Top jobs? Who needs them... (From The Northern Echo)

Top jobs? Who needs them...

12:31pm Friday 26th August 2011 in Sharon's View By Sharon Griffiths

SO more than five thousand women have “gone missing” from the country’s top jobs. Don’t panic.

According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s latest Sex and Power review, women who have the qualifications to be running the country’s top companies, arts organisations, schools and public departments just aren’t there.

They’re off doing something else.

Sensible women.

The last 25 years have echoed to the crashing of smashed glass ceilings.

Women have marched on to the top jobs. Many are hugely successful, but there still aren’t high numbers of them.

There are far more women teachers than men – but far more male headteachers.

There are nearly as many women doctors and solicitors and men, yet the top jobs still go mainly to the men.

There are still vestiges of prejudice and difficulties. But often it’s not that women can’t do the top jobs – of course they can, with no problem – but rather that they don’t want to. They have other things to do. Like having a life.

Most men are still more likely to fit their families around their careers.

Most women are still more likely to fit their careers around their families.

The ruthless single-mindedness that enables people to sacrifice family life for the sake of the career is far more likely to be a male characteristic.

Interestingly, half the women in top jobs in the city are childless.

Those who have children are more likely to have a stay-at-home husband.

The rest must have breathtakingly efficient childcare and a diary like the world’s trickiest Sudoku.

And then, of course, there’s Helen Morrissey, one of the top women in the city, who is clearly brilliant, driven, looks glamorous and has nine children. Good grief.

I am lost in admiration and I’m glad they’re doing it to prove it can be done.

But most mothers would rather not. If they work full-time, they pass on the promotion that would involve lots of late hours or foreign trips.

Others go part-time, or do something completely different and no less challenging that can be fitted around the family. Often with huge success – think of Laura Ashley and The Body Shop for a start.

Nearly 50 years ago the feminists slogan was “A woman’s right to choose” and many women are choosing a balanced life over a high-flying career. And why not?

Interestingly, now that work is becoming a little more human, the men are beginning to take advantage of it too. They want their turn with the family.

Great. It’s called balance. And we all need a little more of it.

But there are other barriers even harder to smash than the glass ceiling...otherwise why are we still more likely to see a mother running a major international company than we are to see a father buying the school shoes?

AS she bounds around the Big Brother house in a bedsheet, compulsive tweeter Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, seems to be trying much too hard to be outrageous.

Critics have said that she is detracting from the dignity of the role of Speaker and her husband shouldn’t have allowed her to do it.

Look, this is the 21st Century. If she wants to be a daft attentionseeking exhibitionist then she can be bonkers entirely on her own account. She doesn’t need her husband’s permission. And she’s not the one who’s the Speaker.

As for the dignity of office, let’s just judge the Speaker on the way he does his Speaker-ing and nothing else.

But you can’t help wondering about their home life, can’t you?

Obedience first for the Queen

HER Majesty, the Queen is apparently an absolute whizz as a dog handler. One of her former gamekeepers thinks she could even be the best in the country.

Make a great TV programme wouldn’t it? – One Queen and One’s Dog.

MORE women are doing DIY jobs around the house, says a new survey. Well, of course. Not only are we capable, competent and keen to make improvements – we’re also fed up with waiting for the men to get round to it. If we’d always waited for men to get on with the house improvements, we’d probably still be living in a nice little cave.

Foraging

I’VE been picking blackberries. Sharp, sweet and free. Brilliant.

No one else seems to bother much anymore. We have lost the knack of foraging. As a peasant I have a fine instinct for wild food for free and can spot tiny wild strawberries at twenty paces. Blackberries are a cinch.

So why do people prefer to pay truly ridiculous sums for a tiny plastic punnet of blackberries in the supermarket? I used to think that was just lazy extravagance but now I realise it’s fear.

So few people actually grow things any more – despite all the gardening programmes and back-tobasics economy drives – that they feel nervous around anything that’s not been neatly trimmed and wrapped and packed in a little plastic tray with a sell-by date.

Ah well, all the more for the rest of us.

The hazelnuts aren’t quite ready yet and it will be weeks before I can pick the sloes for gin, but I shall, if for no other reason than it seems wicked and wasteful not to.

And I shall get more blackberries too and put them in the freezer, so that some time in a grey grim January when I’m huddled over the fire, I can taste again the warm generosity of late summer.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
MICK Jagger should claim a refund on his face creams as they don’t look as though they’re working!

On the other hand he must be very fit to do his stage act. I think his dad was a PE teacher and Mick must be a chip off the old block and have an impressive fitness routine. Not many 68-year-olds could keep up that pace. Maybe his girlfriend keeps him young.

Living longer is fine as long as you’ve got your health. There is a lot of talk about pensions, but most pensioners are more concerned with their health than about money. If you haven’t got your health, the money doesn’t mean much.

Don Burton, by email

Dear Sharon,
HOW I agree with you that we need more grown-ups to make society safe again, but it’s easier said than done.

The days when adults could tell off other people’s children are in the past. If you try to remonstrate with a badlybehaved child, the parents will probably come and give you a mouthful of bad language too.

When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, any adult in our street would feel free to tell us off if we were behaving badly and then tell our parents later so we’d get into even more trouble.

Those neighbours were more like honorary aunties. Although they told us off, we also knew we could go to their houses if we wanted help when our own parents weren’t around.

Families helped each other out more then, too. It’s a different world now.

Sue Stanhope, by email