Women on a downward trend

The number of women in top jobs is falling dramatically, They are hitting a 'reinforced concrete ceiling' which is blocking their promotion, said the Government's Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Fewer are reaching positions of power in high-profile professions such as politics, the judiciary and policing than was happening just a year ago. This says the commission is the biggest reversal in the march towards gender equality in the five years since it started compiling reports. Too many employers have 'old-fashioned ways of working', says the commission, with many bosses harking back to the days when men were the breadwinners and most women were stay-at-home mothers.
Women's rights campaigners said the report is proof that it is still 'very much a man's world when you get to the top'.
Twelve out of the 25 fields monitored in the study registered a fall in the proportion of women in top jobs. It held steady in five, and increased in only eight. Although there are 14.3million women in Britain's workforce compared with 16.9million men, they are not represented in positions of power in anything like the same numbers.
The report showed a fall in the number of women running councils, health bodies, police forces, unions and other professional bodies. There were also fewer women in the High Court and the Cabinet.
The report, entitled Sex and Power,shows a ceiling of reinforced concrete said commission's chief executive Nicola Brewer. We need radical change.'
The commission's report said there are fewer women in the House of Commons, where just under one in five MPs are female.
However, the proportion of women directors of FTSE 100 companies has gone up slightly – from 10.4 per cent to 11 per cent. The report observed that a snail could travel nine times around the M25 in the 55 years it will take at present rates for the number of women in the senior judiciary to equal men.
'It is not lack of talent or ambition that is stopping women,' said Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, 'Rather, women in every sector of the workforce face unjust hurdles throughout their careers. 'This is a fundamental matter of fairness and justice for women. And it has consequences for the whole of society. With so few women in power, the UK is wasting a colossal amount of talent and all sectors are impoverished as a result.'
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: 'It's bad enough that progress towards more women reaching the top of their profession is crawling along at a snail's pace, but in some areas the snail is crawling in the wrong direction. 'This survey proves that the softly-softly approach towards breaking down the glass ceiling is not working. 'Millions of women and the UK economy are suffering as a result. A firmer approach is needed so that women can reach the top on merit, rather than by having to fight every obstacle that society puts in their way.'
Miss Brewer said that inflexible ways of working are frustrating talented people.
Ethnic minority members, the disabled and carers could all benefit from more flexible ways of working. 'Britain cannot afford to go on marginalising or rejecting talented people who fail to fit into traditional work patterns.'
I am sure we will have a retort from some centre right organisations and the usual well, women's place is in the kitchen etc, But equality for women also means equality for men and maybe the Commission should look at the path many men have to tread to get to the top and the way they have to sacrifice home life and family.