Career progression and planning
I think you are still aware that you have a lot to learn and you mustn’t ever lose that because you are a lifelong learner. I’m working in the education sector but also life is about learning and if you forget that, then you’re done for. (Ruth)
I have matured, the life experiences that I’ve had, and I kind of see things as a bit of a journey. (Maggie)
Introduction
This chapter explores the theme of career progression and planning. An important element of our study was to find out about how senior women had reached their present position: the extent to which their careers had been planned, what they had been required to do in order to progress and what they saw as their next career move. We focus initially on the extent to which the women had a worked-out plan and the major attributes that they felt were the key to career success. We look at the ways in which targets changed over time and why, with particular reference to major ‘turning points’ or ‘step changes’, the determination to move forward and the willingness and the ability to take sometimes significant risks. The chapter then looks at experiences of promotion processes, the ways in which the women considered stepping off the career ladder and their future plans, including retirement.
‘It just happened’
Many of the women commented that they had not really had a career plan. ‘It just happened’, as Carrie summed it up, though within a context of looking out for opportunities as they presented themselves or as they were recognised and presented by other people. Bella echoed this lack of a clear plan, at least in relation to the earlier part of her career, by saying:
I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated, took a year out, messed around a bit in France and then in default really thought I would qualify as a lawyer because I couldn’t really think of anything else to do and largely to keep my options open went into the City for just over two years where I qualified and then decided that I really didn’t want to work in the City.
Fiona told much the same story until she reached middle management:
No plan; completely ad hoc; completely ‘what can I do now?’ The word career would not have occurred to me. It’s a job; always jobs that I was passionate about, but no planning. No, I tumbled from one to another.
Even when being considered for a CEO role, there was an element of surprise about the result, even though Fiona felt that she was as good as the male candidates, if not better:
In one sense I was never happier than when I was [a dean of a school of study] because life was good and I loved running [the school]. It just overwhelmed me, just fabulous, just thought it was amazing. And then it fell apart … and I had to move on so I actually moved sideways. But then what drove me was I came to a faculty here which was so dysfunctional … that I got passionate about this place and the people here. And only when the [CEO] retired, and various people saying ‘aren’t you going to apply?’ … It took a big ‘I think I can do this, I can certainly do it better than these guys’. But I never thought ‘oh that would be good for my pension’ or ‘that would be good for me …’ or whatever. It never occurred to me; in fact it all took me by surprise really.
Kate told much the same story:
It just kind of happened … I feel a bit of a fraud doing this interview because all of the stuff has literally just sort of happened. I became a nurse because I worked as a ward clerk because my first husband was still finishing his degree and I looked at that and said ‘well I could do this nursing stuff’ and it paid more than a ward clerk. Not vocationally sound, is it? So ended up doing the nursing course and thought ‘God this is fantastic, I love this job’. I was then going to work … at a regional centre where they’d said I could do whatever I wanted because I think I was skilled as a nurse. But then [my husband] moved … and I thought ‘dear God I’ll never get a job here’. I ended up working again in a quite unfashionable field which was elderly care, but really loved that … I went for a post, didn’t get the post and was so angry that I opened the paper and said ‘the next job in the paper I’m going to apply for’. So applied for this post … and got it and walked away … and for two years afterwards I had consultants saying ‘we should never have let you go’.
Ruth had ‘never been in the right place at the right time or I wouldn’t have had to move’. Even reaching the top was not the result of a definite strategy for Gill, other than determining when young that she could ‘do better’:
But I think the point that emerges from that for me is that there wasn’t any grand plan … I was always going to have a serious job like a lecturer or a teacher or something, but nothing beyond that.
Helen regarded her career as a ‘lifestyle’:
I wanted to be a vet I think, originally. Then getting a half decent degree meant that I got offered research and then, couldn’t stand that. So now it’s happened the right way, the honorary doctorate means I didn’t have to do any work! Or perhaps I have done a lot more than I recognise … I suppose then I thought I was going to teach and then I didn’t teach, did I? I went into publishing. Then I became a journalist. Then I sort of found myself in business. I mean, how do you plan a career like that?
Gill spoke of career progression as if it were like going up a ‘staircase’, with all kinds of barriers on the way, including how women felt about themselves:
In my career, each time I got to somewhere on the staircase I could see the next step. So I got to the teacher training college and then I thought, ‘well I’ll go to university’. I get to the university and I’m a lecturer and I want to be a Reader and so on … Then I got promoted eventually to, it took a long time to get promoted to, being a Professor … because you need sponsorship … it was not as transparent then as it is now. So I was only the third or fourth female professor … so it wasn’t a well worn path. When I got to be professor then you had to take your turn at running the department; it was a kind of I’ve done my three years, now it’s your three years, it was that kind of system rather than a career change … So that was my first taste … of a proper management role. Did it just happen? No: every time I stepped up one step on the ladder, the one above it became feasible in a way it hadn’t been before.
Planned and not planned
Some women commented that their careers had partly been planned (‘I mean it sort of just happened but it doesn’t just happen’ – Diane), either at certain stages or in particular ways, as for example Olivia, who combined opportunism – and a particularly useful organisation for which to work – with a strategic view of where she wanted to go:
I think the early part of the career on the HR stuff was very much planned but it happened much quicker than I expected it to … I got there three or four years quicker than I’d anticipated. Then I moved into the policy role: that all happened much, much quicker than I had in my mental career path. There are advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage was because I’d kind of got there I didn’t think about what I wanted next … I suppose opportunistic for me has been whenever I’ve been looking for new opportunities there has been something within the business that I could go for … I think there are very few places that would’ve supported the level of career development that I have done in terms of moving between functions.
Ruth gradually developed a plan as she went up the career ladder:
It didn’t start out being [a conscious plan]. I get bored and … you come round again to September and you think ‘I’ve done this’ … Initially when I was … on a temporary contract … I needed to move to get a permanent contract. I took a job that was … higher than my first job but with less responsibility. And then the [next] job … was fantastic and so that was exciting … Then the job came up at [another organisation] … and that looked interesting. It was only when I got to be the site manager at the main site … that I had a really good boss … I began to think … I was the youngest person on the senior management team by a good 15 years … ‘gosh I can do this’, ‘I’m not so bad at this’ … You start thinking ‘perhaps I could’, so about half way through it became a more conscious decision, but to start with it was about ‘this looks interesting and that looks great’.
Jessica had some early targets, but was flexible in terms of opportunities. In the light of experience, she is now more ‘analytical’ about the job opportunities presented to her:
I wanted to earn £3,500, which was more than my headmistress of my primary school; that was my target and I did that by the time I was 22. When I joined [a particular company], the question was asked by HR: ‘what is your career target?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, it’s always been happenchance to me’; something’s come along and I’ve gone for it or people have spotted that I’ve done things’. I said, ‘if you mean do I want to be in [the] IT Director’s [job], then no’. A few months later, I was … If somebody asked me to do a job now I would be much more analytical about what do I want out of this, what can I give to this? Because the number of times I do get head hunted at the moment and I say ‘I think I’m the wrong person to do this, perhaps you should talk to so and so’. I say ‘I think you’re looking for that, that and that and I don’t have that and therefore I’m not the right person’.
Maggie also had some early – and very ambitious – career targets, though, as experienced by other women, these had been modified in the light of experience of moving up the hierarchy, resulting in a much more ‘laid-back’ approach to career progression and a timescale for achieving any targets set:
A friend of mine tells a very funny story that when I was a PC … I’d actually written on a piece of paper which rank I wanted to be at which time in my career; it included right up to Chief Constable. That kind of changed again because of the experiences I’ve had and how I’ve matured but I guess there was a very clear plan when I first joined but for reasons I’ve shared with you that’s changed and that’s evolved … I always kind of anticipated, had plans, that I would move to a senior level within the organisation. I’m much more laid back about it now; there’s no specific timescale.
Helen stressed the importance and the value of learning from each career step:
I don’t think I’ve had [a career plan]. But … if I really think about it, each step has built on the values I’ve got from the previous ones … I remember sitting with my father and saying ‘what am I going to do?’ He was a headmaster, and a musician, and he said to me ‘do you actually want to have the opportunity to follow your star or do you want to sit in a class room?’ So I said ‘there’s no contest is there?’ And he said, ‘no there isn’t actually’. So that was how I ended up in publishing … I then realised that I liked moving around … Then I found that people liked working for me and I didn’t find it difficult to get people to work for me … It’s like, how can I put it, being there and always up for it.
Gill commented on the value of networking and partnerships – discussed in more detail in Chapter 6 – as ways of helping career development:
I was very good at bumping into people at conferences and talking about any intellectual ideas coming up and then you’d have ‘well why don’t we do a project on …?’, ‘why don’t we get some money?’ or ‘why don’t we write a book chapter?’ … I had very good strategic partnerships with male and female academics both in Britain and abroad. At the time I just thought that’s the way it is but I suspect I was particularly good at making those relationships because nowadays I realise that it’s a strength making networking relationships … Looking back on it now it’s about identity … because those significant others reflected back to you that you’re a jolly good academic … They validated my worth … Nobody in the department was doing that really … I think it’s important to make the distinction about where the support for you to go on comes from.
Changing targets
It was clear that all the women had set targets at various points in their careers, but had changed them through their experiences and their analysis of their position, as part of a process of ‘self-managed’ career development (see also Kumra and Vinnicombe, 2008). Through the experiences that Lillian had, an initial ambition to be a CEO changed into a desire to be appointed to roles that would give her more satisfaction:
You tend to go for the targets you can see, and when I went to work the generally accepted target was to go up the tree, and I found I could go up the tree, and the ultimate target is to be Chief Executive. I thought I could, as everybody does perhaps who’s ambitious … I was getting advice about the next job up I should go for and knowing that there was almost nothing about it that I wanted which is very difficult. In Myers Briggs I am IP or EP/IP, I’m on that margin, and I found that very helpful because it helped me to find that things really important to me in terms of satisfaction are like new frontiers … finding and exploring new frontiers is probably something that gives me more satisfaction than almost anything else. Although I think the other thing is working with people to achieve it. I don’t actually think that in most CEO jobs that is something that comes very high on what you get out of the job … I’m only talking about large organisations, I think I might have felt very differently if I’d made my career in SMEs or in my own business. But in large organisations, a CEO operates to optimise the value of a very large asset for which he or she is responsible, and optimising the value of an asset means by and large a significant part of your time must be ensuring its ongoing health. Its development, yes, but it’s a lesser task for you by and large.
Turning points
We asked the women what turning points – or ‘forks in the road’ as Diane described them – there had been in their careers. For Carrie, leaving one institution to start another, more senior role in another institution ‘at age 55 [when she had been contemplating retirement] after starting at age 21’ was a major turning point. Ruth changed organisation in order to ‘grow again’. This was after unhappy experiences in a different organisation where she had been bullied. She comments on how she felt after walking out of her job there:
For someone whose career had been really, really important that was the turning point actually, where you think ‘right so I’ve done this, this has been a failure’. Part of you wants to curl up and die: I can’t do this, I can’t manage, I can’t be a senior manager. So I started applying for other jobs to prove I could do it and that took tremendous effort of will and I have to say the support I received at [second organisation] – my boss there was fantastic and took me on when I wasn’t in the best emotional state.
Eliza had lived through similar unhappy experiences in two different industries:
I used to go into work and hate my job because I hated some of the people; I hated the ethos; I hated the fact that … they would basically brainwash you to feel that you couldn’t survive without them. Outside that circle you were nothing … I knew I had to get out when I started going in and sitting by my desk and saying ‘I hate this place, I really hate it’. And I did.
Changes in her personal circumstances proved a catalyst for Olivia:
When I got divorced I basically sat down and said I need a new challenge; I’m bored with the work I am doing, I’ve just got divorced. I need to focus some attention away from my personal situation … I knew if I was bored at work I’d end up having too much time on my hands and I didn’t want to have any time on my hands when I was going through a divorce; I wanted to keep my mind off things.
Gill similarly spoke about getting married as one of a number of turning points, all within the context of a confidence and self-belief that meant that opportunities presented were taken, partly to be a role model for other women at a time when there were not many in senior positions:
Obviously, when you meet your husband and you decide where your careers are going to go, plot out your life a bit, that’s a turning point. And then various professional turning points, being sponsored … people kind of plucking you and saying ‘you will do this job’, and that happened to me at least once if not twice. But you’ve got to link that with this little thing inside me which I mentioned was there from an early age, the ‘yeah, I can do this; I’ll give this a go’ … I take it for granted now, but all the time I was at [institution] this ‘I am a role model for other women’ was an important motivator for me.
The tensions between relationships and work proved to be the basis for a number of turning points in Fiona’s life and career:
At the point when I can remember in a relationship with a lovely guy, we were kind of ‘are we together, aren’t we together?’ way back, and I had the offer to do a [TV] series … And I could suddenly see – there was our road – I was very happy to go along the path; he was already a senior lecturer and I was a lecturer, and I could see babies and baking bread and working, but I could suddenly see that this could catapult me into something big … And I can remember having this discussion with him: ‘look I won’t go, but I think we need to make our minds up now where we are going’; ‘oh I don’t know’. So I went and we did, not the next day, but we did. And that’s also been a path, that’s always been a conflict ‘what am I going to do … where is my life going, is this relationship secure, is this my future – or?’ and it’s ended up ‘or’.
For Eliza, a series of different jobs and line management by inspirational people provided positive turning points to set against the unhappy experiences described above:
I would definitely say that when I worked for [organisation] … It taught me a huge amount [about] business acumen, and that was an area that I needed to learn and I needed to become strong and understand that sector … I knew that I wanted some involvement with business but I still wasn’t sure which area. And another point would have been when I worked for [another organisation] … working on the … niche supplement. The experience and just the time alone working with some of the editors and working with that particular ad director was definitely a turning point … I had found something; I’d found a way to use that creativity … join those two up you have the business development skills … that … was a turning point … I felt I was more recognised, because I was trained as a business development manager … I felt then that I’d earnt that right to be a business manager … finding an industry that I really felt passionate about, understood and excelled in.
Carrie was heavily influenced by a senior male colleague, who provided mentoring for her; even though she found it a less than enjoyable experience:
The man who groomed me to be a chairperson was a tyrant and a brute and I would cry a lot. I was 33 when he came on board. I had just finished my doctorate. I had just had my daughter. I was pretty fragile … And then I was starting to go through a divorce … He was not a nice person … he was definitely old school and he would bark orders to me … when I became chairperson he was still in the department and I knew that I grew up when I told him he was talking when I was leading the group. And I said to him, I mustered it up and I looked at him and I said ‘one more word out of you and I’m reporting you for sexual harassment and I am very, very serious’.
Andrea spoke not so much about ‘turning points’ as ‘step changes’, but again highlighted the need to be willing to take risks and change direction:
Sometimes, I think you’re in a situation where a door is a door into another room which has got another door; sometimes it’s a door into a room that’s used as a corridor that’s got lots of doors leading off, so it’s a kind of a step change.
Jessica spoke about a series of turning points, including learning about the politics of situations and environments:
I think when I joined [institution], I was just so keen to do the work I missed the political side. I think generally women aren’t so interested in the political side … I got myself some coaching … two hours a month, to teach me politics. Not so that I could play it but so I could deflect it and understand it. That was probably pivotal in how I behaved, reacted …
We end this section with a quotation from Kate’s interview, which seems to summarise many of the women’s experiences as she talks about a series of turning points that had led her to where she now was in her career:
We did a very person-focused type of care … and to lead that over a five-year period is tiring … I can remember being so angry about not being allowed to have a break from it by the organisation … The most significant turning point was not getting … a director … job … and then being told ‘if you’d applied anywhere else in the country they would’ve appointed you’. And that was really a very, very challenging time. And I do admire the man who did it because the easy thing to say was ‘you just weren’t the right candidate’ but he actually did take a real risk and was really honest. That was significant … And then coming to work here … was a very significant turning point … The fit between the values I hold … and I suppose people recognised that I’d got skills and capabilities.
Taking risks and being determined
The need to take risks, to remain confident, to persist and to be lucky – ‘it’s what’s fortuitous as well – who knocks on the door, and what you happen to see in the paper when you’re looking, if you’re looking’ (Andrea) – and support from colleagues and senior managers were all important, as Diane stressed:
I think you have to take risks, you have to risk yourself and you have to seize opportunities as they arrive … I was very fortunate to move into organisations where there was lots of opportunity … [and] they did take chances with relatively young people, so I was lucky, and you need luck. You need to be in the right place at the right time, and fortune had it that I was in the right place at the right time. I also had some very good managers, all of whom were men who … were very encouraging … I also suffered some truly atrocious male management as well, which forced me to think ‘I can do a better job than you – you are doing such a terrible job and you got this job just because of who you are, not what you can do, that surely to goodness it couldn’t be any worse’. So, on a number of occasions I risked going for jobs that I wasn’t meant to get, but ended up getting them.
The need to be determined and to learn from bad experiences came out of a number of the interviews, particularly when it came to going up the career ladder, as Olivia commented:
It’s been difficult at times and you get fed up but I’m quite optimistic about things and I also think things happen for a reason. So if I’m going through a particularly difficult bit of work I try to think about ‘this is difficult, this must be for a reason that this is all very difficult. What could that reason be and what could I learn from it?’
For Diane also, taking risks was a key contributory factor in her successful career progression, but in the context of ‘understanding how you can move around without taking the usual path’ and being prepared to take on a role that no one had done before:
I thought, ‘yes, I’m going to do that, I’m going to apply for this job’. And I got it, and I’ll never forget [my line manager], lovely guy, and he said to me ‘the worst decision you’re ever going to make … this is terrible, you’ll come back here in five years’ time. I had high hopes for you, do you know if you’d played your cards right you could’ve been my assistant?’ And I thought, ‘hmm, maybe, but I think I’ll take the chance’, and that was the best thing I ever did. It gave me a huge helicopter view over an organisation.
This ability to see lateral and even unorthodox career progression opportunities was also evident in Olivia’s career, when she was abroad with her partner and unable to work. She comments:
I quickly discovered that I don’t like doing housework! I needed to do some charity work for my final project for the OU course so I found myself a charity job. I was amazed at how that happened. It was networking that did that … I set up a performance matrix scheme for a charity … They set up a new team so I sorted all that and set up a performance matrix on how that would work, an implementation plan and all those things.
Eliza had been prevented, as she saw it, from setting up her own business because of difficulties getting pregnant, though she had eventually managed to be both a mother and a business woman:
Getting promoted
During the course of our study, we looked at women’s experience of getting promoted. Experiences varied, as noted in other research as summarised, for example, by Kumra and Vinnicombe (2008). Kate had little to say on the subject, simply stating: ‘well it’s been fine actually. I’ve never been promoted into a job I can’t do’. Some of the interviewees commented on the ways in which they had been promoted internally within the organisation, as for example Diane and Lillian, who commented on the benefits of open application:
I didn’t apply for promotions I applied for other jobs that were themselves promoted jobs but you actually got an opportunity to fight your corner whereas promotions are probably based on CVs and the promotions committee … so I got promotion by dint of getting a different job in the organisation. (Lillian)
I think the open interview situation gave me more opportunities than I would’ve had without that … I would’ve been selected less often because I was always a bit of a wild card, being female and being in engineering industries without an engineering background, that kind of thing. (Diane)
Fiona had some telling comments to make about her promotion pathway and being appointed to the role of CEO:
I think there was always a feeling around that I wasn’t serious enough. Because part of my story is to be friendly, light, accessible; [I] demystify, not talk in code. I think a lot of people would describe me as lightweight … I’m not going to shout or be pompous in order to be heavyweight, and I know there are other ways of being heavyweight and I think I am … There were always people who helped me; somewhere on every interview panel there was somebody who could see who I was. My biggest amazement is … the first job I was appointed to … why they ever appointed me; I would never have appointed me … Why in heavens name did they appoint me? I suppose they thought they could manage me. When I was appointed here [as CEO] … a lot of senior managers [said] that they wouldn’t work with me … great trauma really; whenever I’m appointed there’s a big kerfuffle.
Stepping off the ladder
We asked the participants if they had ever thought of ‘climbing off the ladder’. Most of them responded as Diane did:
No, I got huge enjoyment out of it; the variety of the jobs and the fact that nobody had done it before. There were days when you think, oh God, but no, I never thought about taking a break, a sabbatical, any of those things, no.
Some had thought about it when they had had children, but came to the kind of conclusion that Jessica reached:
I actually thought of going to a three- or four-day week when I had my daughter but came to the conclusion that I couldn’t do the job I was doing in three or four days and I couldn’t give up doing what I was doing. It was not the wrong decision either. Has she suffered because of it? No.
Gill said much the same as both Diane and Jessica:
I loved being in [organisation]. I was very happy there and I loved my work but for me my professional identity is really a big part of my identity. If I gave it up I’d be giving up a big chunk of myself. I wasn’t terribly at ease being a mummy for six weeks’ maternity leave; I didn’t find that particularly rewarding. No, I’ve just always loved it so no I’ve never seriously considered it.
You could opt for … something slower but having made the choice, and having had the opportunity to make the choice of having a more senior role, there would have been a point when I came back to work … that I could’ve gone for a lower level job and balanced out family commitments a little bit more. But I didn’t feel I would be happy with that, having been in a more senior role, just stepping back and letting someone else take decisions and then having to live with them.
For Fiona, as noted earlier in this chapter, there had been times when she might have powered down her career, but, as she put it, the relationship had ‘never been rooted or the offer never been clear enough for me to say “right I chose bread making and the babies” … and maybe because the guys could see me ricocheting anyhow’. She continued:
I’ve never seriously … thought ‘right, no, I’ve had enough’. I was heavily head hunted because there were so few women around … and a lot of people advised me to go to a bigger, richer [organisation] where the things you dream of can come true more easily. And I did think of that … but … what do I really want? Do I want to wake up in the morning and feel OK it’s difficult but I feel good about what I’m trying to do? So in a sense I stopped there.
Not getting a predicted promotion had made Maggie think about a different pathway, but her love for her job had quickly made her reaffirm her commitment to her profession:
There have been a couple of moments when I’ve thought, ‘shall I go and do something else?’ But they’ve been fleeting moments in time, which I think are a natural reaction to disappointment. Would I ever actively do that? No, I wouldn’t, because I absolutely love what I do and I wake up every morning and I can’t wait to come into work. I’m privileged to do what I do and that’s an incredible place to be in a professional career.
Kate had also had some difficult times, though she had never actually determined to get off the career ladder:
I don’t think I’ve ever, other than … when I’ve just got so annoyed with something and I’ve wanted to move on. It’s only in the last … year or so, because retirement is coming up, that I’ve started to think about a life when you don’t work. So no, probably never wanted to stop but I do think now ‘what will it be like when you don’t have that?’ and actually I’m quite looking forward to it at the moment.
Future plans
Retirement
For some of the women, there was a clear future plan, most notably in the case of Carrie, who felt that, at her age, she did not want to move further up the hierarchy, even though there was a lot that she still wanted to do and had the confidence to do it:
My own plans for the future are to stay exactly where I am. I’ve been asked many times to move out … If I was 10 years younger … and I felt as confident as I do now, I might consider moving up and doing something else. But … I’m going to be a grandmother and I want to have some time for that. And I’m going to stay where I am probably until I’m 66 … but the way my career’s been you just never know … I don’t know what’s round the corner; I’m not looking for what’s round the corner … I have a million projects, so I’m very stimulated and I have a lot of things I want to do. So I’m going to stay where I am, but I do believe I could do other things, I do believe that.
Lillian expressed similar sentiments:
The only plan I’ve got is that I’ve found myself working quite hard in not-for-profit roles and people asking me to do things and take on things in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have a working life until I’m about 65 or 66, which is when I shall stop earning money and in that time I shall aim to create a more permanent balance than I’ve got now.
Diane was of a similar age, and was beginning to feel that it was time to take things more easily:
There comes a point where you probably start repeating what you did before; very few problems come across your desk that you haven’t seen before and I think you might get lazy … and I’m not sure that I have the energy … So I’ll retrieve my golf cart, get that handicap down, make friends with my husband again, travel … I mean this life is inhibiting because even if you love it, it is absorbing and it can control an awful lot of what you want to do.
Kate was also keen to retire at 60 so that she could enjoy a different kind of life, while continuing to fulfil a demanding caring role. She also suggested that men and women had different attitudes to retirement:
I’ve watched people think ‘oh I might stay on a bit longer’ and actually I think that by the time I’m 60 I will want more freedom and that is more than just going part time or whatever. I just want actually to be able to choose … I’d actually like to take a big change in direction … But interestingly, I think this is quite a female perspective on retirement … We’ve had … men in the team … they are really struggling with the concept that they won’t be working. I suspect it might be a male/female thing, because women are used to having multi-layered lives so they’ve got other worlds to inhabit. [Whereas] at very senior posts [men] are putting in huge hours so they’re not really developing a wider perspective on the world.
Fiona, on the other hand, was still very much focused on her role as head of institution. Partly as a result of this and partly because of her relaxed approach to career planning, she had not spent much time thinking practically about other roles – the ‘tumble factor’, as she called it – though she clearly had at least passive ambitions in this regard:
Because I am so deep into this [institution] I haven’t got any thoughts about the future at all. We’re working through a strategic plan: I am deep in this; I’m not stepping back and thinking. There are a million things I want to do … I would love to have more time. There’s other work I’d like to do; I’d be really quite interested in working professionally in the charities … I don’t have any plans and don’t really have any thoughts at the moment. That may be what I’ve done all my life; [it] may be part of the tumble factor, but I’m quite comfortable with that.
I don’t think I’m looking very far ahead to be honest. My ambitions are centred on the achievements of this [organisation] and by the time I’ve finished with it, it having been transformed, which is going to take a few years. I don’t have much, but then that’s me isn’t it? I’ve said that all the way through; I don’t anticipate going another step up there.
Helen had a fatalistic approach to future plans, confident that her energy and other related attributes would ensure that something would turn up when her current role ended:
Well I was actually leaving at the end of December … [but] I’m actually now leaving … at the end of June, after seven years in the job. It’s been quite difficult actually because there’s been uncertainty as to when I was going or when I wasn’t going. I’ve still got my private sector business … I’ve been asked to be a non exec director of another organisation, which I’m really chuffed to bits about, and I’ve got three public sector potential jobs outstanding and I know I’m on the shortlist for all of them … Something will happen, I’m a fatalist, something will happen. But I’ve got plenty to do in the private sector let alone the public one. But I’m geriatric … I’m 66, but the fact is … natural energy is everything. It’s nothing about being as old as you feel it’s about having energy, having enthusiasm, engagement, and not being generational … all of those things are important.
The next career phase
The remaining women were not yet in a position or at an age to consider retirement. Andrea remained ambitious, while recognising that she would find it difficult to become the CEO of a university, given her academic background. Like a number of the women involved in our study, consultancy was an increasingly appealing alternative career:
I’ve always been ambitious; whether those ambitions are possible given my current portfolio of skills … I haven’t got the academic context probably to be the head of an academic institution but I would be very interested in being the head of a bigger organisation than the one I’m currently in. I’d be very interested in possibly even running my own business. Lots of people get to a certain stage and then shoot off to consultancy … I’ve done sufficient to feel that I would have something to offer.
Eliza already ran her own business, and her future plans related both to her company and to a different kind of work-life balance, while recognising that her aspirations might be difficult to achieve in a challenging economic climate:
If you had asked me that six or seven months ago, I would say, expanding the business. I’ve been hit like many by the economic downturn even though it’s picking up very nicely now. I would really like to see my business established. I would like it to be more of a household name. I would like to re-brand the company … and I just really want it to be self-sufficient … I want it to do well financially but not to the extent that I want to be rich. I would just like to be rich in quality time that I spend with my family.
Jessica had revised her views of a possible future outside work in a surprising way:
It’s my normal ‘I don’t know’. I think I’ve got a lot of momentum … [though] two years ago I got involved with the Guides. I’m a Brown Owl. It’s really funny because the mothers who are all a lot younger than me … always came to me because they assumed I was senior because I was older … They all assumed I was a grandma who didn’t work and of course you don’t say anything … and then bit by bit they all found out what I had done and what I do. They treat me totally differently which is really, really, funny. The girls don’t because obviously I’m just Brown Owl and therefore I run the show. I find it really, really rewarding but it’s coming back to giving the girls skills for life rather than just playing games … So you can use your energies in lots of different ways but the thing that startled me most was the assumption of what I was and what I could bring to the party was quite different to what I can.
Olivia had arguably the clearest future plan, which also included moving to consultancy work and, like many of the women, a different kind of work-life balance:
Assuming that my current position sort of settles in some format or another, the plan would be to stay in the current role for 12 or 18 months to get a good foundation in HR and change in terms of delivering some things. Then leave and go and work somewhere else for about six to eight years to get a broader range of HR experience and then go self-employed in relation to I want to do: some travelling and life work balance … So work for the first six months of the year or whatever and then go travelling and not work for six months, then work again. That’s the master plan … The idea is that I get a good grounding here within the business, be able to show that this is what I’ve delivered in this context and environment and then go off and do something similar for one, two, three other companies over a six- to eight-year period. That would then give me enough experience to show I can do it outside … and still be able to balance either project or interim work. I might find there’s something that I really enjoy and that I can do it on a part-time basis or term time: it’s mainly getting the holidays! I haven’t got enough holidays and I want to be able to fit more of those in and that’s part of the drive behind it.
Conclusion
This chapter has looked at the women’s experiences of career progression, the extent to which they planned their career moves and what approaches they adopted where they did plan ahead. We noted that many of the participants in our study had not had a systematic approach to their career and no obvious plan – at least for some of the time. Common to virtually all the women nevertheless was willingness and an ability to identify and take opportunities, coupled with a passion for certain kinds of roles or activities that resulted in their moving up through organisational and sector hierarchies. This was underpinned, in many cases – and as already noted in earlier chapters – by a determination to succeed, coupled with a flexible approach to career development (see also Cornelius and Skinner, 2008).
We noted the fact that planning was perhaps difficult in areas where there was no obvious career path for women. The situation varied from sector to sector and organisation to organisation, with some receiving more obvious support than others in terms of their career progression. This led in some cases to rapid promotion, whereas other women could move only relatively slowly up the ladder. We observed that a number of the participants in our study began to adopt a clearer plan as they were promoted to more senior roles, as a result – in some cases – of encouragement from line managers or other figures who played some form of mentoring role and as they grew more confident of their ability to undertake more demanding roles. Conversely, we found that having set and usually reached ambitious early targets, others had become more relaxed about reaching the most senior levels, although they still expected to do so in due course.
We discovered that an important aspect of career development for many of the women was a learning process that enabled them not only to discover more about themselves but also to work out where they should go next. This led to changes and reformulations of career targets (where they had been set), including decisions not to apply for certain types of role – in some cases because of the type of work and associated gender division of labour that was prevalent in particular types of organisation or occupation (as summarised by, for example, Legge, 1987; Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008). We explored the extent to which the women had experienced major turning points – otherwise described as ‘step changes’ or even ‘forks in the road’ – in their lives and careers; most of them had, and we enumerated the ways in which certain events and experiences – both good and bad, professional and private – focused and reformed the participants in our study. A number of these turning points had at their heart a discovery of what the person concerned really wanted to do. Sometimes, this was as a result of strong support and inspiration from particular individuals, but in almost all cases involved an element of risk-taking, opportunism – as already noted – and an ability to see and go down often unorthodox pathways as part of the decision to change course and/or move on. ‘Being in the right place at the right time’ – otherwise described as having a degree of luck – was also seen as important, though often this ‘luck’ took the form of strong support from others. Negative experiences often seemed to be a strong driver for change.
We then analysed the women’s views of promotion systems. Those who had experienced ‘open’ promotion processes commended their benefits. Conversely, we explored the extent to which the participants in our study had considered stepping off their career ladder; there was little evidence to suggest that many of the women had ever seriously considered such a move, though domestic considerations (discussed in Chapter 11) had most often prompted a review – and then, typically, reaffirmation – of career plans, not least because so much of the women’s identities was bound up with work and love of their jobs rather than home or, in some cases, a less high-powered role and career.
Finally, we looked at the women’s future plans. In a number of cases, these related to retirement, given the age of some of the participants in our study, though even here it seemed likely that their energy would result in a good deal of continuing professional – as well as personal – activity; not all the older members of the group had begun to think about life after work, with at least one person having a high degree of positive fatalism about the future. We referred to perceived differences between men and women in terms of approaches to retirement. The remaining women were not yet nearing retirement age. Their future career plans differed, some including a change of role, as for example a possible move into consultancy work, while others envisaged, at the time of the interview at least, a continuation of their current career trajectories, though there were hints that the economic downturn might change some of their approaches and a change in the current work-life balance was clearly a definite possibility.
References
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