Balancing on the ceiling

Faith Glasgow asks some female finance professionals how they deal with the competing demands of rigorous work and domestic roles

The 2006 Female FTSE100 report, recently published by the Cranfield School of Management, makes depressing reading for all those working to promote women’s interests at a senior level.

The report looks at the presence – or otherwise – of women on the boards of FTSE100 firms. It finds that just 12.5% of the 181 new board appointments over the year to November 2006 were women, down from 17% in two years. Women now hold just over 10% of directorships in FTSE100 companies, and only 3.8% of executive directorships (amounting to a measly 15 out of 391 executive seats). The balance is even more skewed against them in FTSE250 companies. And that is despite three decades of equal opportunities legislation.

The Government believes that women’s family obligations are a critical factor shaping the absence of female talent in the boardroom. To that end, the Minister for Women, Ruth Kelly, recently announced the Quality, Part-time Work Change Initiative, a package of measures designed to increase the number of senior roles available on a part-time basis.

But the professions have traditionally been notoriously resistant to such lily-livered compromise as job-sharing and part-time work. How far, then, is the conflict between family and career reflected in the experience of finance professionals? How feasible is it these days to nurture personal ambition at the same time as bringing up a family? And how does the UK situation compare with the pressures and opportunities elsewhere, for example in Asian countries, where domestic labour is cheaper and the extended family plays an important role?

Sara Harvey, director of a three-partner practice, Hines Harvey Woods, in Norwich, gave up her 70-hour a week job at KPMG to have a family at the end of the 1980s. After five years at home, she started looking for something more family-friendly, and eventually found a job with a smaller firm where she was subsequently made a partner, before setting up her own firm six years ago. But, she stresses: ‘It was a great drawback to have been out of the system – I was being interviewed for positions far below my previous level of responsibility.’

Since going back to work Harvey has worked full-time, employing a nanny and then a childminder while her children were young, and often working after they were asleep. ‘But we would always have a cup of tea in bed together with the kids before work, and I was usually home by 6pm or 6.30pm, so I did bath time and bed,’ she recalls.

The trouble, she says, is that working mothers always have to prove they are not letting the family get in the way. ‘There’s a permanent sense of guilt. Your children can never be ill, and you feel like an alien at the school gate because you so rarely get there. I was once, at the age of 31, asked by one of my children’s friends if I was their granny because he had never seen me before.’

So how far did she have to compromise? ‘If I had wanted to get to the top of the tree I would have had to go back to KPMG, but then I would have had to behave as though I didn’t have kids, so this was my compromise solution,’ says Harvey. No matter how much childcare you have, she believes, ‘something has to give once you have a family: either you find a smaller practice or go in-house, or you send your kids to boarding school’.

Family

Rita Purewal, the chief finance officer at Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, took an in-house route from the outset. The support of her extended family made a big difference in managing her family commitments. ‘I’ve worked here full-time for 11 years, apart from four months off for the birth of my second child, but I couldn’t have done so without a strong extended family,’ she comments. ‘I have great admiration for women who manage without one.’

But Purewal also benefits from the fact that she has a longstanding relationship with a relatively flexible and broad-minded employer. ‘I’ve been able to negotiate a flexitime arrangement so that I can do the school run, start at 10am and finish a bit later in the evening,’ she says. ‘And I always make sure I go to school events – the club is very family-oriented like that.’

She feels no sense of sacrifice in the balancing act that her present set-up demands. She concentrates a lot on her career, but her time with the family is pure quality time (enhanced by the fact that the boys are now old enough to attend Wolves matches with their mum).

But the idea of ambitious professional women working a part-week in what remains a male-dominated business world simply doesn’t make sense. ‘You have to compete, and you have to try that much harder to justify the fact that you’re a woman with a family – especially somewhere like a football club,’ Purewal points out.

However, there have been significant changes in both attitudes and policies in the big accounting firms in recent years. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers now provides parents with support in the form of childcare vouchers as part of the flexible benefits package and an active in-house Parents Network; the company is also piloting an emergency childcare back-up service for when normal childcare arrangements fall through unexpectedly.

The firm clearly acknowledges that working mothers on shorter hours can be as effective and committed to their careers as anyone else. Katharine Finn is a good example: she has two young children and has worked three (now four) days a week at PwC for several years. ‘I have just been promoted to partner [in Assurance] on this part-time pattern, so I don’t believe it does limit your career options,’ she comments. But full-time commitment is still the order of the day in Asian companies. Jessy Wang, financial director of a high-tech company in Beijing, returned to full-time work when her son was six months old, leaving her mother-in-law to take care of him until he was old enough for kindergarten. There are concessions to family needs: her son, now 13, comes to her office after school each day and does his homework there, and then they go home together; and if she needs to take time off for school events, she can apply for ‘private affair leave’.

Ultimately, however, it is a matter of manipulating full-time employment into a manageable form. ‘I wasn’t given the option of working part-time – women work part-time as accountants, but not many companies will hire a part-time finance manager,’ Wang explains. ‘And if I want a higher position I have to work full-time. It would inhibit my career prospects if I took part-time work.’

Merina Abu Tahir, who now runs the financial support services for Malaysia Airlines but has lived in both the US and the UK, believes that professional women with families are better catered for in Malaysia. ‘I had problems managing childcare and work when I was working in England. Here, due to the ready availability of housekeepers and strong family values system, there are no problems trying to work out who’ll take care of the home and kids.’

Women hold some of the most senior financial positions in Malaysia, including the top posts in the Central Bank and the Securities Commission. But there is still a cultural expectation that they will also run the household and sort out the children, which, she says, ‘does take a toll on most career women’. Those who make it to the very top depend on the support of both extended family and husband – or, in many cases, they are single.

Abu Tahir relies heavily on such a support system: she has four children, typically works a 12-hour day and commutes an hour each way. But part-time work or shorter hours are not options. ‘They would block my career prospects,’ she says.

That view is seconded by Serena Kwi Eng Ang, CFO of Philips Malaysia. She too works a very long day and relies on a domestic maid to look after the house and her three daughters. ‘To succeed in your career you have to give full commitment and dedication,’ she explains. ‘Part-time work would indicate otherwise and limit your career prospects.’

Ultimately, it seems that the road to the top for professional women with families worldwide is paved with domestic support, paid or unpaid. But the signs are that more family-friendly arrangements are gaining acceptability, in the UK at any rate. Who knows – in time they might even percolate through to the boardroom.

Faith Glasgow is a freelance journalist, writing mainly on property and finance. She has contributed to a wide range of publications, including most of the UK broadsheets, Vogue, Country Life and Investors Chronicle.