Dr. Sarah Rutherford

Dr. Sarah Rutherford, Rutherford Associates: Women managers – still travelling in a male world?

She is coming from two different worlds – business and academic background. By traveling to many countries she expanded her horizons and that gave her different point of view to some things. When she was writing her book she wanted asked herself: »How far do I want to travel?« At that time also the financial crisis happened and people started to wonder why it happened. There were three motivators that contributed: power, prestige and the money. Nothing has ever been given for free. In 1970 women got paid less than a man. On that frustration point many things had happen but there has been a huge progress made until now. In the UK the quotas for executive positions has been made. Context is also very important. Historical, social and cultural context. Let’s see the organizational culture. Digging into managers’ culture seemed only as a male culture. We removed the legal and educational barriers but we were left with informal barriers. One of CEOs said: »If we want more women in top positions we man will have to push over a little bit.« Organizational culture represents a bigger picture and some of the contexts can be brought back. There are different types of men. Also to understand how women get to the top management we need to dig deeper. We have lots of individual cultures and all cultures are gendered. Trying to do a mass training of the entire company seems sometimes as a waste of money. In three hours the culture can’t change. It won’t help long term. Again we get to the values that are infiltrated into the culture of the company. How would you feel if you step into the office made out of expensive marble and massive wooden furniture? The artefacts are important part of being comfortable in a certain place. Like you can see it in Google. We need to speak up and show what we would like to see. For the ending thought she said: »Think big but also bring these ideas into your companies and use it in particular areas where company needs to do some work.« You can browse her presentation here.