The Observer, January 9, 2005, Sunday

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Observer

January 9, 2005

SECTION: Observer Business Pages, Pg. 12

HEADLINE: Business: Mammon: Counting the cost of sexism: Women are still second-best in the City - and we all pay the price, Julie Mellor, head of the Equal Opportunities Commission, tells Heather Stewart

BYLINE: Heather Stewart

BODY:

CLIENT TRIPS to lap-dancing clubs; ribald banter in the office; and the thickest glass ceiling anywhere in the country: the Square Mile is notorious for having a less than enlightened approach to its female employees.
But Julie Mellor, the straight-talking chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, believes City bosses themselves are the losers, squandering the talents of thousands of potential employees. And this week she plans to tell them so.
'I think the City as a sector has a very significant reputational risk in terms of being able to recruit the people they need in the war for talent,' Mellor says. 'There's a risk for the whole sector that the best are being pulled down with the worst.'
At a conference on the role of women in London's economy this week, she will warn financial services firms that 'discrimination costs, and equality pays'.
Average earnings for women in the City are as much as 40 per cent lower than those of their male colleagues - twice the gap in the economy as a whole. 'I do think that the City's got a particularly big problem,' Mellor says.
She singles out three issues: a lack of flexibility about family-friendly working practices, which tends to prevent women from moving up through the ranks if they want to care for children or other relatives; pay discrimination; and the City's old-fashioned macho culture. 'The level of harassment indicated by the number of cases brought is absolutely appalling,' she says. Her language is uncompromising, and she's angry that some of Britain's most profitable, outward-looking firms are still giving women a raw deal; but Mellor is no bra-burner. Immaculately turned out and urbane, with a neat turn of phrase and a 20-year career in human resources behind her, she has made herself business-friendly.
Instead of speaking the language of women's rights and feminism (though she says she is 'definitely' a feminist), she has set herself the task of telling businesses up and down Britain that overcoming inequality in the workplace is not just good for women - it's good for the economy.
'We start in the real world: I know I came in (to this position) very clear that our job was to make it easier to deliver equality and reap the benefits,' she says in her modest office in Westminster, where she has spread notes across her desk so she can pepper her arguments with facts and figures.
Fighting unreconstructed sexism, harassment and prejudice is part of her job, but she says there are more subtle problems to tackle. 'Sex inequality is due to a lot more than discrimination, so you always need to look well beyond that.'
She believes her best chance of progress will come from appealing to business leaders' hard-nosed self-interest. She quotes Marks and Spencer chairman Paul Myners (who also chairs Guardian Media Group) at a recent Treasury summit: 'The stock market would not allow the waste of capital in the way we tolerate the waste of female talent and ability'.
It's not just the City Mellor has in her sights: what she calls the 'under-utilisation of women's skills' extends from the top to the bottom of the economy. Britain has already invested in educating women, and employers take an enlightened approach to bringing women into the workplace: the rate of female participation is one of the highest in Europe. But when it comes to the race to the boardroom - or the top of the pay-scale - women tend to fall behind, particularly if they choose to have children.
'It's all about caring: the fact that there are 18 million parents and carers who are at work can't be ignored. The failure of public policy and employer practices to adapt to that is part of why we have the pay gap and are failing to use women's skills.'
Improving childcare is part of the battle, and Mellor welcomes the government's promise to increase the availability of care and extend after-school clubs. A working mother herself, she rejects the argument that it is better for children if their mothers stick to traditional gender roles. 'People don't want to abandon their families; quality of life is important. I think it's about choices: it's up to parents and carers.'
Recent research for the EOC found that when women return to work part-time after having children, they often have to step off the career ladder, and watch their pay and status suffer as a result. A third of women working part-time are doing jobs that are below their skill level. 'We've got to change low-paid, low-skilled part-time work with high-skilled, well-paid part-time work,' she argues.
Mellor knows she is lucky to have an enlightened employer - the EOC practises what it preaches by allowing her to work part time and take the school holidays off, while Parliament is not sitting, to look after her son and daughter.
Back in the office for the new year, flexible working will be one of three areas in which she will be launching major campaigns, together with discrimination against women in pregnancy, and what the EOC calls 'occupational segregation' - the divide between 'women's jobs' and 'men's jobs' that sees girls heading for the four Cs (caring, catering, cleaning or clerical work) without thinking about being an electrician or a brickie.
The EOC is encouraging women to start thinking about traditionally male-dominated job options as early as their school years. Careers services should be ensuring that pupils get as much information as possible about potential jobs, and offering girls work experience in men's jobs and vice versa.
'Where you see the real issue is where we have skills shortages, like in construction, plumbing, engineering and IT: the proportion of women and men doing different jobs is so extreme, no wonder we have skills shortages. Both employers and young people are hungry for change here,' says Mellor.
Until there are many more women plumbers - and fund managers - Mellor expects to continue opening the EOC's chequebook to back anti-discrimination cases, in the City and across the economy.
Meanwhile, Britain's bosses can expect to hear a lot more about the economic arguments for smashing through the glass ceiling.
Profile:
Name Julie Mellor
Born 1957
Education Winchester County High School for Girls; Brasenose College, Oxford; Cornell University (Eleanor Emerson Fellow in Labour Education)
Career equal opportunities manager, TSB Group 1989-91; director, British Gas, 1992-96; consultant, 1996-99; chair of the EOC since 1999, and board member of National Consumer Council
Hobbies theatre, travel, food and family
Family one son, one daughter