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Former HarperCollins chief executive Victoria Barnsley has warned that increased recruitment from technology companies, and the greater concentration of publishing ownership in corporations, means the industry's progress on gender balance may have "slowed or even stalled".
Speaking at the presentation of the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize to Anne Perry yesterday evening (13th May), Barnsley said: "We're now seeing the sort of ratios in relation to gender balance at the top of publishing companies that we would expect in other sectors but not ours."
Barnsley said statistics cited by internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox about the staggering dearth of women in technology companies were, if correct, bound to have an impact. "We know publishers are rightly supplementing their talent base by recruiting from tech companies," she said."We know that tech companies are almost entirely male. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work it out. Personally I believe that the increased recruitment from tech companies will have a detrimental effect on gender balance in publishing and we haven't seen the full impact yet."
But the former HC c.e.o. said there were other factors negatively affecting gender balance in the trade, identifying "what I call the corporate effect", as well as "women's own realisation that they can't have it all".
Barnsley said: "There is plenty of evidence that gender balance in businesses cascades from the top.If the top board is largely the preserve of men the likelihood is that the subsidiary boards will also be predominantly male. This is due to the cloning effect whereby c.e.o.s and senior managers have a tendency to recruit in their own image. With the increased concentration of publishing ownership in corporations I believe women will become more conscious of a glass ceiling than they did when publishing was in more fragmented ownership."
Meanwhile, she said, women themselves were perhaps the biggest impediment to gender balance at the top, either through a failure to "lean in", a lack of confidence, or "simply their realisation that 'having it all' in reality means 'doing it all'".
Barnsley concluded that businesses need to encourage their leaders to be "more adventurous in recruitment, to step outside their gender comfort zones."
"All the evidence proves that companies with gender diverse boards perform better. In fact having one single female director makes a company 20% less likely to go bankrupt and that percentage increases when there are more female directors," she noted. "Secondly, businesses need to change their working practices. They need to respond to a world of total and instant connectivity by instituting more flexible working hours and abolishing an outdated meeting culture. Thirdly, companies need to be less ageist. Publishing is missing out on a huge pool of post-50 women who would like to return to full time employment.
"Women have always had a special place in publishing and they have had a profound effect upon our industry - women like Gail Rebuck, Helen Fraser, Ursula MacKenzie to name just a few. I see an equally talented group of women bubbling up to the surface today. For the sake of our industry we need to make room for them. We need to ensure that a good few of them are in c.e.o. positions in major companies by the end of the decade. We need them. And if they're not there? Well Martha Lane Fox's advice to women in publishing was if you can't beat them don't join them. In other words
go and do your own thing. It's tempting advice."
Barnsley left HarperCollins last year after 13 years. She is currently active in the not-for-profit field and will shortly announce a new non-executive role.
The issue of women at the book trade's top levels was recently discussed by Macmillan Science and Education c.e.o. Annette Thomas, agent Clare Alexander, Head of Zeus c.e.o. Amanda Ridout and others in a lead article in The Bookseller.