Women on boards: Two and counting...
What does Angela Ahrendts' move from Burberry to Apple mean for women in business?
By Fiona Cowood
It's a weird situation to find yourself in. You score an amazing top job at the coolest brand in the world and the twittersphere groans in collective disappointment. Yet this is what happened yesterday when Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts was announced as Apple's senior vice-president and head of retail. The reason? Her appointment leaves just two women in charge of FTSE 100 firms here in the UK. A piddling, paltry, pathetic and pitiful number. (Yes, that's FOUR P-words but this is pucking serious.)
It's a great move for Apple, who previously had only one woman on its board of eight, and they will welcome Ahrendts' knowledge of the Asian market and focus on the customer experience. It's also a great move for Ahrendts, who will be swapping £2bn revenues at Burberry for $156.5bn over at Apple. But it leaves us a woman down and when you've only got three to start with, every head counts.
Yes, women need to follow Sheryl Sandberg's example and 'lean in' – read 'muscle in' – to top, high profile jobs but the problem is in the pipeline. We know that women perform just as well as men – if not better – in their 20s, but at senior levels (ie, post family), the number of women falls off sharply, and their salaries nosedive in comparison with men's. In August this year, figures released by the Chartered Management Institute, showed that male managers' bonuses are more than TWICE the size of women's – making an average difference of £141,500 over the course of a career.
Cosmo Editor Louise Court spoke about the move on Sky news:
The problem is the no-getting-round-it-biological fact that women have babies. We need babies to be born because (a) they're cute, (b) they continue the species, and (c) they'll hopefully pay taxes one day to keep this whole show on the road. Businesses shouldn't forget the crucial, additional point that, (d) they are consumers of the future who will buy gadgets and clothes and holidays and houses (well, maybe houses.) In other words, women shouldn't be penalised for having babies. Companies need to take real steps to keep women engaged in the workplace and ensure that their initial trajectory towards promotion and success doesn't turn into a downward curve.
How to do this? With flexible schedules, a culture that rewards results not facetime and ditches decision-making meetings that happen before breakfast, after 7pm or at the weekend. We have to do our bit too – nobody's advocating shortcuts to the top – but businesses must change. And if they need extra motivation, they should remember that firms with women on the board make bigger profits at the end of the year.
Make a woman choose between her high flying career and her family and she will (in most cases) choose the latter. This should be commended, not brandished as proof that women lack dedication. (Ahrendts herself says she is a 'mother first'.) It's time that women stopped having to make a choice that no 'career dads' face. Until then, we can only dream that one day, a CEO will move to the States and we'll say 'oh, shame. But never mind – look at all the others she's left behind...'
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Fiona Cowood I'm Cosmo's Content Director, most interested in the serious stuff - politics, news and campaigns.
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