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Summer in the city – Executive Dressing to stay cool in the heat

Executive summer dressing As we finally start to see some Spring weather your thoughts may be turning to how to stay looking polished and professional over the summer months. Whilst business dress has relaxed in the last few years there are still some areas that are often undefined, such as whether bare legs are appropriate, should you wear sleeveless dresses or open toe shoes?

Female Breadwinners has enlisted the help of Maria Sadler from Capsule Wardrobes to give us some tips for executive dressing in the heat…

At Capsule Wardrobes we deal with issues like these on a daily basis when we are creating client Capsules. We will be discussing these issues and giving our top tips for surviving summer in the City and on the beach at our Capsule Wardrobe Summer Event on 22nd May in Central London.

Our clients come from a variety of industries and range from junior manager to Board director. Whilst budgets may differ our advice on business dress will be similar for both.

Firstly think about situational appropriateness. Is there an office dress code and are these areas covered? If you are a in a role visiting customers what is your customer’s dress code? It is always better to err on the side of caution. If you are visiting a client and don’t know their dress code wear tights and a jacket – if women in their office are in sleeveless tops or dresses you can always remove your jacket. In your own office take a jacket or knit that you can put on the back of your chair ready for any unplanned occasions where you need to be more formal.

The second consideration is your personal comfort zone. Anything that makes you self conscious should be avoided. So if you hate your upper arms keep them covered. However, if like “sleeveless poster girl” Michelle Obama you have toned arms, then feel confident showing them off. The Telegraph Stella Magazine recently said “Long sleeved dresses are the thinking woman’s style weapon” and at last designers are realising that what many women want – even in the summer months – is dresses with sleeves.

Open toed shoes, if acceptable in your workplace, should always be accompanied by pedicured feet that you are happy to be seen. On the other hand if you hate your knees and know that they won’t look good bare then wear tights. There are so many good nude or 7 denier ones around now that look like your legs but better.

If the temperature really heats up swap to natural breathable fabrics like cotton and silk or mixes such as viscose/jersey, silk/jersey and linen/silk. Whilst perfect fit is always important, in the heat anything too tight or clinging will just make you feel hotter. Simple lines and less fuss are more comfortable too; avoid tight belts and shoes.

If you would like to hear more tips about summer dressing in the city join Capsule Wardrobes at our Summer event on 22nd May in Central London.

We will also be discussing:

what most women dread – choosing swimwear
how to make your make-up last in the heat
packing for 2 weeks with one bag

Our guest speaker is award winning author Anne Zouroudi who knows all about living and working in the heat of Greece where her novels are set.

Bring along your summer dressing dilemmas – we hope to see you there.

What Makes China Better for Professional Women?

Globally women do 2/3 of all paid and unpaid work, yet own just 1% of property, there are huge disparities between what it means to be a working woman in China versus the UK. At a recent dinner for Barclays, I found myself discussing how women’s workplace issues were not the same the world over. China is of particular interest, as I spent time there last year and witnessed the paradox of female leadership. Indeed, understanding China should be of interest to everyone, as the 21st century is now widely recognised in business to be the Asian Century for the rapid growth we will see in these markets.

Only 2% of the world’s self-made billionaires are female, but half of them are Chinese. In fact, Communism had a few positive effects for women that are still seen in the workplace and society. China’s state ideology strongly supports female education in the sciences and in technical subjects. Women are expected to participate in the labour force to the same levels as men. Communism’s focus on equality for workers meant women have long been expected to work as long and hard as men – and be rewarded with senior positions. With gender equality at the top of many organisations scaling the Boys’ Club has been less of a hindrance to Chinese working women.

In fact, according to statistics published in the FT, this year 51% of all senior managers in China were women, a triumph of gender equality compared to the global average of 24%. The Us and UK do even worse than the global average with 20% and 19% respectively. Interestingly, in China, state power trumps economic power. Therefore women are still largely excluded from senior positions within the Communist Party of China, which may explain why so many of the smartest and most driven feel free to pursue ostensibly ‘lower-status’ business careers. Where one door closes, another door opens perhaps.

Additionally, the close family structure helps explain some of the female rise to power. There is more of a Chinese cultural norm of grandparents doing a lion’s share of child-raising, again to help parents who are working long hours. For example, there is no stigma on working women who spend little time with their children if they are working for the good of Chinese society. Indeed, the one-child policy means that less time is spent on childrearing overall. In fact, many women see their children just a few hours each week or if they live in the countryside with grandparents, they may see them just a few times a year. Chinese businesses and those that manufacture there do deserve criticism for much sharp practice, but we must recognise that when it comes to gender equality, they have much to teach us. Perhaps, China’s is not a system we would wholeheartedly advocate in the West, but it has led in part to their unprecedented economic growth.

Indeed, the one child policy and the historical preference for male children has left too many men vying for female attention, which some pundits are crediting with boosting GDP growth in the country. According to Harvard Business Review with males in the 15-to-30-year age range outnumbering females 1.15 to 1 in China, men have become fiercely competitive; it’s almost an unspoken prerequisite for bachelors to have enough for a down payment on a home before attracting a wife, says Fortune. The gender imbalance may be responsible for 2 percentage points of the country’s annual 10% growth and up to 48% of the rise in property values across 35 major Chinese cities.

Is Appetite for Gender Diversity at the Top Waning or Increasing?

When I talk with male business leaders, I am struck by how many recognise the value in having women in senior leadership positions. My role is decreasingly about highlighting the benefits and increasingly in talking about which concrete actions and what types of organisational culture change will make the difference. However, this momentum is patchy, and occasionally I hear people protest that ‘women’s issues’ in the workplace are just a passing fad, to be replaced soon enough by another ‘special interest group’. It’s enough to wonder why women, who make up over half of graduates and half of the workforce continue to be seen as a ‘minority’. Why do some companies ‘get it’ and others think of it as yesterday’s priority?

For example, evidence suggests the momentum is slowing on real action to improve gender balance across Australian workplaces and in its boardrooms. The 2013 Directions Report by Asian law firm King Wood Mallesons found that only 13 per cent of directors considered diversity to be a key priority when considering board appointments during the past 12 months compared with 63 per cent in the 2011 report. The explanation is that many boards think they have sufficiently addressed diversity over the past few years, though the numbers of women on boards demonstrate not much progress has indeed been made. Perhaps, because they now are required to publicly report on their gender make-up and cite action they are taking to increase female representation, they feel that the issue will reconcile itself in time.

Certainly, this is not an issue that will reconcile itself without plenty of attention. Indeed, in the UK progress has faltered. As described in the Financial Times this month: The percentage of women on the boards of the UK’s biggest companies has fallen for the first time since the figures were first compiled in 1999, amid worries that the government will fail to hit its target of 25 per cent in 2015. The percentage of women on boards of FTSE 100 companies fell to 17.3 per cent in March in a sign that enthusiasm among the UK’s biggest companies to promote diversity is waning, says BoardWatch, the group that compiles the figures.

Concerns that progress is stalling has prompted Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, to write to the seven companies in the FTSE 100 without a woman on their board to urge them to take on a female member and promote diversity. However, a government spokesperson insisted the 25 per cent target should be achieved, adding: “In the last two and half years we have seen considerable progress with the efforts to increase female representation on UK boards.” Although the drop from 17.4 per cent at the end of last year is only small, it is the first time the figure has reversed, sparking a fresh debate on whether quotas are needed to give the diversity campaign more momentum.

Amidst this backdrop and perhaps not surprisingly, the topic of women on Boards was again addressed at Davos this year at the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report demonstrates a strong link between closing the gender gap and improving economic competitiveness and corporate performance. The panel, included heavyweights such as Christine Lagarde, Sheryl Sandberg and Viviane Reding. They recognised that real progress has been made in increasing the number of women in top economic positions, including more women on boards and in high-level management. However, statistics around the world indicate that we are still far from closing the economic gender gap and progress remains slow. It’s an hour long video, but worth it to hear some of the most impressive minds discuss progress and remaining barriers. You can check out the panel discussion here.

Women Are More Efficient Thinkers

In celebration of International Women’s Week, we at Female Breadwinners are starting with new research proving what many of us already intuited; that women are more efficient thinkers. As discussed in the Daily Telegraph: “Scientists have been long puzzled over why women can show just as much intelligence as men, although their brains are eight per cent smaller. Now a study by universities in Los Angeles and Madrid have shown that for women, brain size does not matter because they are more “efficient”.

The research, published in the journal Intelligence described that: “Despite the fact the women had smaller brains they performed better in inductive reasoning, some numerical skills and were better at keeping track of a changing situation – although men did better on spatial intelligence. The researchers concluded that women’s brains are able to complete and even excel at complicated tasks with less energy and fewer neurons. At this structural level, females might show greater efficiency requiring less neural material for achieving behavioural results on a par with males,” the paper read.

Women’s increased efficiency should be heralded as good news by employers. Our Clients are working longer hours and often operate in organisational cultures where presenteeism is the name of the game for promotion. To get ahead, men and women must entertain clients and network after an already long day. Additionally, they take calls with colleagues and clients spanning many time zones and respond to requests at all hours of the day. As discussed in the research, being able to keep track of a “changing situation” should be lauded as a highly valuable 21st century skill.

To this point, measuring and rewarding people solely on the numbers of their ‘desk bound hours’ is inefficient. Many of our clients are professional services firms where billable hours has historically measured someone’s ‘commitment and value’ to the firm. It is an increasingly antiquated system that rewards inefficiency in the long term. The question becomes: what is the motivation of doing things in less time if we are paid on an hourly basis? However, purchasers of professional services are increasingly demanding fixed fee contracts – a model that requires employees to be as efficient as possible with the little time they have. Instead, the workplace of the future will require efficiency in order to keep pace with lower labour costs in developing countries, and respond to the demands of global clients who don’t identify or want to engage with a billable hours model. Long live the efficient worker – however her brain is wired!