The joke, after 40 years of repetition, no longer seems quite so funny. “So which office do you prefer?” says the male boss to the young female employee. “The one with the sticky floor or the glass ceiling?” Now, for the first time in history, women in the UK represent a large slice of the talent pool and much of the market. They outdo boys in school; they represent 59 per cent of graduates and take 80 per cent of consumer spending decisions.

In developed countries, women are becoming central to meeting the combined challenges of an ageing workforce, falling birth rates and a skills shortage. In the EU, since 2000, they have filled six million of the eight million jobs created.

So why are so many women in careers that fail to make full use of their talents? Last week a report by the Association of Graduate Recruiters indicated that the proportion of women recruited by leading companies in the UK had fallen from 42.6 per cent in 2006 to 39 per cent last year. Another survey, by the market research company Gavurin, suggested that the proportion of female directors had declined from 43 per cent in 1991 to 35 per cent last year. More than half the new companies registered in 2007 had no female directors.

This isn’t a “women’s problem”, it’s an issue for the economy. In 2006 the Women and Work Commission calculated that if women’s skills were better harnessed, the country would gain £23 billion. Yet the fabled glass ceiling appears to be shatterproof, at least to the tentative tap of a stiletto heel.

But what if men were to take on the job of demolition? Forget issues of equality and social justice. What if they could be persuaded that, in the interests of their own health and wealth, it was time to get serious about the issues?

That is the question posed and answered in Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of our next Economic Revolution. The book is by the Paris-based management consultant and executive coach Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, named by French Elleas one of the top 40 women leading change in France, and Alison Maitland, who was a Financial Times journalist for 20 years.

“Isn’t it time to recognise that the 20th century is over?” asks Wittenberg-Cox. “Equal opportunities and diversity programmes are so last century. Making women act the same as men has been tried and nobody likes the result. Instead of trying to “fix” women, it’s time to fix the system. Otherwise, an army of female middle managers are going to network and take assertive-ness courses, and end up talking to themselves while nothing changes. It’s time to reframe the debate.”

Diversity initiatives reinforce stereotypes, the two women argue. Parenting and work-life balance becomes a female handicap that has to be managed in the margins. Women’s events and coaching have their place, but at a price: they reinforce the message that women need to be more competent at male corporate norms of behaviour.

“Women are not one minority among many to be managed,” says Maitland. “They are a majority and they have clout.”

“Business has to recognise that women are equal but different,” Wittenberg-Cox adds. “I have spent most of my adult working life in a state of amazement that so many organisations choose to ignore half the talent pool and most of the market. It’s time they woke up. The 21st century is about the three “Ws” – the web, the weather (and the issue of sustainability), and women.

“It’s time for men to become ‘gender bilingual’. When a major business moves into China, it tries to learn and understand Chinese culture and language. That’s no different from learning to work with female differences in terms of aspirations, vocabulary, attitudes and priorities.”

Wittenberg-Cox, 46, founded the influential European Professional Women’s Network more than a decade ago. Now she runs 20-First, a consultancy that helps organisations to become gender-bilingual.

At present, the two authors argue, the accepted wisdom is not so much economics as “manonomics” – men following their own rules, not recognising that the game has changed. The masculine imperative means that many CEOs are blind to their own failings.

Why Women Mean Business gives example after example of the price that we all pay for a situation in which “women may hold the keys but men still control the locks”.

The authors are not saying that women are inherently “better”, or that the future is female – simply that it is not all-male. Some powerful men agree with them. But is this tiny squadron enough to create a tipping point? What if their critics – often female – are correct in claiming that women are not at the top because they don’t wish to be, or can’t hack it?

Samuel DiPiazza Jr, CEO of the accountancy giant PriceWaterhouse-Coopers (PwC), says in the book: “Of our 8,000 partners worldwide, 15 per cent are women. We are white males . . . our objective is not 50-50. It’s the best people. But that is closer to 50-50 than 85-15.”

Since becoming “gender-bilingual” – or at least beginning to build up a different working vocabulary – PwC has achieved benefits. In 1998, only 40 per cent of employees returned after maternity leave. Now the return rate is 98 per cent.

According to Wittenberg-Cox and Maitland, this is no longer simply an issue about starting a family, and it concerns the future for men as well as for women. Some London businesses, for example, now offer work packages based on “preferential life-styles” or TMTLW (There’s More To Life than Work).

In the 1990s Deloitte, the professional services firm, organised a two-day workshop on gender issues for 5,000 staff. It cost $8 million (£4 million). Douglas McCracken, the CEO, said: “The message was out: don’t make assumptions about what women do or don’t want. Ask them.”

The difficulty is that, at present, some women will say what they think is expected. The book gives examples of how a different approach could work. For instance, Vivienne Cox, BP’s head of gas, power and renewables, was offered promotion in 1998 by Rodney Chase, the deputy chief executive. She declined. She was 39, had just had her first child and didn’t want to work nights, weekends and holidays, or to travel all the time. Chase rejected her refusal, promoted her and told her to do the job on her own terms. Cox is now one of the top 25 businesswomen in Europe.

Schlumberger, the oilfield services provider, employs 2,000 female engineers, yet of its 32 top managers only two are women. Now, though, Jim Andrews, a senior executive, has instigated changes, including talking to every woman who hands in her resignation “to try to fix the underlying issues”. Says Andrews: “It’s about letting smart, ambitious people decide how best to work.”

Do women in charge really make a difference? In 2004, a US study of the Fortune 500 indicated that those companies with the highest proportion of women in their senior teams outperformed those with the lowest proportion. A token woman isn’t enough, though – it takes a critical mass of more than 30 per cent to instigate change and to “read” female customers more accurately.

A UK survey by Saatchi & Saatchi calculated that consumer electronics companies missed out on £600 million in 2007 by “failing to connect” with female customers. What those customers didn’t want, it seems, was to be patronised with “a spa discount and a pink website”.

According to the World Economic Forum, “no country in the world, no matter how advanced, has achieved true gender equality”. So let’s wait until it’s a level playing-field before we decide whether women can hack it, or want power. In 2005 the Forum analysed women’s educational, economic and political wellbeing around the world. For “economic opportunity”, the UK came 41st. The top seven countries for women were Denmark, Norway, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia.

When you consider that Rwanda has a higher female representation in its parliament than does the UK (49 per cent to our 20 per cent), and that the Philippines has the highest percentage of women in management (56 per cent), the UK’s backward slide looks even worse.

So, what acts as a catalyst? Public policy on such issues as childcare, parental leave and pay parity matters, say the authors. In France, two working parents is the norm, as are trois enfants and a family life not dependent on “quality time”. A year’s maternity leave and state-funded childcare from the age of 3 help. “Guilt is noticeably absent,” the authors write. “There is no talk of choosing between career and family.”

Quotas can also help. On Norwegian boards, for instance, 40 per cent of the directors must be female. “Why not?” says Wittenberg-Cox. “We’ve had centuries of positive discrimination in favour of men.”

The authors point out, though, that women can be their own worst enemies. To talk in generalised truths, a man will apply for a job when he is 60 per cent sure that he can do it, while a woman has to be 100 per cent sure. Men talk money, women don’t. Many men follow the 80/20 rule – do the job for 80 per cent of the time, and talk about how well you’ve done it for the remaining 20 per cent. Women expect their labour to speak for itself.

“We are at a fork in the road,” says Wittenberg-Cox. “I don’t think women will push hard enough, because after years of conditioning they still lack that sense of entitlement. So, will sufficient men of influence prod and pull them into power? That’s the crux of the issue.”

And who are the obvious candidates to become pullers and prod-ders? “Outsiders,” says Wittenberg-Cox. She contends that bosses who don’t belong to any established boys’ network, or who are influenced by feisty daughters, are better equipped to see women’s potential in wider and more helpful terms.

It seems a rum do, however, that women must wait for a cavalry of progressive male CEOs to ride to the rescue. Perhaps a younger generation of employees, interested in working in less hierarchical, nonlinear ways, with fathers as well as mothers taking career breaks for children, may expect different terms of engagement. Why Women Mean Business ends with a quote from Churchill: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

So, gentlemen, are you sitting comfortably? Why Women Mean Business by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland, Jossey-Bass, £16.99

Manonomics
Men following their own rules, not recognising that the game has changed

Gender-bilingualism
Companies learning the language and culture of women so that they can manage mixed teams more effectively, and respond better to their growing number of female customers

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