It will be a few years before we can stop being concerned about women’s role in the workplace.  With a few notable exceptions, in the grand scheme of history women have only been real players in the business world for a short time and it will be a while before we have an equal footing.  It will be even longer though if we don’t address the issues at hand.

Last Saturday was International Women’s Day and in response the media addressed the issue of women in the workplace.  The usual topics came up, unequal pay, poor representation of women in boardrooms, the motherhood vs. career debate.  Everyone is happy to address the problems, but who offers the solutions?

HR Review published one particular article of interest to us here at Cullen Scholefield.  It referred to the Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) call  for ‘a new generation of younger, home-grown and female role models to be highlighted in an effort to encourage and inspire women to aim for leadership roles.’  Their argument is that on the list of top 10 inspiring figures in the public eye only two of them are female (Margaret Thatcher and Mother Theresa) and both of them are dead.

I agree that we need to broaden our scope when considering role models, but I have to question their choice of words.  Young, home-grown and female? Sound familiar?  It’s the same problem women face everyday: we need to be perfect to be inspiring.  The truth is, there is more to women than youth and beauty, but that’s a whole other issue…

I think instead of asking for young women in boardrooms, we need to broaden our horizons and think about what other aspirations are out there.  Not all women want to be in boardrooms, so pushing us into leadership roles is a mistake, pushing anyone towards leadership roles is a mistake because not everyone wants to be or can be a leader.  We should promote women and men out there who are already inspiring people to be what ever they want to be.

Take myself for example.  I am a young woman who has just entered the working world.  I am the person that the CMI wants to provide role models for.  I am also not an idiot. I know what I want, I know who I want to be and I know who inspires me.

For example, my three role models at the moment are:

 Kaya Cruz – a young blogger who has taken it upon herself to be an ambassador for twenty-somethings who are finding their feet in the working world.  She represents who I am just now.

Caitlin Moran – for those who have read her Times column you know she is hilarious.  She is also a writer who got to where she wanted to be in her own way which I find inspiring.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – is a successful Nigerian Author and an inspiring feminist and is only 36 years old.  She is who I want to be.

Maureen on the other hand, is at the other end of the scale.  She is a successful, female Managing Director of her own company which she set up nearly 30 years ago.  At one point she was exactly where I am now and she found a role model in her grandmother who ran her own successful taxi company in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, at a time when female leaders were few and far between.  Maureen has followed in her grandmother’s footsteps but does she appear on the most inspiring role model list?  No, because Maureen didn’t need a young, home-grown role model to inspire her to pursue leadership, she found the role model that suited her.

Carolyn McCall – CEO of EasyJet

We are each coloured by our own backgrounds and our own goals, so female CEOs and Managing Directors will not inspire all women because not all women will want to follow that path.  Carolyn McCall is a very inspiring example of a successful female CEO and our own candidate Tracey Mellor is also someone to admire as both a female Managing Director and Group People Director of Reward Gateway.  

These are the women that the CMI are calling for and they already exist.  My suggestion is that we promote these women as inspiring role models and stop promoting leadership as the ultimate goal.  We need to encourage everyone, women and men, to follow their own paths.  If we do we’ll have an abundance of role models to inspire and encourage our next generation of workers.