Didn't mean to post and run. Logging on via home PC and name changing takes time.
Xenia - I've thought long and hard about your question to me. If I'm really brutally honest about it, then my failure must lie with me, because I didn't have the strength to keep expending every ounce of my energy on the small possibility on reaching the top of the tree.
Perhaps I wasn't clever enough to pick up on the implicit culture but actually believed the explicit culture - i.e. Explicit = we want diversity, we welcome people with the courage of their convictions. Implicit = we promote people we feel confortable with, i.e. white middle class men. Graduate intake has been 50:50 male female for a number of years, ratios for partners in the firms are more like 90:10.
I may not have had what it takes, but I don't believe that most other women graduates didn't have as much potential or ambition as the men. I did watch a few women rise to the top, and a lot of the ones I saw were "teflon coated", they'd take their share and then some when something went well, but if it went wrong, they would be nowhere to be seen.
I have a good degree from a Russell Group university and was recruited as a graduate. I am female and working class. If I could speak to a younger me as a recent graduate now, I'd say you need to step back from the equality box ticking guff you are given, identify the real rules of the game, and consider only what is in your best interests at all times. Don't be naive.
PS Xenia - do you need an branch office in t'North?