Emma Ritch works for Close the Gap, and is interested in gender and the labour market, economics, public policy, and politics. (Twitter: @emmaritch)

(Image by Lars Plougmann)

The issue of women in the boardroom, one of the threads of the never-ending public conversation about women, work, and income, has come to the fore of late. Placed firmly on the agenda by the Davies report, it is the topic of a flurry of conferences, meetings, seminars and salons, scheduled to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8. It is also, along with women’s entrepreneurship, one of the topics at the Northern Future Forum in Stockholm, at which David Cameron has provoked some disquiet by appearing to suggest that he would not rule out quotas for women in the boardroom, should the UK business community not be able to increase women’s representation “by other means”.

Downing Street has subsequently walked this back, but Mr Cameron may be overtaken by events. The European Commission has a review planned next month, which will look at the impact of voluntary approaches to appointing more women into non-executive directorships, including under its own ‘Women on the Board Pledge for Europe’. It has declared its intent to impose quotas if it finds that progress has stalled or reversed, and the European Parliament has signalled its own receptiveness to this in the form of a non-binding resolution on Women and Business Leadership.

Women do have something to bring to the boardroom. Catalyst, pre-eminent researchers of women and business, has found a clear link between board-level gender diversity and a company’s financial performance. Examples abound of companies, like Nike, who have parlayed the knowledge of female executives into profitable new markets and products targeted at women mindful of the fact that women now make 80 per cent of consumer purchases in the developed world.

The foregrounding of the issue of women in the executive suite, though, does rest on the idea that it is possible to dismantle the oak-panelled ceiling without considering what happens underneath it. Many of the business representatives responding to Mr Cameron’s muted endorsement for quotas have spoken of the boardroom as the apogee of a ‘meritocracy’. Although the dearth of women around the table is not because women lack talent, ambition, or knowledge, the business spokespeople are right in that the boardroom reflects, and also inspires, what happens outside its doors. Focusing on access to non-executive and executive directorships runs the risk of removing the work experience of the most senior woman from its context.

Women have different working lives to men, principally because our domestic lives are so different. The pay gap exists, in part, because of the additional responsibility we bear for childcare and other reproductive labour. It also reflects the fact that we find ourselves clustered into different types of work, chiefly those that pay the least, and that discrimination lingers on in pay systems long after legislation was enacted to remove it.

The roots of the attitudes that shape our working lives are deep. From an early age, children have perceptions about what types of work, and what types of attributes align with being male and female. These attitudes can be traced through to those of the university admissions staff member, the manager dividing the bonus pot, the executive recruiter. Some of this reductive thinking even finds its way into the programmes that attempt to challenge sexism in the City. Women are deficient, some of the narratives go, and must cast aside self-deprecation and push themselves forward, be more self-confident, become tougher negotiators. Even the supposed compliments are laden with stereotypes: women would not have allowed the banking crisis, because they are so risk-averse.

Catalyst have found evidence that companies with a larger proportion of female board members tend to see increases in the number of women serving as senior executives, or in promoted posts. It seems that appointing women as non-executive directors sends a signal to a company’s workforce that it rewards women’s aspirations. Most people, regardless of gender, will not end up serving as a director of a FTSE 100 company, but this is one of the reasons why we should care who does.

The leaders of our corporations shape society in a way that is becoming more transparent in our current economic circumstances, but it is not only the most senior women who have their aspirations stifled, and their talents underutilised and undervalued. Among other things, and against a backdrop of redundancies and punitive welfare reform, we need to work out how to fund a sustainable childcare system, create enough part-time roles to meet demand, and encourage a more even division of domestic labour. Enabling women to take part in the economic life of the nation means turning our collective will to resolving a number of wicked problems; gender parity in the boardroom is only one piece of the jigsaw.