Women in charge

My wife has a problem with men. Not all men, fortunately, but arrogant men that she sometime has to work around who have a distinct way of working.

And she has a point. I have seen the old boys network in action in a company. The men drink together and stick together, they hire and promote other men and the talented women get repeatedly passed over. We also see it when pitching for work. If a woman is unsure of something, she will be more willing to ask questions and admit her weaknesses. The men will never admit a weakness or ask for help, and will often make you jump through hoops just to assert their authority on the situation.

We have an office where the men are outnumbered two to one (and we’re not the butchest bunch of men). I must admit that given two candidates with equal skills, I would more often pick the woman.

For a start the atmosphere is more collaborative. There is no macho strutting and turf wars. There is no culture of blame and nor witch hunts when things go wrong. Although there a short breaks for maternity leave, when mothers come back, they work with a vengeance to fit all their work in. And because successful women have had a harder time to get where they are, they will be more often be smarter.

However, there has been a lot of concern about encouraging more female entrepreneurs. I think this special treatment is a mistake. The proportion of businesses started by men and women are in fairly equal proportion. There are the very talented female entrepreneurs running high growth companies such as Anne Rushforth of ScotNursing, Michelle Mone of Ultimo bra fame, Belinda Jarron of Fleurtations and Liz MacAreavy of Le Bistro. The one difference is that many of businesses started by women tend to stay as smaller lifestyle businesses. But that is a choice and there is nothing wrong with making that. Bigger is not always better.

To make concessions for women would be self-defeating. The American University I studied at had lower entry grades for black students which was incredibly patronising. Instead, simple business Darwinism will come to the fore. The companies that recruit, nurture and promote the best women and men in equal measure will win.

Some old stereotypes sometimes ring true. A female colleague called out technical support to sort her printer, only to find she hadn’t plugged it in. However, her male counterpart who sniggered at this was insistent that his should be the fastest computer in the office, and took it home for the first three days ‘to really get to know it’. Now which is sadder?