TalkingPoint : Careers Advice for Ambitious Women

written by TalkingPoint on 13/02/2012

Heather McGregor is the Managing Director and principal shareholder of Taylor Bennett, a leading firm of communications headhunters.

Last week on a visit to Scandinavia, Prime Minister David Cameron made much of his theory that the UK would be a lot better off if more women were at the top of organisations. I certainly believe this, which is why I sit on the steering committee of the 30% Club, an organisation founded and chaired by Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Investment Management. The members of the 30% Club are chairmen who have agreed to aim for 30 per cent female representation on their boards by 2015. You can read more about the organisation and see the list of the chairman who have signed up here.

However, the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for more women on boards looks as though it could potentially lead to quotas. The European Union is also calling for quotas. I and my fellow steering committee members are all anti-quota – all that quotas will do is lead to tokenism. We would like women to be appointed to boards on their own merit, rather than because of their sex. We also believe that there are plenty of well-qualified women out there if chairmen look hard enough.

The banking industry is a useful training ground for women who aspire to board membership. However, even in banking there is not enough representation at the top, and if there aren’t enough women at the very top, there will be fewer candidates for the boardroom. This was brought home to me last month when I attended the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos. Despite bankers being well represented amongst delegates, only 17 per cent of those attending were women.

Boards need women with banking experience; you can see this from the feature I wrote in the Financial Times on women in the boardroom. Of the eight women interviewed for the FT feature, four had strong connections with the banking industry. Susan Kilsby – currently on the boards of Shire Pharmaceuticals and L’Occitaine – has had a world-beating career at Credit Suisse. Gay Huey Evans of the London Stock Exchange and Aviva cut her teeth at Bankers Trust and, more recently, Barclays Capital. SAB Miller’s Helen Weir was Lloyds Banking Group for many years as both its finance director and later its head of retail banking. And finally, the BBA’s own Angela Knight was among the women I was privileged to feature for the FT; Angela serves the banking industry daily.

I wrote Careers Advice for Ambitious Women for women in every industry, to give them the tools and tricks that men use almost without thinking about it. On reflection, I would like to get it in to the hands of more female bankers than almost any other group.