Is it harder for women to get to the top in publishing? Is it harder across every profession?
Catalyst, a group that campaigns “to build workplaces that work for women”, reported last August that “the proportion of women in senior management roles globally grew to 29% in 2019, the highest yet recorded.”
In the UK, the figure was 37.6%.
Despite the figures heading in the right direction, the fact still remains that the higher up the corporate ladder you go, the fewer women you see.
Contrast this with the rising achievement of girls at A level; in 2019, they overtook boys in achieving top grades.
So, what’s going on? One obvious answer is… kids.
Esther Newman, editor of Women’s Running and the guest on our latest podcast, said: “It really does take a while to get your career back on track after taking time off to have kids.” She referred to the relentless struggle women returning to work faced not to feel guilty when they had to leave to pick up kids and the daily grind of having to prove themselves worthy.
“Men just don't face this issue,” she said; “no male boss of mine with kids has ever had to deal with any kind of hiatus in their career – they just take a couple weeks off to make tea and change nappies.”
Hard to argue with any of that.
Hopefully, the more flexible ways of working ushered in by the pandemic will make the work / life balance easier for mothers to negotiate and mean that their publishing careers are not stopped dead in their tracks whenever the stork visits.
(Finally, we’ve just scheduled our next webinar, entitled '7 Subscription Trends You Need to Leverage in 2021' for 16th March. You can find out more and register here.)
