The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Go by the headlines, and the UK business world might seem to be an unreconstructed playground for male sex pests who are stuck in a time warp.
However, the data show a different picture. Surveys suggest that the UK is making steady, if unspectacular, progress on gender equality, and the country compares relatively well with international peers. How to reconcile this apparent contradiction?
To recap: The nation’s biggest business lobby, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), is fighting for survival after a series of sexual-misconduct allegations against senior figures spurred a wave of defections by major companies.
The CBI replaced its director-general last month and promised a root-and-branch review. The pressure has not let up.
On May 19, Tesco PLC said that John Allan would step down as its chairman after the Guardian reported four instances of inappropriate behavior when he was president of the CBI.
Allan denied three of the allegations and apologized for the fourth.
“We are not alone in facing issues around workplace misconduct,” said Rain Newton-Smith, who returned to lead the CBI last month.
That is a safe bet. IKEA and McDonald’s Corp signed legally binding agreements this year with the British Equality and Human Rights Commission, to improve their policies and procedures on preventing sexual harassment in response to concerns over how they had handled employee complaints.
Last month, Aviva PLC chairman George Culmer warned shareholders against a repeat of misogynistic comments targeted at chief executive officer Amanda Blanc at the insurer’s annual general meeting last year, when one investor told her she was “not the man for the job.”
Meanwhile, a government-backed bill that would impose a proactive duty on companies to prevent sexual harassment is in danger of being derailed because of delaying tactics by Conservative Party opponents in parliament, to the dismay of rights campaigners and trade unions.
All this adds to the impression of a watershed year for the UK’s approach to tackling sexual misconduct in the workplace. Yet some of the gender equality research to appear as the CBI scandal unfolded has shown striking progress.
In February, the FTSE Women Leaders Review announced that the government-backed program had met its target of having women account for 40 percent of board positions in the 350 largest London-listed companies three years ahead of schedule.
Achieving the goal meant the UK had “cemented itself as a world-leader for women’s representation,” the government statement said.
Equileap released a Gender Equality Global Report, which ranks listed companies in 16 developed markets by 19 criteria, including women in executive positions, gender pay gap, flexible work options and freedom from violence, abuse and sexual harassment.
In March, the annual study placed the UK fifth, ahead of Australia, the US and Germany.
London-based drinksmaker Diageo PLC was rated the second-best company in the survey out of 3,787 examined.
A similar story comes from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, released in July last year, ranking the UK in 22nd place out of 146 countries, ahead of the US, Canada and the Netherlands, and up one place from the 2021 survey.
Data is the plural of anecdote, as the saying goes. Not always, though: In this case, they run counter to each other.
The question is, which is giving the more reliable picture of the state of UK business culture? The macro view from surveys that offer, on balance, encouraging signs of progress; or the news reports of inappropriate, sometimes criminal, behavior that suggest there are pockets of the corporate world in which the male-dominated and alcohol-soaked norms of bygone decades have barely changed.
An accurate take is a matter of economic importance. A wealth of research shows that companies that value diversity and inclusiveness perform better. Discriminatory work environments that discourage or block participation are a waste of human talent and potential.
That is something that the UK — a country with a tight labor market, a long-term productivity problem and an economy forecast to be the worst-performing in the G7 this year — can ill afford.
Both stories are probably right. The progress is real, just incomplete. Cultures change slowly and unevenly, and the outmoded lingers even as the modern starts to take hold. The asteroid hit some time ago, but there are still dinosaurs roaming the Earth.
Dig deeper into the gender-equality statistics, and there can be less than meets the eye. Take the FTSE 350 program. An increase in the percentage of women on boards mean little if they do not hold positions of power.
“There simply aren’t enough senior women on executive committees and in leadership positions,” Chartered Management Institute chief executive officer Ann Francke said.
The same goes for the gender pay gap. This is closing, but at a glacial pace, and there are wide disparities between professions.
The median pay gap narrowed 0.2 percentage points to 14.9 percent last year, after rising slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed.
Based on the rate of progress over the past five years, it would take more than two decades for it to disappear completely.
The UK’s performance in global surveys deserves recognition. Just keep it in perspective.
Matthew Brooker is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business and infrastructure out of London. A former editor and bureau chief for Bloomberg News and deputy business editor for the South China Morning Post, he is a CFA charterholder. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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