Whoa! You aren't going to poke that hornet's nest, are you?

At The Office Genie, we answer the telephone for a wide range of businesses in different industries. Calls are usually answered by female and male genies, but on occasion, we get asked to use one specific gender only . . .

Can you guess which gender and when? Well, it's usually female genies answering the phone for the beauty industry. I'm an old-fashioned gal. I understand completely. I have no objection. My only comment is: we've never been asked for calls to only be answered by male genies.

I've been thinking about it because there's going to be a female Doctor, and there's been a bit of fuss about it. I thought we'd had female doctors for years now . . . and male nurses. Sorry, that's a terrible joke.

I'll sidestep most of the discussion about whether it makes sense "in universe" because this isn't the place (feel free to message me if you want to talk about that). It's pretty clear that there's nothing within the story that prevents the Doctor from regenerating as "female".

So the objections must be coming from somewhere else, right?

Every so often someone suggests a female James Bond. It usually causes a bit of a flutter. With the Bond films disregard for continuity, and the amount of remakes and reboots recently, I don't see how "it doesn't make sense in the story" stands up as an objection. Also "James Bond" may or may not just be a codename, if you didn't know.

But that's enough pop culture nonsense; the issue is very real in business as well. The gender pay gap at the BBC was a big story that broke recently. I feel the same as most sane people: that there's something very wrong to find that in an organisation which is supposed to be a service for the whole public who basically have no choice but to fund it.

Most people guess that over 25% of business leaders are female. It actually doesn't go much higher than 17%. Amongst the CEOs of fortune 500 companies, it's only 4.6%.

This needs to get a bit depressing for a paragraph or two because it's tempting to think of this as a problem just for women in business. It's might not be as simple as that. Consider that if women have got all the problems then why is the number cause of death among young men suicide?

I apologise, but that needs to be made very clear. The only common factor amongst all those suicide victims is that they were male. Most likely, that means there's something we as a people and a society are doing that make men so unhappy that they choose to exit.

I don’t want to end on a low note. Things are changing for the better even if the news doesn’t ever report that. I see a lot of businesses, and there are more and more women in traditionally male roles like solicitors, accountants or IT people every year. And the reverse is true; more men taking on traditionally female roles.

I know we're making progress. It makes me happy, but it's slow going. I worry about how many brilliant employees, business owners and people we're missing out on along the way.

It’s not about men’s problem and women’s problems or assigning; it’s about having the discussion about something which is simply a problem for everyone. I'd love to know your thoughts.

Best wishes

Jacqui