How women CAN have it all — ditch the dither and leap before you look
AS A girl, Dame Helena Morrissey was a ‘ manic Brownie’ who drove her parents mad in her bid to break the regional record for the most badges.
As a woman, she continued to push herself beyond the norm — and her own comfort zone. She achieved a stellar City career while popping out nine children and campaigning for gender equality in the boardrooms of Britain.
The ironic consequence has been a ‘superwoman’ label that has cast shade over the struggling women she’s been trying to help up the corporate ladder.
Her new book sees her correct that unrealistic image and try to convince readers that she is ‘just an ordinary girl from an ordinary background … All I have really done is stretch myself’.
While Morrissey fails to convince the reader that she is ‘ordinary’ she makes a very compelling case for aiming high, living boldly and using failures as learning opportunities instead of the disabling dents in personal confidence that they can become for so many women.
Born near Chichester, West Sussex in 1966, the daughter of two teachers, Morrissey studied philosophy at Cambridge before launching herself into the corporate world in the late Eighties, when films such as Wall Street and Working Girl were ‘energising’ the world of high finance.
‘I genuinely believed hard work and aptitude determined how far anyone could progress,’ she ruefully recalls. ‘It did not occur to me then that the masculine dress code adopted by many career women at the time (big shoulderpadded suits) suggested that it was still very much a man’s world.’
So she got a big shock when her first pregnancy saw her passed over for promotion, despite her excellent professional performance. But she learned a lesson that she’s carried with her: get out of any organisation that doesn’t encourage you to thrive.
Morrissey jumped ship and landed at Newton Investment Management, where she proactively put herself forward at every opportunity for advancement. In 2001 she became CEO aged just 35. This was a position she held — raising the managed assets to $53 billion — until 2016, when she left to become head of personal investing at Legal & General Investment Management (which has £894 billion of assets under management).
She hasn’t found it all easy. She’s battled perfectionism all her life. Between the ages of 14 and 15 she struggled with anorexia, imagining herself as ‘fat’ when she dropped to just 5st (32kg). This perfectionist streak later found her enduring a miscarriage in the office (surely she would have told an employee to go home?).
She admits to waking in the night with worries. With nine children she says she has to run washes in a rainbow of colours and packs 11 pairs of flip-flops for holidays. But her kids — aged eight to 26 — appear well-adjusted.
Morrissey would not have been able to raise such a large family while flying so high at work without the support of her husband, Richard, who quit his job as a financial journalist to be a stay-at-home dad when the couple were expecting their fourth child. This book gives him the sincere credit that comparative memoirs by male CEOs seldom give to female partners. Morrissey makes a common- sense argument for dividing the workload couples share by ability and inclination, not gender, but acknowledges that not everybody is lucky enough to have such a supportive spouse.
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, famously told women to ‘lean in’, then acknowledged she could ‘barely stand up’ when her husband died suddenly, aged 47.
Morrissey rows against the cultural tide by arguing that men and women do — on average — have different inherent strengths. She believes that men are more noisy, competitive and risk-taking, while women are more diligent, doubtful and empathic.
While many readers might disagree over whether these traits have their roots in culture or biology, Morrissey is right to suggest that successful businesses require a balance of all these skills and need to reform the way they recruit and reward them.
In 2010 she founded the 30 Per Cent Club, aiming to get a minimum of 30 per cent women on FTSE-100 boards. Her campaigning has been largely responsible for seeing that percentage rise from 12.5 per cent to 27.9 per cent over the past eight years.
SHE’S
done this with the support of men and is worried about how some current feminist movements — stuck in the idea of a gender ‘war’ — might alienate male allies.
‘Throughout my life’, she says, ‘I have looked to engage with, rather than walk away from, those who have treated me with condescension.’
In the face of macho behaviour, she advocates the Iranian art of
ta’arof: showing apparent humility or weakness while getting to know somebody and gaining advantage in the process, although I can see that backfiring.
But I loved Morrissey’s positivity and push for collective female focus. She encourages her six daughters and three sons to find their strengths, follow their passions and continually ‘leap before you look’. She makes a great case for ditching the dither, fixing your eyes on the prize, and asking for help where needed and promotion where desired, too.
‘Women are bombarded with advice on how to network, how to be more assertive, how to dress for success. While we are doing that, men are taking aim at the role they want,’ she says.
Morrissey believes this is a big moment for women. She’s a passionate cheerleader for the progress we’ve made and the opportunity we now have to change a sexist culture for everyone’s benefit. Because when it’s a good time to be a girl, it’s a good time to be a boy, too.