Too embarrassed to protest

As an awkward 17-year-old, Esther Freud felt unable to say no to an acquaintance's sexual advances. After writing about a similar incident in her new novel, she has come to realise how common this experience is Esther Freud Wednesday May 30, 2007 Guardian I see them every day - the teenage girls at the gates of the sixth-form college, at bus stops, walking home in pairs. They look so confident in their low-cut jeans and grungy T-shirts, their flat shoes - Converse or Vans - chatting into their mobile phones. But are they more confident than we were? Those of us who grew up in the late 1970s and were caught between punk and stilettos, without even an answering machine, let alone a mobile, to keep track of our movements. When I was 17, and for some years before and after, I was far from confident. In fact, I was in a permanent state of indecision and embarrassment. I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge, experience, beauty and talent. I was embarrassed by my spots, my clothes, my dreams. I was proud, too, and that was a disastrous combination. It meant I couldn't tell anyone I was embarrassed, or ask for any help, so I drifted around with a worldly wise expression on my face, getting myself into awkward and sometimes dangerous situations and hoping, more than anything, that no one would notice, or ever know. It was around this time that I fell in love, not for the first time, but maybe for the first time with someone who also seemed to like me, and this only made things worse. My greatest fear was that anyone would know how I felt, especially the person I was in love with, and so I blundered on, sinking into a secret mine-filled world of my own making. I had met this boy, Tom, on holiday and, unclear when he would be back in London, I had spent day after day sitting by the phone, hoping that he would call. Finally, he did. We arranged to meet up that night in a pub. I was feverish with excitement. I imagined it would be just us - we would sit holding hands in a corner, talking through every moment of the time that had elapsed before taking a night bus home to where I lived, and spending the night in each other's arms. In fact, there were four or five other people at the pub too, all a little older than us, drinking, smoking and talking about things I didn't really understand. I hadn't seen Tom for two weeks and in that time there were jokes I had missed, people who had become his new best friends, new drinks and drugs he'd tested. I grinned and attempted to join in, sipping at my Pernod and black, wondering whether our affair stood any chance. Finally, last orders were rung. "Where to now?" We stood about, and, not daring to suggest we leave the others and head to where I lived on the other side of London, I waited to see what would happen. There was one man, Derrick, who seemed to be in charge. He was a grown-up. Twenty-five at least, with a marriage and two children already behind him. "This way." He ushered us through dark streets, across busy roads, through closed-off squares until eventually - the others having disappeared - he invited me and Tom through the front door of a tall, dark house. We trudged upstairs and into a flat, where a girl, half asleep, appeared with smudged makeup and a T-shirt showing one plump shoulder. When she saw us, she retreated into her room. "Tamara, wait." Derrick took Tom's arm and he pushed my boyfriend into her room. He pulled me after him into another room which turned out to be his. "You can sleep in here." I stood there frowning. A hundred options flitted through my head, but not one of them seemed viable. And surely, anyway, after a few minutes, Tom would realise the mistake and come and find me. But Tom didn't appear. I listened, but I heard nothing from the next room. Maybe he had just fallen asleep. He was drunk - we all were - but as I lay down on the very edge of Derrick's bed, I felt horribly sober, afraid of what would happen next. I have written about a similar scenario in my new book, Love Falls, with more devastating consequences than those I suffered, and I've had two very different reactions. The first, mostly from men, is frustration, anger: "Why didn't she do something?" The second, from women: "That chapter, that was just so very familiar." These reactions have inevitably led to a discussion about the embarrassment of being a teenage girl. How hard it is to call out, to make a scene, to risk looking ridiculous, even if you are being abused. I have one friend who was assaulted in a toilet when she was 15. She was at a party, when, to the envy of her friends, an older boy picked her out and, without a word spoken, led her into the toilet and pushed her up against the wall. She was a virgin. And someone was banging on the door, but even so he wouldn't let her go, kissing her hard on the mouth when she tried to call out. "Although I didn't call out much," she admits. "I was too shocked. And too embarrassed." Afterwards her friends looked at her with admiration, and, instead of disillusioning them, she closed herself off from them and her family. She put on weight and developed a rash of cold sores around her mouth. It was only years later that she understood it had been rape, and also, where she had caught the cold sores. At the time she just blamed herself for being, well, 15. Another friend got into a row with an older man she'd been seeing for six weeks. She stood up to him, asked him to take back something offensive he had said. After he had, he turned to her and smashed his fists down on her ribs. She crawled out of the bed, dressed and went home, but although it was Christmas and everyone she knew and loved best was all in one room, nothing in the world would have made her tell them what had happened. She felt too ashamed, and when, even after two weeks, her ribs were still hurting, she didn't admit to it and see a doctor. In a recent NSPCC survey of girls in their mid-teens, it turned out that 45% had had unwanted sexual experiences, and at least half of these were made to feel guilty for saying no. Fifty-six per cent of these experiences happened before the girls were 14. One in three kept quiet. I didn't mention to anyone what happened that night with Derrick. I was too embarrassed to protest when he stripped down to his underpants and got into bed beside me. My heart was thumping. "What should I do? What was Tom doing? Did he want to spend the night with that other girl, Tamara, and, if not, then why didn't he come and find me?" Derrick was restless. He kept brushing his leg against mine. I turned away and then his hands were on my shoulders. "Relax," he urged. "At least take off your skirt." When I did, under the covers, wrapping the sheet tight round me, he suggested I was tense and offered to give me a massage. "No, I don't want a massage," I protested and he put his finger to his lips and told me to shush. "If you let me give you a massage I'll leave you alone, I promise." So I lay there with his hands on my back, and then later I had to listen to him laugh, when he said he had had his fingers crossed all along. And that was how the night went on. Hour after hour, an awkward, clumsy battle, his hands groping me, mine forcefully, politely, pushing him away, until the light started to show in the sky and eventually he gave up and went to sleep. I didn't want to tell anyone what had happened because they would think I was a fool. Why didn't I shout? Get up and leave? Find a phone box and call home? I didn't even say anything to Tom when we were finally reunited the next morning. Maybe he was embarrassed, too, because he didn't say anything either. And in case he had enjoyed the experience, had planned it, God knows, had wanted it, I kept quiet. Years later, in my mid-20s, I bumped into Derrick. I was with a friend who stopped to talk to him. I hoped he wouldn't recognise me, but after a moment he turned to me. "Why so quiet, stranger?" And, to my amazement, my embarrassment finally gone, I told him: "That night, you trapped me in that room!" I felt my face grow red. Maybe he wouldn't even remember. But he did. "It was only meant as a joke," he said, and for the first time I was able to look at him. "It wasn't funny," I told him, and, as I walked away he called: "I'm sorry. I was a mess back then." I turned and, in spite of myself, I smiled. I felt oddly lighthearted. So it wasn't my fault. Was that it? And I realised that for all those years the worst thing about that night was that I had blamed myself for being too embarrassed to protest. · Esther Freud's Love Falls is published by Bloomsbury at £12.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

Women in the boardroom

With prejudice

Companieswith senior women perform better, yet only 12 executive directors inthe FTSE 100 are female. An executive coach and author of a book onwomen in the boardroom tells Penny Wark why, and what we can do about it

It is a familiar lament: why are there so few women in the boardrooms of major companies? At the last count there were 12 female executive directors in the FTSE 100, a miserable 10 per cent that takes no account of demographics. Given that half of the population are women, it might be a good idea to understand at first hand how their minds work if you want to engage with them.
Mercifully, the boardroom debate has long moved on from feminism and now revolves around the growing belief that companies that employ senior women are better financial performers. As evidence for this emerges, it should provide the wake-up call that the more Jurassic employers need. In the meantime, the key to women breaking through the glass ceiling lies in understanding the factors that stop them rising through it. Once you know that, you can develop strategies to get women on to boards.
This is precisely what Peninah Thomson has done. A partner of Praesta Partners LLP, an executive coaching firm, she co-founded the FTSE 100 cross-company mentoring programme with Jacey Graham, a partner and co-founder of Brook Graham LLP, and together they have written A Woman's Place in the Boardroom, a study of senior women. By talking to FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 chairmen, chief executives, women directors and headhunters, Thomson and Graham have identified the reasons why women fail to reach senior positions, and formulated an agenda that they believe will enable many more of them to fulfil their professional potential.
Some reasons are historical: if you don't have many female role models at senior levels, it is hard for other women to see themselves in those positions. Some stem from the nature of organisations, perhaps a predominantly male culture and a reluctance by older male senior executives to be more flexible. Some relate to deep-rooted differences in the male and female mind: women tend to sabotage themselves by underselling their strengths and acknowledging their limitations, men commonly oversell themselves and rarely acknowledge weakness. And some stem from the obvious fact that it is women who bear children and who are still more likely to carry out the majority of child-rearing and domestic responsibilities.
Graham is optimistic. Mentoring schemes, female networking groups and coaching can all help women to move into senior jobs, as will the changing business culture, she believes. "The growth in the understanding of emotional intelligence is going to mean that people who have high levels of EI are going to be in demand," she says. "Organisations are no longer going to be competing simply on cost reduction and products. Building long-term meaningful relationships with suppliers and customers is essential, and that absolutely plays to women's strengths."
But isn't there an argument that many women choose not to work at senior levels? Graham acknowledges that, irrespective of gender, reaching board level involves sacrifice, but points out that companies will have more choice in their appointments – and diversity is an important word in 21st-century business – if they allow their senior executives to lead balanced lives.
"It's great that there are so many entrepreneurial women setting up their own businesses, but it's a cause for concern because if women leave senior positions, then nothing's going to change," she says. "So it's important that women are encouraged by their organisations to stay in there, which means that companies need to make the sacrifices for both men and women as bearable as possible.
"There will always be those driven individuals of both sexes who become out of balance and make every sacrifice to be at the top and stay there, but I would like to think that this is being challenged. We don't want lopsided human beings running things – decision-making isn't good when it's made by people who are obsessive. We want greater diversity, not less."
A Woman's Place is in the Boardroom, by Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, Palgrave Macmillan, £25
How to get there
1. Confidence
Problem: A major reason why women don't reach senior levels is because, as individuals, they don't think that they're good enough. They also tend to assume that by doing a good job and working hard, recognition will follow. This does not happen, and is not helped by women's awkwardness in discussing their own merits, especially as men excel at telling the world how great they are. Worse, women are also inclined to broadcast their limitations.
Solution: Talk about your achievements calmly and quietly, and don't be apologetic.
2. Visibility
Problem: Most women focus on doing the tasks for which they're accountable. In corporate life this is a given, it isn't enough, and it's essential that you're recognisable.
Solution: Be visible both at work and outside, put yourself about, be present at events, have something to say and say it in forums that are not necessarily tied to your specialist area. This demonstrates that you can play to the whole spectrum of the board. You will also make connections.
3. Behaviour in meetings
Problem: Women who are new to boards are sometimes surprised to discover that meetings can rubber-stamp decisions that have already been made informally in corridors, or by people popping their heads round doors. This isn't necessarily plotting.
Solution: Recognise that a lot of business is done subtly, and engage with it. Seize opportunities for a chat, a quick lunch. Then when you get to the meeting people will see that you understand the unspoken rules of the game, and you won't be excluded.
4. Lack of female role models
Problem: Young men learn from senior male executives, but it is harder for women because there are fewer female role models. Without them, women don't have as many opportunities as men for informal apprenticeships, and this makes them more tentative.
Solution: Find a mentor, male or female.
5. The Queen Bee syndrome
Problem: This relates to the senior women who, having themselves achieved, pull up the ladder behind them and do nothing to encourage other women to follow. They may be rare, but they do exist.
Solution: The best people aren't afraid to hire talent. With time all women at this level will become more confident.
6. Risk taking
Problem: Women are less likely than men to take risks.
Solution: Take some. They needn't be big ones. Speak at a meeting, don't worry about honing the perfect response and miss the opportunity to make your intervention. Don't remain silent.
7. Competition
Problem:Women like to be seen to support each other because they see themselves as allies, they're empathetic, good at building consensus and less egotistical than men.
Solution: Competition may be a word you don't like (you probably prefer words such as collaboration and partnership) but you are in competition with your peers. This doesn't mean that you have to be nasty.
8. Career planning
Problem: Men are more inclined to plan their careers, women are more inclined to let them happen.
Solution: Think about the outcome you want, understand that you can make things happen, have a sense of purpose and seize opportunities.
9. Discrimination
Problem: It's illegal and no one will own up to it, but it still happens, and it's often subtle.
Solution: It's not part of the Zeitgeist– challenge it.
10. Ambition
Problem: Another word that makes women uncomfortable as they think that it implies ruthlessness. Women are perceived to be less ambitious than men. This doesn't mean that they are, but the impression comes about because they don't sell themselves as hard or as consistently as men do.
Solution: Use the word aspiration instead. Companies need to use language that doesn't turn women off, that encourages them to stay in the corporate world.
11. Politics
Problem: Women are more reluctant than men to engage in political games. Women also think that they're no good at them.
Solution:There's no choice; you need to understand how your organisation works, you need to be involved inits dynamics. Women can do this in their own way – they don't have to copy men.
12. Networks
Problem: Men have long--established networks that they can tap in to, women don't, which means that women don't have the contacts they need and have to try harder to reach senior levels.
Solution: As women's networks continue to emerge, the process of getting the big jobs is being demystified. But you do have to engage with the networks.
13. Supply and demand
Problem: Men in major corporations sometimes comment that they don't know where to find senior women to appoint, that there don't seem to be enough of them.
Solution: Enable women to cut their teeth by taking up positions on FTSE 250 boards, in the public sector and on charity boards.
14. Children
Problem: The demands of working at a senior level in a big corporation are incompatible with having and raising children. Most women want to put their children to bed themselves.
Solution: To retain senior women, companies need to create more flexible working options. BT, for example, has decided that what matters is that work gets done – where or at what time it gets done doesn't matter. Some companies allow employees to compress their working week into four long days.
15. Detail
Problem: Women often think that they can rely on instinct. This, however, doesn't impress men, who are more fact-orientated.
Solution: Women must be rigorous on detail, too, and support conclusions with data and analysis. Only when you have moved from being an expert in your field to an authority will people accept your conclusions without supporting data or analysis.
16. Mobility
Problem: Working mothers are less inclined than men to relocate or to take foreign postings. This means that they don't get the experience boards seek.
Solution: Organisations need to look at their expectations with a critical eye. Unless they make top positions attractive to women, their boards will remain male.
17. Research
Problem: Most leadership research is done by men and based on men. This perpetuates male models of leadership.
Solution: Include women in the data.
18. Culture
Problem: In companies where the working culture revolves around male – and even macho – interests and concerns, women feel unwelcome and as though they don't belong.
Solution: Companies need to be aware of this, and junior women are well placed to point it out. Companies should enable them to do so.
19. Look the part
Problem: Some professional women think that denim and cleavage are acceptable in a work environment. If you aspire to the boardroom, they aren't, ever, not even when the invitation says smart casual.
Solution: Understand that there is a difference between smart casual at a social occasion with friends and smart casual at an event where you are mixing with business associates. Your male peers will be wearing chinos and shirts, not cut-offs and trainers. Dress to the next level, not the one that you've already reached. Understand, too, that dress codes for women are set by senior women – don't threaten them.
20. Avoid ghettos
Problem: Women are often held back because they have restricted themselves to traditional female areas, such as HR and marketing. These positions rarely lead to a place on the board.
Solution: Make sure that you get involved with parts of the business that are involved
We made it, so can you: what the top women executives say...
MOIRA BENIGSON
Moira Benigson Executive Search
Women don't want to be on the boards in some ways because it's made too difficult for them. They have to juggle their home lives and work lives and it's a struggle. Women spend their time focusing on the job in hand. They do not spend time building their profiles internally or externally. They like to be good at what they do, do a good job and go home.
MOIRA ELMS
First female board member, PricewaterhouseCoopers
There is a tendency by some senior people to recruit those who demonstrate the same patterns of behaviour as they do, and this may deter some women with great potential. It also often comes down to the little things in the day-to-day working environment that subtly reinforce and sustain existing patterns of behaviour – and these take a long time to break down.
JAN BABIAK
Managing partner, Ernst & Young
With many organisations, having a single woman on the board is seen as enough and somehow that box has been ticked. More women are far less comfortable than men at selling themselves internally; too often women expect that their boss will automatically notice their achievements, while men are much more likely to showcase themselves. When a women displays strong leadership she is scary; when a man does so he is commercial. Scary tends to result in recommendations for personal development courses, commercial in promotions.
JENNIFER HARRIS
Founder of JRBH Strategy & Management
Men are naturally more clubbable than women. From the golf club to the old boys, men are good at building strong mutual networks. Women perhaps don't leverage sorority in the same way so they miss out on a potentially invaluable tug up the ladder.
LYNDA GRATTON
Professor of management practice and director of the Lehman Centre for Women in Business, London Business School
As board size shrinks, most boards have only three to five executive seats, including chief executive and chief financial officer. The path to CEO tends to have included managing a very large business unit; in traditional FTSE 100 companies, especially engineering and technology firms, such positions have not yet been generally open to women. There is still a hostile environment at the top of many organisations that leads to women saying: "Enough is enough; I don't have to do this." Because women are less tied up with salary and status, valuing these as indicators of their contribution rather than as enhancing their power, it is easier for them to walk away.
DR VAL SINGH
Deputy director, International Centre for Women Business Leaders, Cranfield School of Management
Where there are fewer than 30 per cent senior executive women, companies are incapable of creating the critical mass that will encourage younger women and help to pull them up through the pipeline.
MARIE-LOUISE CLAYTON
Finance director, Venture Production
Women tend to approach business in a different way from men. They get some things done more quickly but are sometimes inclined to talk more lengthily about the human angle to things. Although their approach can be useful, if women aren't prepared to compromise, their approach can put people off. Women are easy targets. Decisions at the top inevitably involve a certain amount of conflict, and sometimes issues dress themselves up as sexist when they're about something different.
Interviews by MICHELLE HENERY
...and the top men?
DAVID WOLFSON
Former chairman, GUS
There actually aren't any obstacles left but women assume that the old prejudices still exist and have less confidence as a result.
PAUL MYNERS
Chairman, Land Securities
The worst thing women can do is to encourage tokenism. There's no substitute for being good at what you do.
ANDY STREET
Managing director, John Lewis
Like attracts like and people still recruit in their own image. Once more women do the recruiting the process will speed up.
DAVID THOMLINSON
UK managing director, Accenture
There aren't enough female role models and it's hard for women to know the right way to act. Sometimes they think they have to be pushy when actually all they need is to be very good at what they do.
ERIC DANIELS
Chief executive, Lloyds TSB
Women are just as capable as men but maternity leave makes it harder to reach senior positions in some companies. If people take a few years off it's very hard for them to get back in the game.
Interviews by FRANCESCA STEELE
Women tend not to put their heads above the parapet
For those who aspire to the boardroom, executive coaching can help people to see their blind spots. For women the emphasis often revolves around giving them confidence in their own style, says Mairi Eastwood, the managing partner of Praesta Partners LLP.
"The lack of senior role models for women means that they often feel quite lonely," she says. "They feel on the edge, on the outside. They'll say, 'I've seen this guy doing this but I couldn't imagine integrating that style into my personality'. People who are successful are authentic, they use the style that works for them. So there can be more work with women helping them to find their own style and not feel that they've got to copy an overly masculine approach.
"It's about coaching people to make sure that their contribution is listened to and noticed when it's delivered in a way that's less assertive, less aggressive. Women may be more consensual and they need to make sure that although their style doesn't fit the pattern of the boardroom, it's equally effective."
Eastwood, who was one of Ernst & Young's first women partners in the mid1980s, is able to use her own experience of having climbed through a male hierarchy. "There are often lots of micro inequalities that stop women feeling confident," she says. "So having a coach who recognises their potential, believes in it and encourages it helps to counteract that abrasion. If you've got someone unsympathetic above you and you're feeling downtrodden, sometimes the answer is to move.
"Women don't tend to put their head above the parapet as much as men, so we encourage them to take risks, to have a go. There's often as much self-doubt in a man but it's not shown to the same degree."
Interview by PENNY WARK
I never felt held back
LORRAINE HEGGESSEY, the chief executive of talkback Thames, was coached by Peninah Thomson when she ran the BBC children's department
Thirteen or so years ago I was an executive producer in the BBC's science department, responsible for such series as QED, Animal Hospital and The Human Body. So I was leading quite big teams and at that stage very much of the opinion that I never would take a senior management role. I didn't think that I would enjoy it or that I would fit into the mould. A lot of the people running the BBC then were big Oxbridge men, and I wasn't any of those.
Then I met Peninah Thomson, and once I got my first senior management role that became a regular coaching relationship. I didn't have a particular aim but what I did get out of it was more confidence in my own abilities. I said: "I'll never fit in, I'll never stay at the BBC, there's no point, I'll go freelance", and Peninah said: "What makes you think that they won't appreciate you for what you bring to the table rather than expecting you to be like everybody else?"
I was always offered opportunities by the BBC, I never felt held back as a woman; it was all about my own feeling that I wouldn't climb the career ladder there. I didn't think I was good enough. What coaching made me realise was that I was as good as anybody else. One reason women don't get on is their own limited self-belief. At that time the senior jobs didn't seem that attractive to me. I was a hands-on programme-maker and that was what I enjoyed. Particularly once you've got children you tend to focus on getting your day job done and don't necessarily play the games that some of your male colleagues might in terms of making sure that you do get advancement and get noticed. A lot of women keep their heads down and assume that they will get noticed because they're doing a good job. What my coach identified in me was leadership potential.
Having sworn that I did not want to run a department, I loved running the BBC children's department and I loved running BBC One, and it was male colleagues who asked me to go for those jobs. I've developed a theory that women tend to go for jobs two years after they're ready and men two years before they're ready. You think "I haven't quite done this or that", but in the end, get on with it.
When I first began sitting on BBC boards that was incredibly intimidating. The BBC's board of management, which John Birt ran, was very formal and procedural. Peninah taught me a lot about how to prepare for the meetings, to ensure that I made a valuable contribution and to make sure that contribution got heard. Also not to witter on: whereas other women quite like that, it irritates men. Learning how to be effective at those meetings is important.
Now I love the range of a big job, I like motivating and enabling people. I like the responsibility, I like jobs that occupy all my head space. I like to be challenged, I like the people-management side and I like working out how you should position your organisation, the strategic side. What I don't like is bureaucracy, and endless meetings that don't achieve anything. A lot of men recognise how much better an organisation functions when you have a mixture of male and female people at the top. You want diversity in its broadest sense. The key thing is not to blame anybody. Most men I know just want to appoint the best person for the job, but it is about equipping women, and women equipping themselves, to take on more senior roles. Interview by PENNY WARK
 

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