REPORT
Despite recent progress towards professional gender parity, many enterprising women are still the first females to occupy their position. Marie-Claire Chappet meets three of these extraordinary trailblazers
WHEN, LAST DECEMBER, INDHU RUBASINGHAM was named the next creative director of the National Theatre, she became the first woman, not to mention the first woman of colour, to lead the institution in its 60-year existence. Earlier that year, Allison Kirkby was made the first female CEO of BT, taking the total number of FTSE 100 female chief executives up to just 10, while Sue Carr was appointed the Head of the Judiciary of England and Wales, the only Lady Chief Justice since the post was created more than 800 years ago.
The achievements are bittersweet, for the fanfare surrounding each announcement serves as a reminder of its rarity.
‘Every time I am the first, it doesn’t make me happier,’ admits Patricia Scotland, who has made history three times: as the first Black woman to be appointed a Queen’s Council (now KC); the first female Attorney General since the office was founded in 1315; and, currently, the only woman ever to have held the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations. ‘Though they are wonderful achievements, it makes me sad that there are still firsts happening.’
Being a forerunner is, it seems, something of a poisoned chalice; it is loaded with the countless complications of representation, disproportionate opprobrium, intense pressure and isolation. Scotland voices her frustration at being seen as an ‘emblem’ instead of someone trying to do a good job, as it naturally reinforced the idea of her as an anomaly. When, in 2013, Inga Beale became the first (and thus far the only) female head of Lloyd’s of London in its 328-year history, she says she was taken aback by the attention she received.
She had spent much of the early part of her career in the male-dominated insurance industry of the 1980s, ‘keeping my head down by trying to be like a man’. Working as the only female underwriter in one firm, her colleagues plastered her desk with photos of nude centrefolds. ‘I walked out of that particular job, as it made me feel it couldn’t possibly be for me,’ she says.
That feeling would return when, many years later, at a different company, Beale was up for promotion. ‘I turned it down because I just didn’t think it could be done,’ she admits. ‘I’d been in the insurance industry for 12 years by then and I had never seen a female boss.’
White men are the only demographic who look up at the start of their careers and see themselves reflected in leadership. They represent roughly 30 per cent of entry-level jobs but occupy 60 per cent of C Suite roles.
‘When people expect you to be
