Translator: Ryan Christian Prasetya Reviewer: Ivana Korom
Thank you, it's absolutely wonderful to be here.
Now, women have made unbelievable strides when it comes to workplace equality.
They're graduating from university at greater rates than are men.
And they're seeing incredible success in particular professions
and in particular sectors such as education, as GPs,
and in a retail and service industries.
But there is still much to be done.
Women continue to be underrepresented in many professions still.
In surgery, in science
and in the police force and armed forces as well.
And they continue to be underrepresented in particular roles,
such as senior and executive management.
Indeed, if you search for "CEO" under Google images,
the first 80 images that come up are of men.
The first woman to appear at number 81 is Barbie.
(Laughter)
Now some may argue that this under representation of women
is about the choices that women make themselves.
They choose not to go in particular roles or into particular sectors.
And often these choices
because of hours of dedication and sacrifice
required for success in those roles.
What sort of sacrifice do you need
to become a surgeon, to become a scientist?
And those sorts of ideas as well.
People argue that women have a greater need than men for work-life balance,
and therefore, they are not prepared to be as ambitious
or make those sacrifices that are needed.
This sort of argument is reflected by comments from women as well.
A number of years ago, the New York Times magazine
published an article called "The Opt-Out Revolution".
And they talked about the many women who are leaving
high-powered posts, high powered positions,
successful positions, long before they hit the glass ceiling.
Because they wanted to spend more time at home with their families.
One woman interviewed for the article said this,
"I don't want to conquer the world.
I don't want that kind of life.
A baby provides a graceful exit."
I'm not sure how many of you have had children.
I have, and "graceful" is not a word
that I would associate with having children.
(Laughter)
But at any rate, I think it is incredibly important
to look at the decisions that women make and the priorities that they have.
But I do worry that if we take such decisions purely at face value,
what we might end up ignoring is the continuing existence
of societal barriers such as the glass ceiling.
I actually think there may be some more complex things going on.
We need to look at the circumstances
and contexts under which women make these decisions.
Why might they be less ambitious?
Why may they be less willing to make these sacrifices?
Is there something innate about the desire for work-life balance that women have?
Now, I don't want to question the priorities that some women and indeed,
some men place on home, over work.
You know, this is an incredibly valid and important decision.
But what I do want to do is look at some of the complexities
that may be involved in these decisions.
What I'd like to do is to present some recent cutting-edge research into ambition
and into work-life balance that may shed some light
on why it is that women might be unwilling to make these sacrifices.
So one of the first questions that we can ask
"Are our women innately less ambitious?"
We've done work with science students, with police officers,
and with surgical trainees, that suggests that at the beginning of their careers
or at the beginning of their training
men and women have absolutely the same levels of ambition.
But that for women, this ambition erodes over time.
You can see this erosion for science students.
By the third year of their undergraduate degree,
women are less likely to say that they want to be a scientist
or to have a career in science.
You can see this erosion for police officers.
So that, in the third year of their training
women express much less ambition to become sergeants.
You can also see this sort of erosion for surgical trainees
so that over the course of their training -
and it's a really long period of training as well -
women show less and less desire to become top surgeons.
And indeed, women drop out of surgical training at much higher rates than men.
Even though there is no demonstrable evidence
that women perform any worse in a surgical training.
So, some people might argue that these figures,
this drop in ambition over time for women
is because of the biological clock.
As the clock starts ticking, suddenly women's ambition start to vain.
But what's really interesting
about the research that I've just talked about
is that it pertains to students in their late teens, in early twenties,
to police officers in their mid-twenties,
and to surgical trainees in their mid-thirties.
So what's consistent here is not a particular time in women's lives
where their biological clock just kicks in.
What's consistent here is systematic exposure
to rather male dominated environments.
The operating theater,
the science laboratory, the police force.
What we can see though, is that women's ambition drops over time
as they have an increase in the perceptions
that people that have been successful before them
are very different from themselves.
Male scientists, male surgeons, male police officers.
So you can see women's ambition dropping off as they come to believe
that the chance that they will be successful
is getting smaller and smaller as they get further and further on.
What we can see then is not some innate difference.
But rather, you can imagine asking this question,
"See that highly prestigious job over there,
the one you are unlikely to have?
What do you think about it? Do you want it?"
Now, do you say, "Yes, that thing that I can't have, I definitely want it"
Or do you say,
"That thing that I can't have, actually, I don't want it anyway"
Could this be what the women interviewed for the New York Times might be saying?
So this brings us to the idea of work-life balance then.
If we look traditionally at what we think of "work-life balance"
we think about the issue of "time".
The time that we spent at work versus the time that we spent at home,
with friends, with family or engaging in hobbies.
And if we look at the research,
we can see that when you ask people about their work-life balance
whether they think they have a good work-life balance,
time certainly does play an issue.
But what's just as important as time is how one feels about the workplace.
So consider surgery again,
and I know at least one of you -
from looking at the chalk boards during lunch time -
has a desire to become a surgeon before they die.
I'm not sure who of you it is.
But let's just consider surgeons for a moment.
Why is it that less than 10 percent
of surgical consultants in the UK are women?
Some may argue that it's those long hours, it's the night shifts.
It's the being called out in the middle of the night for an emergency.
And that these sort of things are just incompatible
with the sort of life that women want,
with the work-life balance that they want.
But now consider nursing
or midwifery,
professions where women are absolutely abundant.
Long hours, night shifts,
and you don't get anymore unpredictable hours than midwifery.
So we can see that it's not just about time.
It's also about something else that is going on.
So if we ask surgeons and if we ask navy personnel -
which is where we've done some research most recently
about their ideas of work-life balance -
we can see that perceptions of work-life balance
are a little bit about time,
but they're also about how people feel about their workplace.
Not just the number of hours that they spend there.
Here, for both men and women,
feeling that you have a good work-life balance
is just as much about, again, feeling that you are similar
to those who have been successful before you.
You feel like you have a good work-life balance if people like you have made it.
This is totally irrespective of the amount of time you might spend at work.
Now we can explain this relationship in two different ways.
The first is that being similar to successful others
reinforces your identity.
Who you have to be to be successful at work
is compatible with who you are at home.
In this way, we can see a balance between our identities at home
and our identities at work.
Being similar to successful others also tells us something about
whether we can succeed in the future.
And if you feel like you can succeed in the future,
you're willing to make sacrifices, you're happy to make sacrifices
at home, for your career.
And it's not too far a stretch to see that maybe women don't feel
that they are similar to those who have been successful before them.
So this brings us on to the idea of sacrifice then.
Who is willing to make sacrifices for their career?
One of the biggest differences between men and women at the middle management level
is that women are much less likely to say
that they will make sacrifices for their career.
So it seems that maybe it's just quite simple -
women just don't make these sacrifices.
But we can see that women say
that they're unwilling to make sacrifices purely because they believe
that their sacrifices won't be rewarded.
That if they make sacrifices,
they won't see the benefits for these.
So you can then see that it's not just about an innate difference
in men and women and unwillingness to make sacrifices,
but rather, what the payoff is for this.
And indeed if you ask middle managers,
both men and women, who feels like their sacrifices will be rewarded?
It's those who expect to succeed in the future;
it's those who have clear role models
and support networks within their organizations.
And those people who feel like organizational success is meritocratic.
So if we're to draw all these ideas together,
we've got evidence that women are less likely to be ambitious.
They are more likely to feel that they have a poor work-life balance.
And they are less likely to make sacrifices in their careers.
But far from being innate, the research suggests
that these decisions and these priorities
are very much about workplace experiences.
And in particular, about issues of identity and belonging.
So this research has a number of implications.
I think the first of these is that work-life balance is not just about women.
Anyone can feel that they don't belong.
Anyone can feel that their identities at home and at work are incompatible.
This could be on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion,
sexuality, class, age, disability.
So all types of people may feel that they don't belong.
And therefore, if we have an explanation around work-life balance
that's about identity and belonging,
we can help explain why all sorts of different people
are underrepresented in particular roles.
And we can have an explanation
that doesn't rely on the biological clock either.
The second implication is about what can be done.
If we look at the initiatives and interventions around work-life balance,
most of them concentrate on time.
Part-time working, work from home, job share.
And I think while all of these initiatives are incredibly important -
because they give women, and indeed men,
the opportunity to balance time in their lives -
what these may do is inadvertently
exacerbate issues of identity and belonging.
If you work from home, if you work part-time,
you are less likely to feel that you belong
and you are less likely to feel that you can succeed.
So such interventions may inadvertently
unbalance issues of identity and sacrifice.
So what is it that we're to do then?
I think we need interventions and initiatives around work-life balance
to go well beyond time that focus on identity and belonging.
We need to send the message that all types of people can make it.
So that women, people of color, people from working class backgrounds
can all imagine themselves in particular roles.
That they can imagine succeeding in those roles.
And that they can be confident that the sacrifices that they make,
and indeed we all make,
will be worth it in the end.
Thanks very much.
(Applause)