The Female Board Index, a list of numbers of women in top positions provides for an annual survey. The main conclusion of this research from a while ago is that the number of top women in executive boards and supervisory boards is growing steadily, but very slowly. Why is it that the number of top women is increasing so slowly? They certainly have an idea about that themselves!
Especially the children bother top women. Not the children themselves, but the clichés about children, about families and motherhood. Three top women complained in NRC Handelsblad about. They constantly have to compete with employers' expectations. When a woman in her thirties applies for a job, it is immediately assumed that she will have children in the foreseeable future, so that she will work shorter hours and therefore no longer be able to handle challenging tasks. And has she actually arranged everything properly at home?
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Stop that, they all say. Don't spare us! Because those kinds of expectations involve a judgment:that it's not normal for a woman to work hard and reach the top. If women are constantly reminded of this, they will indeed give up. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In short, don't ask a woman questions that you wouldn't ask a man either, according to the top women.
Still, I secretly wonder. I regularly read interviews with female professors, top lawyers, board chairmen. Sometimes they are just in their forties, sometimes even single mothers. How do they do that? If I compare them to myself, what do those top women have that I don't? Am I such a tut? Where do they get the time from? I'm the same age, and 'just' a lyricist. I fold my work around school and childcare times. And in the evening after eight I am finished.
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Would I have wanted to become a professor or chairman of the board? Well no. So I miss the ambition in any case. But most likely I also miss the energy. Take lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld, who stated in an interview that she is a real morning person. She prefers to get up at five o'clock. I don't. And these women must have arranged 'it' at home so well that they hardly see their children. I once read an extreme example in an interview with State Secretary Sharon Dijksma. She said, pointing to a photo on her desk, that she only sees her family on weekends. Consequence of living in Enschede and working in the Binnenhof. Well, you have to want that.
I don't get the impression that many women would want to live like that. On the other hand, men in top positions have been doing it that way for centuries. In general, they only receive complaints from their spouse. It seems only natural to me that women who want that should be given the same opportunities. And that we must indeed let go of our prejudices. Let them!
As long as I don't have to 😉
Image used via Shutterstock
