Professor Loch writes:
Last month, Carolyn Fairbairn, the head of the CBI, told the FT that “we don’t have enough women running things and it’s not getting better anything like fast enough. Too much of UK business is still geared up for men, in terms of its social habits, its small talk, its clubbiness.” Fairbairn went on to call for a 25 per cent target for female senior executives on the basis that “women as leaders” was the real issue, not just board seats.
Uh-oh. Carolyn Fairbairn sits on my board – the CJBS Advisory Board. Should I express “caution with any target proposal”, as the business community does? Making comments on women and leadership can feel like a complicated issue, but it’s a vital one, one that we should all, women and men, engage with no matter how tricky it might seem. I will venture a few comments anyway.
To cut to the chase, I fully support Carolyn Fairbairn’s call. Even if you disregard the central issue of fairness and gender equality, it is now well established that mixed leadership teams are better, because they are better capable of generating and pursuing diverse ideas.
That’s not to say that our record at CJBS is unblemished – yes, we had a female Director 10 years ago (Sandra Dawson, a brilliant leader, who created a basis for excellence on which we are building today). And yes, our most senior administrative officers (with whom I work every day) are women, and the driver of our successful Accelerate Cambridge programme is a woman. But we have too few female faculty, and certainly too few senior female faculty. One can see Carolyn Fairbairn’s “male social habits and small talk” in action.
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