T. MARIN

In this section a closer examination of the findings aims to reveal more specifically what differences exist between women and men and the role SC plays in their promotion to MD.

Table 6-3 shows how the candidates are split between males and females.

Table 6-3: Split of candidates by male/female

The numbers of candidates in this sample who had been through the promotion process more than once was similar for men and women. Interestingly, the percentage of women appointed in the sample is slightly higher than the men.

However, this is not representative of promotion at this level in Globank where men are more likely than women (as a percentage of the Director talent pool) to be promoted to the position of MD. Instead this reflects access issues where, because of sensitivities around the non-appointment of women, access to women in this category proved problematic; as discussed in Chapter 3.

The mean age for women and men was similar but more men than women were in their 30s (76% versus 46%) and almost double the percentage of women than men were in their 40s. Men were more likely to be married and the majority had partners at home rather than with jobs outside of the home. This was completely the opposite for women - 92% of women in the sample had partners who worked outside of the home; only 1 woman had a partner at

home. Similar percentages of women and men had children. Although the majority of the sample overall was based in the UK, more than twice as many women than men were based overseas.

Increasing the number of women who are promoted to MD is important to Globank and the senior management team are very aware that this is problematic in an industry sector that is traditionally male dominated at senior levels. Perhaps not surprisingly, some male candidates recognised that senior MDs wanted to see more women promoted to MD and would, therefore, work hard to make this happen:

“I think there’s a very clear desire for obvious, understandable reasons to try and get female candidates promoted if you can, and that’s something that is an advantage or a disadvantage as a business because if you’ve got a female candidate that’s great, if you haven’t that’s not so great.

(Laughingly). And equally one of the things that’s definitely crossed our minds this year is does having a female candidate help us get two slots rather than one? You kind of go actually can we use that – can we use that to try and help us make sure we get two people rather than just one person?” (Richard, appointed+1).

Richard and his LM saw the desire to increase the number of women at MD level as a means of increasing the total number of MD positions that might be available to them in their area of the business; rather than seeing it as a meritocratic, equality or moral issue. Richard regarded the female candidate as being the second candidate on the list of nominations rather than being the ‘top pick’. Later in the interview he argued that it was easier for women to get promoted than men: “because you don’t need to know the merits of the individual, you just need to know that she’s female …”.

Some of the other men shared this, somewhat jaundiced, view of female MD candidates:

“There is such a thing as: ‘well, you realise she was made MD because she’s a woman’. There’s an undercurrent of like: ‘yeah, she was made MD because she’s a woman; we have to make female MDs because

otherwise there’s going to be - they’re saying it’s always a man’” (Tim, appointed +1).

Tim suggested that women were being appointed because they were women rather than their capability and suitability for the MD role and that female MDs in the firm lacked influence. Later on in the interview he said:

“No one is going to tell you that but it is [women appointed because they are women]. Especially the women themselves, right, because they’re going to say, “I was made MD because I’m so good; not because I’m a woman”. It’s counterproductive for themselves to admit that, right. They’re complicit” (Tim, appointed +1).

This suggests that some men within the firm believe that women are being appointed only to demonstrate that the firm provides equal opportunities rather than being appointed on merit. Many of the women in this study were aware of this and chose to accept it as part of the culture in which they worked. Katrina was the first female MD in her division in the EMEA region for seven years. On her nomination she said:

“Immediately people started saying it was because I was the woman, they had to have (laughingly) a woman on the list and you get this all the time; you ignore it” (Katrina, appointed).

In this context women face different challenges to men in how they build and use SC for promotion to MD.

6.3.1 Structural social capital

All of the women in this sample had access to senior-level networks as a result of their role and the projects they were working on, although some had greater and more frequent access than others. Some of the women said that they had to make it clear that their contribution to projects was recognised. Irena described this in the following way:

“[….] making sure that you can be identified in each of these processes;

whenever you present a transaction for approval that you are actually

seen in the interaction that, either presenting it or that it’s obvious that you are leading or are part of the team, it’s relevant to what you are doing” (Irena, appointed).

Women seemed more reticent to capitalise on networks beyond those based on their work role. Earlier in this chapter Nigel explained how he met with a global business leader because he had kept in touch with his secretary (who had previously worked for another MD this candidate knew well). The secretary made sure that she created space in her boss’ diary for Nigel to meet him. This was in stark contrast to Olivia who felt unable to even enter the office of a more senior person in her area of operation because she had not built a relationship with him as some of her other (male) colleagues had:

“I’ve never worked closely with him …. I just don’t feel as comfortable going in to his office to talk about something, he has a very open door policy but I don’t feel comfortable because I don’t feel I have that relationship.” (Olivia, not appointed).

Olivia observed that many of the informal conversations she witnessed her colleagues having with this senior man were around football and other sports.

Five of the women in this sample were not appointed to MD. All of them recognised the importance of building networks across divisions and with senior MDs to increase visibility but felt uncomfortable doing this:

“I'm not a great networker and it's something that feels false to me, so it's not something that I can do particularly well” (Olivia, not appointed).

Networking felt false to Olivia and her confidence in this area was low. Bridgit talked about approaching MDs with whom she worked to ask them to support her nomination for promotion but she too felt “very uncomfortable with the whole thing” and this prevented her from capitalising on those connections. Bridgit approached MDs herself because her manager had not made the approach on her behalf as other successfully appointed candidates reported. At the time of our interview she had already been nominated for the 2012 process. In the quote below she first refers to her 2011 nomination:

“I purposefully chose people [MDs, to ask for their support] who were outside of Equities to do that. And again, having done a similar thing this year [2012], I would say that that was a wrong strategy, I probably needed to big myself up to some people in Equities that I haven’t been doing. But anyway [she paused] but anyway that’s what I did in 2011, selective lobbying with people outside of Equities” (Bridgit, not appointed).

Although building connections within a wider network has been seen as a successful strategy for many candidates in this study, Bridgit demonstrated that a candidate must also be confident in the support from their local network – connections with close ties must be in place perhaps before connections to the wider network are made. Certainly for Bridgit, this seemed to be the case. She had taken a proactive approach to wider network activity but had not secured support from her local network. Women who had been successful viewed networking differently:

“Previously I felt building the network ‘Isn’t that a little bit disingenuous, is this not almost a way of, I guess, using people?’. But I’ve come to realise it’s not; it’s a fact of building relationships [...] helping each other in the business environment [but] I’ve seen people who basically – excuse the terminology – are nothing more than people who suck up to seniors without there being real substance to it” (Angelique, appointed).

Angelique overcame her dislike of networking by reframing it as building effective working relationships with others, which enabled business goals to be met. She also talked about the need to build relationships at all levels within the business not just with seniors. As a newly appointed MD she described how she was helping other female Directors build their network:

“I’ve done it for two women mainly who I really strongly feel should be made MD and every time I’ve highlighted for them who are the people who I think sit at that table that I’ve described and I’ve told them you have to have a coffee with them. I don’t know how we do this but in three