留学生毕业论文需求：性别与权力报告Sex and Po
时间:2011-01-10 09:22:13 来源:www.ukthesis.org 作者：英国论文网 点击:165次
Sex and Power Women hold just 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships and only 19.3 per cent of the positions in Parliament. This year, there are fewer women holding top posts in 12 of the 25 categories for which figures are available. In another five categories, the number of women remains unchanged since 2007’s index. Women’s representation has increased in just eight areas. The report traditionally estimates the number of years it will take for women to achieve equality in key areas at the present rate of progress. This year’s report indicates it will now take 15 years longer (55 years in total) for women to achieve equal status at senior levels in the judiciary, and women directors in FTSE 100 companies could be waiting eight years longer (73 years in total). If women were to achieve equal representation among Britain’s 31,000 top positions of power, the Commission estimates over 5,600 ‘missing’ women would rise through the ranks to positions of real influence. A snail’s progress... 200 years At the current rate of progress, it will take... Another 27 years to achieve equality in Civil Service top management. Another 55 years (up from 40 years) to achieve an equal number of senior women in the judiciary. Another 73 years (up from 65 years) to achieve an equal number of female directors of FTSE 100 companies. Around 200 years – another 40 elections – to achieve an equal number of women in Parliament. Progress: a snail’s pace The annual index of women in positions of authority and influence in Britain is in its fifth year. Yet the trend that is emerging is one of reversal or stalled progress, with only a few significant increases. This year, in 12 of the 25 categories for which figures are available, there are fewer women holding top posts: Westminster MPs, Cabinet members, Members of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, editors of national newspapers, people in public appointments, senior police officers and judges, health service chief executives, local authority chief executives, trade union general secretaries and heads of professional bodies. Although most of the decreases are small, and in some cases attributable to one or two women leaving their posts, they are disappointing. In another five categories, the number of women remains unchanged since 2007's index: UK Members of the European Parliament, top media bosses, directors of major museums and galleries, chairs of national arts companies and holders of senior ranks in the armed forces.#p#分页标题#e# Women’s representation has increased in just eight areas. There are more female members of the House of Lords, FTSE 100 company directors, chief executives of national sports bodies and voluntary organisations, local authority council leaders, principals of further education colleges, vice-chancellors of universities and top managers in the civil service. But in six of these eight categories, the proportion of women doing these top jobs has increased by less than one percentage point –which, while welcome, is a tiny change. Looking back over the full five years Sex and Power has been published, the picture is equally worrying. In six categories there are fewer women than there were in 2003’s index. In 13 of the categories, the increase has totalled less than five percentage points. In recent years, Sex and Power has also projected forward, suggesting the number of years it will take – on current rates of change – for women to achieve equality in key areas. Worryingly, this year's report indicates that the wait for equality for women in the judiciary has crept up by 15 years, and women in FTSE 100 companies will be waiting in the wings a further eight years. To say that things are changing for women at the top at a snail’s pace seems about right. We all know snails aren’t very speedy –with the record holder among them clocking in at just two minutes to cover 13 inches (32.5cm). Yet a snail could crawl nine times round theM25 in the 55 years it will take women to achieve equality in the judiciary, from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again in the 73 years it will take for equal numbers of women to reach the top of FTSE 100 companies, and the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, only slightly longer than it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament. Sex and Power 2008 Index: Women in selected ‘top jobs’ over the last five years1 %women The Cabinet3 23.8 27.3 27.3 34.8 26.1 Members of the Scottish Parliament5 39.5 39.5 39.5 38.8 34.1 Members of the National Assembly forWales6 50.0 50.0 50.0 51.7 46.7 Local authority council leaders7 Figures not available 16.6 16.2 13.8 14.3#p#分页标题#e# UK Members of the European Parliament8 24.1 24.4 24.4 25.6 25.6 Sex and Power Index continued Small businesses with women the majority of directors10 12.3 14.4 12 14 Figures not available Sex and Power Index continued Sex and Power Index continued#p#分页标题#e# %women
So, five years on from the first Sex and Power report, does it matter if women still aren’t in top posts? If it does, then why? And what will help accelerate the pace of change? It matters because it means Britain is failing to get talented women into these positions – and losing out on what they would contribute. Girls now out-perform boys at many levels of secondary education, and nearly three out of five recent first degree graduates arewomen.29 In 2008, 14.3million women are in the workforce alongside 16.9millionmen,30 and we are moving to a position where women could eventually make up more than half the work force. In short, women no longer work for ‘pin money’. They are essential to our country’s economic success and in many families share the responsibility for bringing in enough money to make ends meet. Against this back drop, we might expect to find women taking on more responsibility and rising through the ranks. So what is happening? In some workplaces discrimination still occurs and stereotypes hold women back. In other cases, young women are pointed towards traditionally female occupations at the expense of opening up a variety of opportunities. But a fair portion of the blame must also be attributed to our rigid, inflexible approach to work. A snail’s progress... Missing women If women hope to shatter the glass ceiling and These include: Note: Missing women equal half the total number of posts minus the number of posts held by women. Workplaces, political systems and other parts of society – forged in an era of ‘stay at home mums’ and ‘breadwinner dads’ – have failed to keep pace with the reality of modern women’s and men’s lives. For women at every level of work, this failure leads to a squandering of talent, the most glaring example of which is the lack of women in positions of power. Before the arrival of children, 85 per cent of working women are full-time. That falls to just 34 per cent of working mothers with preschool children.31 A 2004 survey of part-time workers showed that just over half had had previous jobs in which they used higher qualifications or skills or had more management/supervisory responsibility.32 Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying al women have to work outside the home. For some, being full-time mothers for part or all of the time their children are under or of school age is a genuine choice. But for too many, moving to part time work or leaving the labour market altogether is the result of limited choices. Often, women experience a draining combination of out dated working practices and a long hours culture alongside the absence of appropriate high quality affordable childcare or social care. Similar situations arise when a family member’s age or disability requires more time and energy to ensure they are receiving appropriate care. Aspiration gives way to frustration Ask young women today what they want, and one thing becomes clear. They are not short on aspiration. In a 2004 Equal Opportunities Commission survey of year 10 pupils, 86 per cent of boys and 88 per cent of girls said that choosing a career with long term prospects was very important to them.33 A 2006 survey found that over 90 per cent of young people surveyed, both boys and girls, wanted to balance career and family life in the future.34 Yet women wanting careers and a family are too often sidelined. Though many employers increasingly embrace the benefits of flexible working, others offer time off for raising a family and flexibility linked to childcare and caring grudgingly, as concessions that are a burden to business and those who seek them as not committed to the company.#p#分页标题#e# Given women’s experience, it is not surprising that fathers –who increasingly want to spend more time with their children than was typical 40 or even 20 years ago – are reluctant to take paternity or longer parental leave or to seek flexibility, because of the career penalty or career death that may result. This means that, whatever a couple want to do, greater responsibility ends up being left to mothers, who in turn experience more of a penalty at work. With a reluctance to embrace flexibility – despite the fact that in the hands of the most innovative employers this has been shown to support modern ‘24/7’ business – employers are relying more and more on long hours working. Even though men want to spend time with their children, they often end up working longer hours after they have a child. This perpetuates a model of work that is almost impossible for women to see as allowing them to combine a fulltime job with family life – and comes at a real cost for fathers. Ethnic minority women The glass ceiling is low for most and lower for some: 15 ethnic minority MPs, including two women.35 Not just a women’s issue The one thing the newly-created Equality and Human Rights Commission would like to make clear – the first year it publishes Sex and Power, produced previously by the Equal Opportunities Commission – is that this is not just a ‘women’s issue’. The Commission believes that while the absence of women from these powerful positions is important in itself, it is also an example of a wider failure. We have to ask ourselves in what other ways are the old-fashioned, inflexible ways we’re working preventing us from tapping into talent? How we can work better is the subject of a current investigation by the Commission. The fact is, the world of work – and the range of skills we’ll need to tap into to power our economy – is changing and it’s time for employers to catch up. It is estimated that: And to be frank, our public policies sometimes make assumptions about who does the caring and who should pay the ‘price’. For example, there has been a dramatic change in leave for new mothers in recent years and the Commission welcomes that. But the exclusive focus on increasing maternity leave without more leave for fathers in their own right, or the right to parental leave that gives parents real choice about who does the caring, may well have had an unfortunate unintended consequence of entrenching the view that only mothers look after children. It has also, in some cases, made women an easy target for more unscrupulous employers who steer clear of hiring women of childbearing age. This is not about filling quotas or positive discrimination – appointing people just because of the group they belong to. The Commission wants to see people appointed to top jobs on merit. But merit and talent are not the exclusive preserve of one section of the population or another. Instead, we are failing to adapt the way we work to the realities of people’s lives and ignoring the talent that exists within the population. By contrast, genuine equality of opportunity looks beyond the stereotype and asks what someone is good at. It also removes unnecessary barriers to participation, for example, through changes to working practices such as reasonable adjustments for disabled people and flexible working to enable everyone to combine their paid work with life outside. Alongside this, good childcare and social care policies and services are essential if both women and men are to have a genuine choice about the extent to which they can be parents or carers as well as paid workers. Women’s representation in Parliament: the international perspective44 The UK currently ranks 70th and is outperformed by Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of women’s representation. • UK: 70th, 19.3% Change brings wider benefits Changing the way work is organised would not only enable women to continue in their chosen career after having children, but also fulfil the aspirations of: Government policy and business practice are gradually acknowledging the positive impact of modern, innovative, flexible working arrangements, both on business performance and on the ability of individuals and families to fit their work and the rest of their lives together. But British business is often stubbornly traditional and the pace of change is slow. And the laws of unintended consequences have meant public policy has not always hastened the social revolution in our workplaces.#p#分页标题#e# The danger is that we simply overlook or waste talent from our economic, cultural and political life. Instead, Britain’s employers and politicians need to make a determined effort to ‘work better’. We have to make sure that: In turn, we at the Equality and Human Rights Commission will listen to real people, using innovative techniques and new technology to drive a 21st century consultation that tells us what people really want and what will make a difference for them. For example, we are engaging parents via a joint campaign, ‘The Home Front’, with Mums net and Dad. info. We will listen to experts, and look at what we can learn from other places around the world. We will do all we can to encourage employers and politicians and to provide practical advice and guidance on how to achieve these changes. And – finally –we will map out our vision for the future with the publication of a major report in the New Year, looking at how we can ‘work better’. Britain cannot as an economy afford to go on asking people to fit their families around the demands of ever-more intense ‘24/7’ global competition, and marginalising or rejecting workers who fail to fit into traditional and inflexible working arrangements. Only when we get this right will we see women as well as men making it into the positions of real power and influence. And we want that to happen at more than a snail’s pace. A snail’s progress... 55 years Notes 1 Indicator values for 2003–06 repeated from Equal Opportunities Commission (2007) Sex and Power: who runs Britain? 2007, except for amendments to entries for small businesses and senior police officers. See notes 10 and 19 for details. Contact us The Equality and Human Rights Commission aims to reduce inequality, eliminate discrimination, strengthen good relations between people, and promote and protect human rights.You can find out more or get in touch with us via our website at or by contacting one of our helplines below. If you require this publication in an alternative format and/or language please contact the relevant helpline to discuss your needs. Equality and Human Rights Equality and Human Rights Equality and Human Rights#p#分页标题#e# © Equality and Human Rights Commission Published September 2008
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