Sexist dinosaurs and baby blues pushed City boss to ‘edge of suicide’
ONE of Britain’s most successful businesswomen has confessed to suicidal thoughts as the pressure of working in the City mounted.
Jayne-Anne Gadhia said taking her business Virgin Money through a £1.3billion stock market float pushed her to a state of despair.
The top banker also opened up about her struggle with post-natal depression and discussed her battle with sexist ‘dinosaurs’ in the workplace.
Mrs Gadhia told the Daily Mail yesterday: ‘I had pegged depression to be a bit of a weak-minded thing. But it’s as real as a broken leg. I did have suicidal thoughts. It was, “How do I get out of this? I would rather be dead,” rather than that I was just about to do something terrible.
‘The mental health issues are around feeling trapped in a situation you can’t find your way out of.’
Mrs Gadhia, 55, said she suffered from post-natal depression after the birth of her daughter Amy in 2003.
Her husband Ash, a 58-year-old former accountant, gave up his job to be a stay-at-home dad while she continued in senior management, then at Royal Bank of Scotland.
But depression struck as Mrs Gadhia realised she couldn’t be with her baby and also be the breadwinner.
‘There was that perfect storm of having to satisfy everyone,’ she said. ‘Ash wanted to be at work and I wanted to be at home.’
Eventually the feelings became so strong she felt she had to get tested for depression – and doctors told her the situation was serious.
She felt so bleak that at one point she even believed her baby was dead.
‘The thing that really surprised me was I couldn’t listen to music,’ the businesswoman said.
‘When I hit rock bottom, I couldn’t go home,’ she added. The family even took a trip to France to escape their domestic setting.
With support from doctors, Mrs Gadhia cut back on the hours she worked and took more exercise.
She pledged always to take her daughter to nursery, avoid working weekends and travel as little as possible.
Mrs Gadhia also credits support from her parents, who lived with her, Ash and Amy for ten years, for helping her balance motherhood with a career. Both her parents died last year.
However, her problems had not gone for good. She had another brush with depression years later at Virgin Money, where she is chief executive officer, when the pressure was on to get it to join the stock market in 2014. She was vying with difficult investors over how the float would work and felt there was nowhere to turn.
In the end, Mrs Gadhia was able to call on Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson for backing and the problem was then resolved.
She is now determined to help others. ‘I definitely don’t want to get misinterpreted that we should all be weeping in each other’s arms,’ she said.
‘But you should be allowed to tell your boss you’re feeling a bit under the weather.’
Mrs Gadhia, who has just published her autobiography The Virgin Banker, has also become a champion for women’s equality at Virgin Money.
The bank is seeking to ensure both sexes are paid the same and last year she worked with the Government on a major report on the role of women in finance.
She said that she had been shocked at a dinner last year when one ‘very senior City man’ questioned employing women in case they later turned out to be pregnant.
‘I remember going back to the office and saying, “You know what, the dinosaurs are still there,’ she told the BBC in a separate interview yesterday.
‘Having to satisfy everyone’