Objectively there clearly is one, because there’s so much evidence of women being very talented and successful when they do the jobs, but they find it very hard to get the jobs to do. I was just saying to somebody this morning that you look at the Guardian league table which is just coming out … two of the top ten institutions both have women vice chancellors who’ve kept them in the top ten against all the odds. So women can do a brilliant job. but there are only 16 women and 106 men so there is still clearly a glass ceiling. Glynis Breakwell¹ has done this work on. how many people get recruited as vice chancellors. There is a view. that we are women and we present in a different way to men candidates and the interviewing panels by and large warm to the confidence and pizzazz of male candidates more than women.

A lot of women fall of the perch because they have children and want to spend time with their children, so that’s their choice. Other women in other subjects, science subjects particularly, maybe medicine, they just can’t play that game: it’s just too awful to spend the hours and the competition and the ruthlessness. I know because I’ve spent a lot of time with people who either are professors in those subjects or who aren’t. And I used to talk to post-doctoral women … in engineering and science … and they said, ‘it’s just too awful you know, it’s so hard to get up the ladder’. It wasn’t like that for me and I think in social sciences it’s much, much easier. I for example used to work a lot at home … and I could flex my work around my children, things like that. So certainly in academic life – and I expect even more in commercial life – the pressure of work is such that many women don’t want to do it, quite rightly and sensibly, for whatever reason. So that’s cumulative; you’ve probably lost 60 per cent of potential candidates through that kind of wastage. And then you’ve got the ones that say, ‘I don’t want that kind of headache.thank you very much’. And then you’ve got only a certain proportion of the year group, the cohort who’ve got. the particular blend of qualities and skills that make them capable of taking on these quite tough jobs. There’s one woman I know who became a dean, good academic, became a dean and she just couldn’t do it. She put the cause of women back rather than forward because she just couldn’t rise to the task. There are men who do that too, can’t do it, but. she was so highly visible because there are so few women out there.

If you look now, I asked CILIP³ for the makeup of the profession the other week, and it’s still 75 per cent women but if you look at the makeup of senior librarians in universities it’s still not 75 per cent. It’s nearing 50 per cent. Then if you look at the next layer up, and there are issues about academic credibility and so on, but if you look at UUK⁴ membership it is men. I look round the table and it’s still two-thirds men. I think that there are issues around confidence for women and professional confidence and I think that librarians aren’t very professionally confident as a whole and I think that that comes from being a female-dominated profession. So there are issues around individuals but also around the broader profession that we need to think about.

I think that we now have a culture … where men and women – at least in the States – have lived pretty much somewhat more equal, and younger men I think don’t look at women the same way men looked at me for moving up or success, they just see you as another rival. I think what’s really interesting for me is that when we have faculty who come in who are culturally different. really culturally different, coming from other countries where there may be more of a hierarchy with men and women, what saves me is my job level. Because I am above somebody else and they know that, but I’ve heard from some of their female professors. that they feel they’re treated like second-class citizens. But not from an American, born in America.

You’ll find more women vice chancellors in new universities rather than old universities where managerialism and the policies of being able to do the sums and manage the whole organisation in a concerted way are probably valued more than being the senior academic or whatever it is in an organisation. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky and I’ve been in a place where, well they had to employ women because there was nobody else.

I’ve seen it, for other people. I think I might have done if I’d gone further up the scale. Working in industries. which were primarily engineering based I have seen at least one other woman who came quite directly up against quite prejudicial views about not a woman being a poor choice but because she was quite a feminine woman really. She used to talk about the value of making things happen which people would feel better about; they just didn’t think she was tough enough. I didn’t experience it myself, I think it existed but I didn’t experience it. In some ways I was tougher.

I’m of mixed views as to whether I think it’s there or not. I had a team member once who I had several career discussions with her about what she wanted to do and she kept saying she thought there was a glass ceiling. I found that quite difficult, because from my perspective the reason why she wasn’t being promoted was that she didn’t have the knowledge, depth of experience in comparison to others and she was not focused on what she wanted from her career. So she was applying for lots of different jobs … I couldn’t see any similarities between them. It was completely scattergun; all she was interested in was … more money … I’ve just never understood the financial drive for getting a promotion. There were times earlier in my career when I thought ‘oh I could do with more money’ but that was never the primary drive of why I went for a job, it was always because that looks really interesting, I think I could learn a lot and I think I could bring something to the party, oh and by the way it’s more money, that would be good. I think that’s where I have difficulty with the glass ceiling because I haven’t had any issues with it. I don’t know also it’s because I self-select so I haven’t pushed myself.

I think most people who break through it should break through it and those that don’t, don’t. They don’t deserve to. I haven’t seen too much where I think someone’s been deprived. I learnt to shake off this mantle of, I suppose, unwillingness to engage socially when I realised that if I wasn’t careful it would mean that I wouldn’t network, it would mean that I wouldn’t do the things that I really needed to do. But as soon as I realised that and had the confidence and courage to do that, it’s never been a problem since.

I don’t know and I think I would find it hard to really voice an opinion on that one, which is unusual for me! I’ve tended to work in female-dominated organisations anyway. This is the first time that I’ve worked in an organisation where more of the senior team are male than female.

I suspect that some of the glass ceiling thing is a multiple of people wanting to have it all and therefore not putting 100 per cent of their effort into the work environment but having other effort elsewhere.

It came from, not a kind of aggression, it came from a genuine question ‘do I not know the rules and have to learn them?’ Some things we need to learn, we do need to learn about money and we set up training and support. We need to listen to successful men and friendly men and have them help us. But some things we want to do our way and that was the whole glass ceiling movement and what I tried to hold to in my working life subsequently is to say ‘it’s OK to do it your way whatever way that is’, provided it works. I think we were pioneering a new way of working which actually, with the introduction of things like Japanese companies into this country and equal opportunity legislation and so on, the world did begin to change. And the skills that a lot of women brought to the table at that stage did become more valued. Books like Emotional Intelligence⁵ were published; diversity began to be recognised, but there are still not enough women, are there, at the top?

I still feel that there is a huge way to go; it is still very male dominated. I think women are more forceful in what they want to achieve these days but we are not on an equal footing, and I would like to see that. I’m not talking about women’s lib, I’m talking about unleashed talent that is not recognised and not rewarded in the same way that it is actually rewarded by men.

I can give you an example at my last institution where someone [a man] was promoted above their existing line manager and I feel very strongly it was to do with their sex. Yes, someone who’d risen very highly. I think you’re right, I like to say it exists, that life isn’t equal. I don’t know if actual discrimination exists but I think. there are issues around who actually applies as well as the discrimination.

I’ve had pretty negative experiences. head hunters. it may be they haven’t worked for me because I’m not good enough, it may be they haven’t worked for me because of the kind of thing I’m interested in. but I’m conscious of individuals who are being taken forward for jobs – people that I think are rubbish, putting it meanly – but there’s a sense in which maybe what’s being looked for is a male image, and it’s not what I’m offering.

I think it’s very hard for me to say [that there is a glass ceiling] now, because I hope in this organisation, I passionately hope, that those kinds of barriers are far less real … But I think there are now big barriers that we’re working on hard around ethnicity and around disability and so on. In the early days we just concentrated on women and men. So for me the women/men glass ceiling thing is far less visible, but the different ways of doing things, the diversity issue, is strong.

I think all of us over many years are continuing to make sure that people break through that. I find [the glass ceiling] quite a constraining concept; it’s restrictive just in the whole concept of what it means. I just think we all have a responsibility to make sure our good people in the organisation, whatever their gender, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their sexuality, give of their best. If you are within a minority in an organisation. those of us who are in those roles, I am very clear, have a responsibility to nurture other people who come through. And to continue moving up, not pull the ladder up – that’s been another experience – women get there and thanks very much, I’m all right, I’ve done it the hard way and you lot can do it as well. It’s about nurturing and supporting and helping other people to do it.

I know someone who’s a younger woman – ten years younger than me – and she f’s and blinds and she tries to be like the men; alternatively she cries, which is awful. So I don’t think it’s generally men’s reception to it, I think there are still a few men who have difficulty with it but I don’t think there are that many anymore. I think women often opt to look after their children and do a part-time job and that’s their prerogative. I said once. that women are very lucky; they can have a job or a career, they can work part-time or full-time. They can have a break or not have a break. Poor men have to take the career route and earn as much as they can generally. Although I do know quite a few women now who are the major breadwinners and I think the men are much more supportive now of that. I do think I’ve been fortunate with my husband as our salaries have gone sort of like ‘that’, but he’s pretty relaxed about me being a powerful woman in business, it doesn’t bother him, it doesn’t take away his masculinity. Some men can’t take it at all.

So is there a glass ceiling? I think there is a glass ceiling for different reasons and I think some of the younger women need to have some behavioural help in how they handle themselves. I used to say to young women who got promoted to manager, this is awful of me to say this, but most women who get their first managerial position become terrible, really dictatorial and they think that’s how they have to behave. Most of them gradually relax, men seem to take that position and not be dictatorial as much. So there is some help needed for women when they move into managerial positions.

There also feels like, and it’s only anecdotal, magazines and conversations, a generation of women, or some women that are saying ‘I’m not prepared to make that sacrifice’ and I think it is quite difficult because a number of us women [CEOs] are … without children or single or divorced or whatever: a kind of a generational thing maybe. I think it would be a shame if the next generation felt ‘I don’t want to do it because’. But it’s interesting, because I think if I was 40 now and I looked at me, would I want to do what I do, I think ‘would I want to do it?’ Or, because I would have more choices I’d have more sideways things. I could be more influential in more things, be that Facebook or charities or whatever, I could be more active. Would I choose to make my mark on the world that way rather than that way?

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