Thank you to those who sought to wear the trousers...

A few weeks ago, I bought a friend a newspaper from the day of his birth (The Times from 19th February 1971 to be exact). It was his fiftieth. Very much in my lifetime.

Tucked away in the middle was a piece entitled “Women in the board room – prejudice and discrimination against women” by Penny Hunter Symons.

The second paragraph caught my eye: “Those women [who insisted on their right to eat in the executive dining room, on entering the executive grade] were branded as troublemakers, because there is a vicious circle operating against them. If women do not show initiative in actively seeking promotion, they are overlooked, because initiative is a desirable quality in senior management. But women who have agitated for better prospects, promotion or more equal treatment are thought to be causing trouble”.

Apparently, a ”woman scientist”, attending a sales conference, was astonished when the sales manager told her she would not be allowed to attend the firm’s dinner. She ate alone and said defiantly : “I lecture these people on my subject, and we shall continue to send a woman, so it will just have to change”.

The report “Women in Top Jobs” (Michael Fogarty, Patricia Walter, John Allen and Isobel Allen, George Allen and Unwin, ￡3.75) found that the under-employment of able women “is a result of thoughtlessness, tradition and threshold difficulties”. At the time, of 36,000 members of the IOD, only 962 were women.

As a recently qualified solicitor 1995, I remember clearly my female colleagues and I organising a multi-firm rebellion by agreeing to wear trousers to work on the same day (a practice frowned upon by the almost exclusive male partnership). A small but significant insurgence at which a number of eye brows were no doubt raised in the (nearly all male) partners' dining room…

Of course progress has been made. More than a third of FTSE 350 board positions are now held by women, an increase of 50% over the past five years. We’re not there yet, of course but society is catching up. Because of those women from fifty years ago, my daughters may not have to puzzle about why their abilities are not recognised or rewarded and they won’t think twice about wearing trousers.

Today with my obligatory IWD21 post, I want to thank all those women who showed initiative, who agitated, who wanted to wear trousers, who just kept turning up and who required things to change.