tragic, subversive but most of all, human ... 

Tour de force performances are few and far between. In this one-hour piece Dowie gives just that.”

Julie Ross will be performing her one-woman show 'Don't Ask the Lady...!', celebrating female songwriters of the 20th century, and Funbags Festive Frolics, from Funny Women Award semi-finalists Gemma 

Layton, Jo Burke and Jacqui Curran, will add a seasonal twist with a daft, dark, fast-paced mix of sketches, comedy songs and silliness.

The Women in the Arts Festival is co-produced by the So and So Arts Club, which is 'dedicated to building an artistic community through a series of interactive events', the The Actor's Centre and the Tristan Bates Theatre.

For details, keep an eye on their website. To purchase tickets, or reserve tickets for free but 'ticketed' events, click here.

Story published in Women's Views on News, December 6, 2013

New law will put women at the heart of overseas aid

Parliament debates bill to ensure aid spending advances gender equality.

The UK parliament is currently debating the Gender Equality and International Development Bill.

If it becomes law the Bill will force the Secretary of State for International Development consider the role of women in all government supported overseas aid initiatives.

It would place a statutory obligation on the UK government to consider the impact of its overseas aid spending on reducing gender inequality.

The Bill was introduced to Parliament by Conservative MP Bill Cash who believes women are ‘prime movers’ in poorer parts of the world.

'On a visit to India a few years ago... in the slums and among the ragpickers, it is women who are the driving force behind efforts to improve sanitation and water in Delhi and Mumbai.

'Dividing up the slum areas into sectors, they raise one or two rupees from these desperately poor people, including themselves; but because of the scale of those in deepest poverty, weekly and monthly they raise millions of rupees, which are then invested in localised water and sanitation projects,' Cash wrote recently in the New Statesman.

The Bill is supported by Water Aid, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and the Gender Rights and 

Equality Action Trust (GREAT) Initiative, a foundation to promote gender equality globally, established by writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, her husband Jason McCue and others.

Writing in the Huffington Post last week, singer and GREAT Initiative co-founder Karen Ruimy argued that gender inequality held back development.

“For instance early marriage and teenage pregnancy put a stop to the education of girls which means they cannot enter the workplace, which in turns slows down economic development.

“We also know that overseas aid can address or exacerbate gender inequality.

“For instance, a democratisation programme which fails to address the representation of women may lead to free and fair elections but may also lead to a male-dominated parliament.

“Women make up only 21 per cent of parliamentarians globally and it is critically important to address this.

“By considering the different needs of women and men in emergency situations, like the crises in Syria or the Philippines, or anywhere around the world that needs our provision and security, we can ensure that our aid is more effective and targets the most vulnerable in these situations, which is so often the women and girls.”

She told the Guardian, "In theory, gender equality should already exist, but we need to work on it every day," and she hopes the bill will inspire other European politicians to assess their legislation.

The Bill has crossparty government support so is likely to become law. It is believed to be the first to enshrine in law a commitment to reduce gender equality through aid disbursements.

Story published in Women's Views on News, January 22, 2014

Two female tech experts join LSEG board

...as industry increasingly looks to women to meet skills shortages.

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) appointed two leading female tech entrepreneurs to its board last week, which means there are now only two FTSE 100 companies with no women on their boards.

The two are Joanna Shields and Sherry Coutu.

Shields is currently chief executive of Tech City, the government-backed initiative to help new technology companies. She is changing her role there, and will now be chair.

She has over 25 years of experience building global technology businesses, having held senior executive roles at Facebook, AOL and Google.

In 2013, she created the UK government backed 'Future Fifty' acceleration programme which is to nurture and support high growth businesses in the UK. She also serves as a non-executive director of 

TalkTalk Telecom Group Plc and as a member of Mayor Boris Johnson's London Smart Board.

Shields told the Independent she would continue to champion the UK’s digital industry as chairman of Tech City UK and in her role as business ambassador.

Sherry Coutu is on the board of computer firm Raspberry Pi, Artfinder, Cambridge University’s finance board, Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press, as well as on advisory boards to Linkedin and Care.com and a number of not-for-profit companies in the technology and education sector.

She has more than 20 years of experience leveraging technology to drive companies from their earliest entrepreneurial stages through to global expansion, and has made angel investments in more than 50 companies and holds investments in 3 venture capital firms.

Voted by TechCrunch as the best CEO mentor/advisor in Europe in November 2010, in May 2011, she was voted by Wired magazine as one the top 25 'most influential people in the wired world', and one of the top ten most influential investors and women.

The London Stock Exchange said it was bringing the two in particularly for their IT sector experience, “reflecting the group’s continued focus on delivering innovative technology solutions to its customers around the world”.

And the business world is increasingly looking to women to fill the gap in science and technology expertise and to keep the economic recovery going.

For example, in November Sir John Perkins, chief scientific advisor to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published A Review of Engineering Skills.

Perkins called for a high profile campaign to reach out to young people, especially girls aged 11-14, with inspirational messages about engineering and diverse role models, to encourage more diversity in apprenticeships and a change to the gendered stereotypes associated with technical sectors.

The review also recommended that the government should continue to support schools to increase progression to A-level physics, especially among female students.

The review also drew attention to the actions being taken regarding engineering skills in the Devolved Administrations.

The Scottish Government, for example, is supporting the Scottish Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) to create sustainable change for women in SET sectors throughout 

Scotland, and the CareerWISE Scotland campaign to support girls and women to take up and retain jobs in STEM occupations. It has also encouraged Scottish universities to sign up to diversity schemes such as Athena SWAN.

The Welsh Government's National Science Academy (NSA) and sector work fund activities to engage young people in STEM, e.g. supporting Airbus to run an all girls cohort of Industrial Cadets.

Currently only around one in ten engineers in the UK are women.

Story published on Women's Views on News, January 23, 2014

Health charge plans threaten women's health

The UK government plans to extend charges to primary and emergency care - and maternity care.

In March the government plans to publish details of how it intends to extend charges for healthcare services to emergency and primary care.

GP consultations will still be free, but services like minor surgery or physiotherapy might be charged for.

And while ministers have assured would-be patients that they will not have to pay for emergency treatment at the time, from 2015, they are likely to be faced with a bill afterwards.

Patients from overseas are also expected to have to pay higher fees for NHS-subsidised services like eye care, dentistry or medicines.

These changes will affect some classes of migrants, such as those coming from outside Europe without indefinite leave to remain, short-term visitors from outside Europe, visa overstayers and failed asylum seekers, who will have to pay for NHS services.

The government plans to eventually introduce a Visa Health Surcharge for these groups - once paid, NHS services would be available to them on the same basis as the will be to residents.

These changes come on top of charges for NHS services introduced in 2011 for non-European migrants not 'settled' in the UK.

But it is not clear whether those with private health insurance would be exempted.

Maternity Action, which campaigns for the rights of pregnant women and new mothers, is concerned about the lack of clarity surrounding private health insurance, and worries that maternity care is often not covered in these policies – leaving pregnant women and new mothers exposed.

Last month Maternity Action published research which suggested that thousands of migrant women were leaving antenatal services and giving birth at home, or turning up in hospitals in labour and with severe complications.

Pregnant asylum seekers already have worryingly high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality.

Maternity Action’s director Ros Bragg told the Guardian recently: “"We are in contact with a lot of midwives who tell us women are disappearing from antenatal care because they cannot pay for it.

“This is unacceptable. We are very concerned about the charging arrangements currently in place."

Susan Bewley, professor of complex obstetrics at King's College London, told the Guardian that  the policy of charging migrant women for NHS antenatal care put pregnant women in danger.

"They may be put off accessing antenatal care that's good for them and their baby. If health professionals misinterpret their duties towards this group of women they might not come for scans, other checks or to deliver their babies," she said.

"We know that when women fail to access early antenatal care or any care at all, it can lead to poor outcomes for the mother and the baby," she continued.

"We live in a civilised society. It is dangerous not to look after pregnant women properly and not doing so reflects very badly on us all."

Story published in Women's Views on News, February 6, 2014

Help for breastfeeding working mums

Acas publishes guidelines for employers.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) published new guidelines for employers recently aimed at helping them create 'an accommodating environment' for women who are breast feeding.

The booklet, called 'Accommodating breastfeeding employees in the workplace', provides information about the legal position, gives tips on how to create the right environment and facilities for breastfeeding women, offers advice on considering the mothers' requests and shares examples of good practice.

The law requires an employer to provide somewhere for a breastfeeding employee to rest and this includes being able to lie down.

There is no requirement to undertake a risk assessment, although the guide says this would be good practice.

Employers do not have to provide facilities, or paid time off for employees to breastfeed or express milk.

The guide suggests that companies adopt and publicise breastfeeding policies, and explains that providing facilities for breastfeeding women can increase loyalty and retain skills.

The guide warns employers that enabling women to express or breastfeeding at work may lead to inappropriate behaviour and banter among co-workers and they must guard against this and take swift action if this occurs.

The guide says that breastfeeding women will need a private space, equipped with a fridge to enable them to store milk.

Employers should make clear to women returners how they can make a request for breastfeeding facilities.

They should ‘reasonably and objectively’ consider requests for breaks, taking care that they do not discriminate against the breastfeeding woman.

Employers should be sympathetic to requests for flexible working or consider extending existing breaks to accommodate breastfeeding.

Maternity Action, which campaigns for the rights of pregnant women and new mothers, welcomed the guidance as it has been campaigning on these issues for some time.

Story published in Women's Views on News, February 11, 2014