Sue Unerman - The Glass Wall: Success strategies for women at work – and businesses that mean business

Advance praise for The Glass Wall

For anyone looking to seriously understand why gender imbalance persists in the twenty-first-century workplace (and what to do about it), this book is both revelatory and important.

David Abraham | CEO, Channel 4

This is a rich report on what it is like right now in the complex world of men and women working together. Its specialty is that it allows you to find your own recipe for mastery of a meaningful work life.

Charlotte Beers | Speaker, Author, former CEO Ogilvy Advertising and former Undersecretary of State

I wish that this book had existed when I was starting out in my career; the advice is so useful, both for women on the way up and for businesses seeking to develop and retain talented women. I would encourage everyone to read it.

Karen Blackett OBE | Chairwoman, MediaCom UK

It is so important to empower other women and that is exactly what this book does. It gives women practical advice to help them navigate their careers and, ultimately, design their own life.

Diane von Furstenberg |Founder and Chairman of DVF Studio LLC

Fantastic to see a book with such practical experience and common sense at its heart lets hope we wont have to talk about glass walls for very long.

Martha Lane-Fox | Entrepreneur

Practical, insightful and thoroughly enjoyable, this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to see change in their workplace and their life. An inspiring book that is sure to have a huge impact on women in the workplace.

Nicola Mendelsohn CBE | VP for EMEA, Facebook

Organisations thrive when women are well represented in management. The Glass Wall offers practical wisdom to deconstruct barriers; its an excellent guide for managers and individuals alike. We can all relate to the material.

Eileen Naughton | VP & Managing Director, UK & Ireland, Google

Theres nothing lofty about this excellent book. It doesnt drone on about the inequity of it all. Instead, it proposes real things that real women (and real men) can do in the real business world so that womens currently untapped potential can be painlessly released to the benefit of absolutely everyone.

Sir Martin Sorrell | CEO, WPP

THE

GLASS WALL

Success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean business

SUE UNERMAN & KATHRYN JACOB

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3 Holford Yard

Bevin Way

London

WC1X 9HD

www.profilebooks.com

Copyright Sue Unerman and Kathryn Jacob, 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 78283 280 5

The authors would like to dedicate this book to all the strong women in our lives, especially our daughters, and the lovely men that support them and us.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sue Unerman

When Sue joined her current company, which in 1990 was a small media independent, as an Associate Director, she was the most senior woman they had ever employed. Now at MediaCom, which has grown to become the UKs largest media agency, there have been two women CEOs, there is a woman Chair, a woman MD, and Sue is the businesss Chief Strategic Officer. Sue is also a Council Member of the Open University, sits on the University of Oxford Public Affairs Advisory Group, was on the Advisory Board of the Government Digital Service and is on the Corporate Development Board of Womens Aid. www.sueunerman.com

Kathryn Jacob

Kathryn is CEO of Pearl & Dean, the most well-known player in the UKs cinema advertising industry. She was one of the first women to work in display advertising at the Daily Telegraph and has worked at Virgin Radio and SMG. Kathryn has used her experience to provide advice and mentoring to numerous young women in business, and to inform her role as a member of the Government Expert Group on Body Confidence and as a member of the Advertising Association Council, an ex-President of Women in Advertising and Communications (WACL) and her positions on the Development Boards at RADA and at Womens Aid.

FOREWORD

I have been involved in womens rights in the workplace for over thirty-five years. When I started out there were very few senior women in law, and those who had made it were usually from privileged backgrounds and had often committed exclusively to their careers. In the years since then weve seen some change but not at the highest levels and not in enough numbers. Weve been told that it is just a matter of women coming through the system: that it is just about evolution, just a matter of time. We are still waiting.

Lets be clear that its the system that is at fault, not women. Were perfectly smart, perfectly able and often better at management because of the need to run a family as well as a professional life. So, whats the problem, and what can we do about it?

It is still the case that senior men tend to nurture and promote younger men. Women often underrate their own talent, when their peers who are men are doing the opposite. And when women talk about equality in the workplace it can crowd out some important truths about difference. Weve been so cagey about special pleading for special treatment that we have focused on equal treatment. Yet equalisation has almost always been to a masculine norm.

This excellent book from Unerman and Jacob does not shy away from the differences between men and women. It establishes what those differences are, and gives the reader a clear course of action to overcome situations where the difference is real, and has become a disadvantage. The Glass Wall does not pretend that there is a level playing field when such a thing does not exist. The authors dont support the status quo, and they dont approve of it. But they dont pretend that either ideology or a few words of encouragement are enough to make it go away.

Instead, they give practical advice to help remove the barriers to women progressing to leadership roles, and essential advice to business leaders on how to stop the talent drain of women in their organisations. The immediate task that lies before us is not to dismantle the current institutional structures in business, politics and law that stand in the way of diversity in leadership, although this is, of course, the ultimate ambition. For now, we need to help more women gain senior positions so that we can make those changes happen.

This is a manual of pragmatic feminism in the workplace that is easy to apply for women and for men, for women progressing upwards at any level, and for anyone in leadership who wants a better gender balance at work, an ambition that is proven to deliver competitive advantage to business. The time for change is now, and strategies in The Glass Wall, will make this change achievable.

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC

PREFACE

T his book will give all women the armoury they need to gain the most from what they do at work, whatever their jobs might be. We passionately believe that every woman can achieve her potential at work and, at the same time, a good work/life balance.

Not every woman is doing so now.

Weve both been fortunate enough to reach fulfilment in our careers, so far. Of course, during our careers we have come across women who dont want seats on the board, and we fully embrace that choice. We also know that many men in senior positions are baffled by the drop-out of talented women from the career ladder. They know theyre losing talent, and the pressure to deliver a better gender balance on their board is only growing but no one wants tokenism.