Gender Equality in the Boardroom

In the first of two blogs in honour of International Women’s Day, Alex Killick, Director of People at Glasgow Caledonian University, discusses gender equality in the workplace.

A few years ago, I attended a CIPD roundtable debate on whether there should be quotas for women on boards. My view was that quotas were demeaning and undermined a meritocratic approach (a view shared by many women, it seemed). I now realise, however, that progress has been glacially slow; our daughter is seven and she will be seventy before we have balanced boards.

We need to do something more than level the playing field if we are going to progress at an acceptable rate. The Davis review highlighted the fact that setting a clear target can allow progress to be made, with the FTSE 100 companies moving from having 12.5% women on their boards in Feb 2011 to 26.1% in October 2015.

This is positive progress it seems. In higher education, the picture is even more positive. Currently around a third of Universities have a female Vice Chancellors. At Glasgow Caledonian, we have been one of a very small number of universities globally that have had a female Vice Chancellor, female Chancellor and female Chair of Court at the same time.

Interest in the gender pay gap is also beginning to build. Overall the sector is doing well in this area, but we recognise that we have structural occupational segregation that underpins some of the gender pay gap issues. In Scotland, we have been required to publish our data on gender pay gaps since 2015. Based on HESA data, GCU’s current gender pay gap is 14.5% (compared with the Scottish Sector at 20% and the wider HE Sector at 18.7%). Additionally, our academic gender pay gap has reduced from 8.2% in 2015 to 4.2% as at 31 July 2017.

At the JNCHES Equal Pay Audit and Gender Pay Gap Guidance launch, hosted at GCU in January 2018, we shared our case study in relation to female academic progression. Our number of female professors has now hit 40% (with the sector average at around 24%). In addition, we have an active Advancing Gender Equality Group that are working to support Athena Swan actions. They are looking at creating working conditions to support both women and men to thrive: practical flexible working, development programmes and mentoring opportunities to name a few. Our Executive Board is 50:50 and our governing body 55:45 (male to female).

My view is that we are thriving in this area because advancing gender equality is seen as a leadership responsibility, and is championed in particular by the Vice Chancellor. We believe the work we are doing is making it more likely that we will develop a cadre of future female leaders in the sector.

However, the discussion at the JNCHES launch was less celebratory because, overall, the sector still faces the problem of women being significantly under-represented at professorial level, even bearing in mind the increasing gender balance in the more junior ranks. Opinions on the causes ranged from glass ceiling stereotypes, workload pressures and work-life balance challenges, to more societal issues pertaining to subject choices at school.

This made me reflect on my previous experience in NHS Scotland, where the overall workforce is predominantly female (80%), 50:50 at first line management level and 80:20 (male to female) at CEO level. My wife, who was NHS Scotland’s Head of Equality and Diversity explained that women were self-selecting out because the predominantly male Health Board Chairs were continuing to oversee cultures that talked family-friendly but didn’t really mean it. Below are her views – they contain a few home truths for me (and maybe others too).

Our second blog for International Women’s Day is written by Alex’s wife, Lynn Killick, and looks at the division of labour within the home.