Indhu Rubasingham is the first female director of the National Theatre, but it's woeful that it has just occurred

 However, I was most certainly not in a bubble as my mother had made me all too aware of the struggles she faced as a woman first starting out in her career and when I undertook a PGCE in secondary English a few years ago, I was genuinely aghast at how some of the most intelligent girls in a Year 8 class were effectively being silenced by their male counterparts. It shocked me so much that I wrote a dissertation about how to encourage teenage girls to become more confident in lessons. 

This leads me onto Indhu Rubasingham and more specifically why in 2023, nearly 2024, women are still being woefully overlooked when it comes to top positions. One only has to look at the government’s recent reshuffle to see that it is men who hold the top four positions, and this hasn’t happened since 2010. Sorry, why do we have to go backwards in time? 

Yes, I know that Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss (although her tenure was short), have all held the position of Prime Minister, but there has been no female leader of the Labour Party as yet, and please don’t try and argue that there have been no suitable candidates…. 

In November 2022, Cranfield University published a Female FTSE Board Report 2022 that that revealed despite the number of women on FTSE 100 boards continuing to rise, the report stated that it was “critical of the slow progress of women being appointed into significant decision-making roles, such as Chair and CEO - and calls for executive succession planning to be taken more seriously at board level.”

The Female FTSE Board Report 2022 not only revealed the ‘slow progress’ of women being appointed into ‘significant decision-making roles,’ but that female representation only amounted to 30 per cent or less in ten companies in the FTSE 100. 

When it comes to the BBC, it took until 1990 for Margaret Salmon to become the first woman to be appointed to the BBC Board of Management, but as yet there has not been a female director general. Since Margaret Salmon’s appointment, seventeen women have followed her lead and Anne Bulford became the first woman to be deputy director-general, but it is still a ‘deputy’ title and not a director general title. How long do we have to wait BBC?

It took until 2010 for Professor Dame Sally Davies to be appointed the first female chief medical officer and then she left her role in 2019 to become the first female master of Trinity College, Cambridge University. When she was appointed Professor Dame Sally Davies said that “It has been an honour to be the first female chief medical officer. I have enjoyed it from the start and I will continue to do so right up until I finish. I am delighted to be appointed as the master of Trinity College following a distinguished list of predecessors and as the first woman.”

I spoke to Simon Keegan, the Editor of Insider Media to get his perspective on the lack of female leaders in high positions. He said that “Diversity is an issue across a number of sectors. Not just race and gender but also factors like socio-economic background and neurodiversity. As well as being representative of their communities, it is a quantifiable fact that a board that is diverse is more effective and ultimately more profitable. Diversity of thought leads to a more efficient company. So companies should not think of it in terms of box-ticking or "positive discrimination" but should instead see it as building a more effective company.”

“Traditionally we see a glass ceiling in a number of sectors where women in particular found it difficult to reach senior positions because of a lack of flexibility in the organisation. This is definitely changing. In lockdown many of us proved we could work effectively remotely, utilising tech like Zoom and being judged on output not the number of hours sitting at a desk. 

"For some industries there can be a desire to have a diverse workforce, but often they struggle with the type of language used in recruitment. Some industries like manufacturing can have a stigma around being dirty, oily, blokey jobs when often this is not the case any more - but the language used in job ads doesn't tell this story.

“As editor of a business magazine we try to champion women business leaders. By featuring some of the North West's female entrepreneurs we give the next generation something to aspire to - they see women like them on the cover of Insider and this becomes an attainable goal. A few weeks ago Insider presented its coveted Dealmaker of the Year trophy. This is for accountants, lawyers and funders involved in mergers and acquisitions. For the first time this year, the judges picked a female winner, Beth Houghton who leads the Impact Fund for Palatine Private Equity, one of Manchester's oldest private equity houses. I'd like to think a young woman starting her career saw Beth's win and was inspired by it and will do the same for the next generation.”

Although it’s great that Simon of Insider Media champions female business leaders, more need to take his lead. I don’t want to be writing a similar article in 2024 about the lack of women in leadership positions at top companies and I am sure you won’t want to be reading it either. Let’s not make a change tomorrow, or next year, let’s make a change today.