Gender gap in business stories

[barnsleychop71]

There's a lot of research into the gender gap in business and that often leads to headlines in the nationals like, 'Still not enough women in British boardrooms.'

Does that make you think; a) durr - tell me something I don't know, b) angry, but makes you want to change it or c) there's too much focus on the boardroom - what about everyone else?

Am looking currently trying to come up with new (there's already a lot of out there), positive research topics into gender in business/ leadership. Any thoughts, observations and anecdotes most welcome as well as what kind of stories or topics would you like to read?

Thanks in advance! BarnsleyChop71

[mrscog]

I would like to hear more detail about all kinds of flexible working, and how it works. There is much more to flexible working than either shorter hours or dropping a couple of days. Some of my staff work different hours in the school holidays for instance, I had a colleague who took a FT post but on 95% pay basis, and basically used this to buy extra leave to use across the year.

I'm sure there's room for much more creativity (which may well benefit employers) but people need inspiring, practical examples.

[slightlyglitterstained]

What about highlighting men working flexibly, taking paternity leave, etc?

This blogpost got a lot of attention recently - male CEO stepping down to (literally) spend more time with his family:
maxschireson.com/2014/08/05/1137/

It'd be interesting to see if companies that have higher numbers of senior male execs who set an example have greater numbers of men lower down the ranks taking full statutory two weeks paternity, additional paternity, part-time, etc. And whether those companies are, as we expect them to be, then better at promoting and retaining women.

[mrscog]

Yy, I agree that would be really interesting glitter. I think articles which promote more equally shared duties for men and women would be great. Maybe even some articles targeted more for men to get them thinking about working more flexibly and being able to participate more in family life.

[Trills]

If a job can be done "flexibly" - with different hours or remote working or shared between more than one person - then I think that flexibility should be available to everyone.

If men and women, with and without children, all had the opportunity to work flexibly, and all took up this opportunity where it made sense, there would be a lot less stigma about people "working from home nudge nudge wink wink".

Everyone would have to actually DO work while they were working from home, of course.