A Good Time to be a Girl: Don’t Lean In, Change the System. Helena Morrissey
2,000 men, giving useful reference points. The feedback showed that only half the women felt supported by their employer in their career aspirations. Flexible working was seen as helping with work–life balance but there was a stigma attached, undermining chances of career progression. Only 40% of respondents said that their organisation valued flexible working as a way of working efficiently.
Overwhelmingly, women said they did not want special programmes, they just wanted to be managed better.
Increasingly, in our knowledge-based economy, performance will be measurable in terms of results, rather than hours at the desk. Some jobs lend themselves more easily to this and, given that flexible working was not even a concept in the late 1980s, I made a fortunate choice of career. At the end of each quarter or year, the performance of the funds I managed stood as an objective record for anyone to see. It would have been much tougher to combine a large family with being, say, a corporate finance lawyer, where the work is transaction-based and individual contributions are often measured in billable hours. In 2016, PwC’s 25th annual Law Firms Survey revealed that newly qualified lawyers at the UK’s top ten law firms are set an average annual billing target of nearly 1,600 hours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most lawyers fall short.
The meritocracy that I benefited from at Newton can be the corporate cultural norm, not the exception. Beyond a small number of organisations, we haven’t yet really shaken up our working structures to attract more diverse talent – or taken full advantage of technology to make work more of an activity than a place. Instead, we’ve tended to add in programmes around the edges designed to encourage those who are outside the ‘norm’, but often this draws attention to the problem and may have the counterproductive effect of making difference appear troublesome. We’ll explore approaches that work better in Chapter 6.
There’s also a tendency to leave those in the diverse or under-represented groups in charge of solving the problem of their own under-representation. This is, I promise, an impossible task (even if an executive sponsor is drafted in to cheerlead). ‘Affinity groups’ or special interest networks can encourage people to feel less alone, but won’t do much for their chances of promotion and obviously do not foster inclusion. Talking to ourselves is never going to get us very far.
One evening, I arrived to give a speech at a diversity event hosted by one of the big four accountancy firms. The first problem was that I could see from a quick glance that the audience comprised only women, ethnic minorities, and one or two disabled people – where were all the white men? I was told they hadn’t been invited, which immediately seemed to limit the event’s potential impact. The few members of the leadership team who were there in a supportive role appeared downcast. I asked what the problem was: earlier that same day, the firm had the chance to pitch to an important prospect but the presentation team had been asked to leave as soon as they entered the room. Apparently the potential client had specifically asked for a diverse team but the group that had arrived to present was all-white, male and middle-aged. My hosts explained that of course they had read the brief, and a young woman had been due to go along but she was off sick and no one had remembered the diversity point until it was too late. The issue just wasn’t front and centre of anyone’s mind. In contrast, Stewart Newton had created an investment philosophy where difference was integral to the thought-process, where multiple perspectives were valued. That was great not just for me, but for anyone who enjoyed thinking laterally, being challenged and challenging others.
The third essential ingredient behind my newfound career success was the true partnership with Richard. My career setback after our first son was born had not put us off having more children. Both Richard and I had grown up in small families and shared a romantic vision of the happy chaos of a large number of children. When we married we said we would love to have five. Neither of us is from a wealthy background and we had to be self-sufficient. Fulfilling our dream of a big and happy family involved some stresses, including financially, although we were conscious that this was our choice.
We had not planned to start our family so quickly, but were young, rather relaxed and, as it turned out, able to produce babies rather easily (or, at least, conceive). Our first child, Fitzroy, was born ten months after our wedding. Young women often ask me when is a ‘good’ time to have a baby. I always say there is no ideal time, although I am grateful that we started to have our children when we were young by today’s standards. We weren’t perhaps ready, but as first-time parents do, we learned quickly.
The financial struggles when Fitz was born were challenging, though. We were amongst the many young professionals who had borrowed money in the late 1980s to buy a small flat, only to see interest rates soar and our mortgage payments balloon, while property prices collapsed. Neither of us had a high salary and for a while, our outgoings outstripped our earnings, a clearly unsustainable situation. One income was not enough to cover the mortgage so we both needed to work full-time, but our only realistic childcare option was a day nursery near my office. The nursery fees were around a quarter of our after-tax income before we had paid even a penny of the outsized mortgage bill. That first year I returned to work after having Fitz was tough, particularly when I didn’t get the promotion that might have eased our financial strain, but the experience also made us very determined. My new job at Newton came with a salary rise and Richard found a higher-paid position too. Mortgage rates came down and although our flat was worth far less than we had paid for it, bigger properties had suffered even larger price falls, so we were finally able to move.
Buying a modest house enabled us to hire a wonderful nanny, Paula, who stayed with us for more than twenty years. She always lived out, which gave us precious family time together and space for her, but meant that either Richard or I had to be home before she left at 6 p.m. Richard was a financial journalist and had multiple daily deadlines so I would always do the morning shift, waiting until she arrived at 7.30 a.m. Paula was incredibly reliable, but every day I felt anxious about getting to the office on time by public transport.
There was no slack at all in the arrangement, no room for error or lateness, and the stress of us both rushing in and out of the home, often distracted by work when we were there, trying to ‘do it all’, was taking its toll, including on our relationship. Richard and I needed to work out how not just to survive but to be happy. We took our time having our second and third children, who were born more than three years apart.
It is a big part of our story that when we were expecting Millie, our fourth, who was born just a year after our third child, both Richard and I knew something had to change. With another baby on the way we felt at breaking point and one evening discussed how we could possibly make it all work. Richard volunteered to go freelance and work from home: he would be able to play a bigger role in bringing up our family. He also wanted a freer existence, having never enjoyed office politics. Over time, as we had yet more children, his opportunity (and desire) to take on paid work dwindled and he became a full-time, stay-at-home dad.
This reversal of traditional roles was ahead of its time: Millie is now at university. It has not always been perfect (nothing is) but it has been key to our ultimately happy family life as well as helping my career. At the beginning, we were completely open as to how things might evolve – neither of us knew whether we would be able to afford the arrangement becoming permanent. We definitely had to be careful about money: ‘staycations’, for example, were a necessity rather than a choice and it was a long time before we could decorate our new home. These were minor sacrifices for our happier family life.
Both of us feel confident that the set-up has been beneficial to the children: Richard enjoys being at home, is completely dedicated to being at every sports fixture, likes cooking and (most of the time) doesn’t mind the endless chauffeuring. It’s been wonderful for me to know that the children have been benefiting, both logistically and emotionally, from one parent being at home. Meanwhile, since I have always wanted to be home whenever possible, throughout my career I have been disciplined about leaving the office in time for family suppers most evenings. This time together at the end of each day has always been an important part of our family life.
Of course, with nine children, it would have been impossible for me to get to all (or even most) of the school plays, concerts and ballet performances, so I have prioritised those events that are each child’s ‘special’ thing. I do