TALKING HEADS

Business Support

Lead, always possible sam@alwayspossible.co.uk alwayspossible.co.uk sam.hilton@metrobank.plc.uk www.metrobank.plc.uk michaelp@emcltd.co.uk www.emcltd.co.uk

Always possible is an award-winning strategic development organisation, helping organisations and entrepreneurs feel confident about the future Sam, a funding and business development specialist, is the business support lead for always possible. He has also worked in skills and education.

Sam has supported start-ups, SMEs and corporate businesses for over 20 years; the last eight years at Metro Bank. Metro, which supports the Investing in Women code, offers personal and business banking services, aiming to become the UK’s best community bank.

Michael Pay is a co-founder of EMC. During a career spanning 30 years at EMC, he has worked with a number of womenled businesses, successfully raising funds, assisting with strategic planning, before going on to act as an adviser to the shareholders on exit.

Elaine worked at NatWest for 41 years, nine of which she was branch manager, and 14 as a Business Relationship Manager with a portfolio of 200 SME customers. She is now at Let’s Do Business Group, with experience as a lender and trusted advisor.

Elaine.Robinson@ldbgroup.co.uk www.letsdobusinessgroup.co.uk

Maarten Hoffmann is the facilitator for the Platinum Influencer Forums maarten@platinummediagroup.co.uk www.platinummediagroup.co.uk

The Platinum Media Group is the largest circulation business publishing group in the UK, reaching up to 720,000 readers each month across three titles.

Lesley is a marketing professional, having spent many years with Capital Radio in London and the Observer Newspaper, and was instrumental in the launch of the Observer Magazine.

T: 07767 613707 lesley@platinummediagroup.co.uk www.platinummediagroup.co.uk

The pandemic had a disproportionately adverse impact on women’s careers, and this has received a great deal of attention. Fields heavily populated by women have experienced greater layoffs, with a McKinsey analysis showing women’s jobs 1.8 times more vulnerable than men’s jobs.

But there’s another big shift that has more recently come to light as figures from 2020 show a substantial drop in venture capital funding for women-led startups.

This isn’t just part of an overall decrease in VC funding. In 2019, 2.8% of funding went to women led startups. In 2020 that fell to 2.3%. After all, only about 12% of decision makers of VC firms are women and most firms still don’t have a single female partner.

Of all partners that these firms have, only 2.4% have female founding partners. When women venture capitalists do make the decisions, they’re twice as likely to invest in female founding teams. This is needed more than ever.

MAARTEN HOFFMANN (MH): SAM – WHY DO YOU THINK WOMEN ARE FINDING IT SO TOUGH TO COME BY FUNDING?

Samantha Hilton (SHI): Generally, it’s a lack of confidence in knowing how to approach funders. There are the traditional high street funders, similar to VC funders, who are very male dominated in a commercial and business environment. So that doesn’t help.

It’s just having that courage of knowing what they need and where they can get it from.

MH: DO YOU NOT FEEL THERE MIGHT BE ANY INSTITUTIONAL BIAS AGAINST WOMEN-LED BUSINESSES?

SHI: I’d like to hope not, being a woman in commercial banking for the best part of my career. But I think there is that perception, and it’s something that we’ve been trying to tackle. But it’s quite difficult to break down those barriers.

In 2018, the government commissioned the Rose Review, headed by Alison Rose at NatWest to do a review of why we were having trouble accessing finance, and where the barriers were. Out of that, we started the Investing in Women code, which Metro signed up to, to try and make finance more accessible for women. That’s starting to pay dividends, but it’s still early days.

MH: ELAINE, DO YOU HAVE AN OPINION ON WHY WOMEN-LED BUSINESSES TEND TO FIND IT DIFFICULT TO COME BY FUNDING?

Elaine Robinson (ER): Businesses started by women, have often been started from home and will be more of a female-orientated type of business therfore when these women go to male lenders the lenders might not ‘get it’ as much as the loan isn’t a traditional type of loan to them. For example, a business making candles might be better received and understood by female colleagues. So not only can women find it hard to put their ideas across but they can also find that men are less receptive - they may think it’s too ‘fluffy’ for them.

MH: When you go to your bank – as opposed to a VC –for a loan, a business is a business.

If the margins are right and the P&L makes sense, then it shouldn’t make any difference what the business is. Is it not possibly taken seriously by male lenders because a female-led business might be seen as a bit of a ‘hobby’ business?

ER: Not by all, but that it can be a stumbling block. Different schemes have been set up to try and help women. We work with NatWest on a pre-business startup programme for women to help them get the assistance and advice they need to put their case across for financing. One of my colleagues – and he wasn’t being sexist at all – pointed out that sometimes business plans that you will get from a woman will be different from a man’s plan because women put in too much detail. That can cloud the real issue, which is ‘what’s the return on investment going to be?’ Women will focus on the detail that doesn’t need to be in the business plan.

MH:MIKE, DO YOU RECOGNISE ANY OF THIS?

Michael Pay (MP): The majority of the advisory community in terms of raising money is male dominated. We do struggle to find women who are suitably qualified to join us. That’s not a great thing to say, but it is true. And then you’ve got the banking side, which is male dominated. In terms of a man’s reading of the business plan, he’s looking for the things he’s used to seeing. However, women are rightly putting a different viewpoint forward, and therefore, the bank or the lender is thinking, ‘Well, this isn’t answering what I want to know.’ Because he’s looking at it in a way that he’s always been trained to look at. That doesn’t mean to say that you need more women, it means you need the men to understand what it is and look beyond that.

MH:SAM, WHAT’S YOUR VIEW?

Sam Hawkins (SHA): The Rose Review is a really important piece of work. One of the key barriers it talks about is that women do not have the support network around them; people who can teach them some of the fundamentals. Men, on the other hand, know other men who run businesses. So when it comes to how to start a business, you have a different starting point and that’s at the heart of trying to design some of the business support elements that try and plug some of those gaps. The recommendations said, why not look at building networks locally? That’s something we were involved in. Trying to build from the ground up over time but it’s not an instant fix.

MP: My first question would be how many women who are starting businesses and seeking funding are getting turned down for funding?

MH: Well, it’s been over 100 years since women got the vote in the UK, and we are still sitting here discussing inequality, which is absurd. 90% of women I speak to will not forgive things that have happened to them on their journey through sexism. Whether it is sexism is dependant on which angle you’re standing at but female led businesses are the fastest growing sector in the country and upsetting them is a foolish thing to do. We had a gathering around the table a few months ago and 80% of them had been turned down for funding.

MH: WOULD YOU AGREE MEN DO LOOK AT IT SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY? IT’S NOT A PREFERENCE; THE BUSINESS PLAN IS PUT TOGETHER SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY TO THE WAY THAT THE MALE DOMINATED WORLD IS USED TO. THAT SHOULDN’T CAUSE REJECTION, ONLY A SHIFT IN THINKING…

MP: What is a bank there to do? I put my savings into a bank, the bank lends those to get a return. And maybe I get a bit of return from the bank. But we want our money back. You still have to have those fundamentals addressed in a business plan and I don’t believe that I’ve seen any difference. When I was at Southern AMC 25 years ago, my first client was a female-led business. We went out, we raised £150,000 from HBOS, on a debt puzzle piece, and we got the money. There weren’t any problems. We had a business plan for five years, with checks every month and they ran the business really well.

I haven’t seen that point about a difference in the way that the business plan is put together. The fundamental thing is that I need to see certain things in that business plan. Whether I’m lending to a man or a woman, what I need to see, are a respectable P&L balance sheet cash flow, all tied in, all working properly.

MH: WE ALL ACCEPT EVERYBODY HAS TO JUMP OVER THE SAME MINIMUM BAR. IT’S WHAT HAPPENS ONCE YOU GET OVER THAT BAR, WHETHER THE DECISION IS POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE, DEPENDING ON THE SEX OF THE PERSON SITTING IN FRONT OF YOU. I FIND THAT INSULTING…

ER: I would argue that the presenter of the figures doesn’t make any difference to the majority of lenders. It’s that bit initially where the customer might not believe in their business as much, and to get them to look at it and take it seriously.’

They had a perfectly good business plan with a very good P&L, with a very good return – and they were turned down, and they considered it was due to the fact that they were female, and they will not forgive.

So when the world is completely dominated by women, which is the way it’s moving, I think us lads are going to get a good smack. And rightfully so, to be frank.

Alison Rose, launched the Rose Review with a billion pounds, which is a huge amount of money. Has it been successful? They’ve just increased it to two billion pounds. So yes, it’s been phenomenally successful.

SHI: NatWest has got a full team behind this. It’s support that we at Metro give as part of our role. The last Rose Review back in 2021, shows that 20% of new businesses are now female-led, and it’s growing each year. So there is some traction there, which is fantastic. But I think it’s the same for the other banks, I know a number of banks that have got all female divisions, but clearly it’s not as as prominent in the press. And we need to work on that. It’s also about getting men on board, training and developing them to understand how they need to review a female business.

SHI: It’s the confidence of selling what you’ve got, and traditionally, women don’t sell themselves as much as men.

ER: There are occasions where my colleagues – and it still happens – would say, “Would you look at this one because it’s more of a girly business; it’s more your sort of thing?” That’s the bit that needs changing, because a business is a business.

Just very recently, there are four or five businesses that I’ve considered at Let’s Do Business, and they’ve been going quite a while now. They have a female founder, sometimes she is the sole person. All of them have grown and all of them are good businesses. When I looked through last year’s figures, out of the 45 loans that were drawn down, a good 20 of those were companies run by women – almost 50%. And with the Regional Growth Fund delivery, £2.5m has been lent, and 50% has been to females. There is a step change there.

MH: THAT’S EXCELLENT TO HEAR. YOU SAID THAT A LOT OF THEM COME TO YOU BECAUSE THEY’VE FAILED WITH TRADITIONAL LENDERS. WHERE’S THAT FAILURE COMING FROM? YOUR FIGURES ARE EXCELLENT, BUT THEY’RE STILL COMING TO YOU.

ER: The failures across the board – male and female – aren’t always because they’ve been declined; it’s more that the policy doesn’t fit. If it’s a startup business, there’s probably going to be an issue on the startup side of things with financing. If it’s a business that’s already going and they want more funding, that may be down to lack of security, or they may already have a bounce back loan, and that’s going to preclude them from getting any other unsecured finance. And that’s where we’re getting them coming to us. Their business itself is good, and shows it’s got growth, but they don’t have the assets there to show, or they’ve started up fairly recently, or they’ve gone through Covid.

MH: If there’s a disconnect, it’s because 67% of female led businesses are finding there is bias.

LA: NatWest has said that angel investors are increasingly investing in women businesses, because there are more female angel investors and it’s them who are investing in the women businesses, not the men.

MP: Let’s talk about the Dynamic Awards here. I went home after what was a great evening. I feel, as a man in Brighton, it’s wrong that we have to have separate awards. But then I was discussing it with my daughter, who loves business. Her attitude was that it’s great. She feels it’s inspiring that she can see herself in 20, 30, 40 years’ time, You’ve now got women who are successful, who are now angel investors. And it wasn’t that long ago that men didn’t have angel investors, unless you were in the City of London, all the clubs were in London, and we’ve now got clubs all over the country.

So where do you go? How do you find those people? Where is the money to chase? For both the women who are chasing the angel investor, and obviously having an angel investor, who is a woman, they will lend to people who they once were. My daughter can see how she got there, and that’s her inspiration.

There are things that need to be addressed, like making sure that there was a proper plan. And from there we go to ‘are you asking for money?’ Do you need to raise capital for the types of businesses that women are historically involved with? There may be a bit of impostor syndrome – ‘would anybody really want to lend me the money?’ Whereas a man would just go and give it a shot.

There are plenty of women who are not slow in putting themselves forward.

MH: SOME OF THOSE ARE AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN, OF COURSE, AS THERE ARE EXCEPTIONAL MEN. THE OECD SAID THAT THE MAJORITY OF FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS WILL TRY TO SELF-FUND IF THEY POSSIBLY CAN. WOMEN WHO DO HAVE TO SELF-FUND THEIR BUSINESS ARE JEOPARDISING IT THROUGH LACK OF FUNDING TO DRIVE THAT BUSINESS FORWARD. DO WE RECOGNISE THAT?

SHA: The irony is that women are more risk averse. So when it comes to presenting a package for funding and loans, in principle, that’s going to be better than the average as it’s going to be more thought through.

What does that mean for the VC community and people working in assessing the risk of those businesses? Is that a barrier to women excelling there or taking up those roles?

MP: When you look at the VC community, you’ve got to look at what they are after. They’re after three to five times their money on each round of funding. “I raise a million pounds a day, I want that to be worth five million pounds on the next round of funding, I raised the five million, I wanted to be worth 15 million…” The growth rates are very aggressive.

If women are presenting a cautious, risk-averse business plan, you’re not going to raise the money, and you are going to get turned down. Because when a VC looks at the plan, they realise it’s not going to give me the returns that they want compared to the risk as the venture sector is based on risk.

MH:HOW MUCH DO WE THINK WE SUFFER FROM THE FACT THAT THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAN’S WORLD? MEN HAVE, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, SHAPED THE WORLD, PUTTING OUR OWN SYSTEMS IN PLACE. HOW MUCH OF THOSE SYSTEMS ARE INSTITUTIONALLY BIASED AGAINST WOMEN?

SHI: That’s where things like the Women’s Awards, and the networks are really needed. It’s very much still an Old Boys’ club. I’m one of 12 commercial banking directors on our team and I am the only woman. There are only two people in my bank that do my job, which is ridiculous.

Women are less likely to scale up their businesses because there is this fear factor. Generally, they have to fit their businesses in with being the primary caregiver – and access to childcare is still a struggle. Post Covid, we are working in more of a hybrid world; there is a lot more flexibility out there.

But we’ve got hundreds of years to catch up on to get the right mindset. So I think we still need the visibility; the awards, the networks. The old adage being that, ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’.

MP: What we actually want to know is not ‘how much money was lent to female businesses?’; you want to know how many female businesses applied for that money? And how did that turn out?

SHA: To answer your question, is it stacked against women? And is it unfair? 100% yes, it is. If we have a thought experiment to say, would we have designed it this way from scratch? If we were starting again, even right now, the answer will be no.

We had a guest on our podcast recently. An entrepreneur who has been writing broadcasts and invests himself. He has a policy that he only invests in female-led businesses, because he views overcoming the inherent bias against female businesses as kind of a metric.

It means that that business scores quite highly in terms of resilience and fundability. Now, I’m not sure I agree with that 100% in terms of binary, but it raises quite an interesting point.

SHI: Interestingly, those figures aren’t published per bank. They’re published as a sector. But there has to be that step change; you can’t change hundreds of years of tradition overnight. I’d like to think it is going in the right direction. But we’ve got to bring men along with this. With every area where we see women at a disadvantage, having male allies has got to be the way. You’ve got to have men AND women banging the drum.

MH: Someone said to me that we’ll be fine with the next generation. Great – but what about this generation? My girls are at a girls’ school, and if you were to say to them in any way, ‘you’re not equal, you should expect lower pay,’ they just won’t accept this. We’re also training the next generation of boys to become men who don’t accept this.

But we have a current generation that can’t be thrown into the bin. It’s got to be changed really fast, because apart from anything else, the economy is missing out on this huge female talent. 49.7% of the population is hugely underutilised.

SHI: If women opened businesses that are scaled up to the same degree as men, £250bn will be added to the economy.

ER: I’ve been talking about the education side of things, and I recently went and did some mock interviews for Year 11 at a local school. One of the boys obviously didn’t want to be there, because he’s was going to set up his own business online when he left school.

They do have the people that they can talk to in the networks. What you’re not getting in schools is, say, if you want to set up a business, here’s what you can do; here’s the information. There’s nothing like that in schools. I’m not sure there is at university either.

There should be some education into the business world for everybody. There’s not enough financial innovation in the country. It’s very poor.

That’s the stumbling block for women who do want to start up a business and are trying to juggle it around family life. Where do you find the information while not knowing what is out there? Which is why it is so important to have women’s networking groups - to be able to let each other know what is out there.

MP: Is imposter syndrome a problem? “If I can’t do it, I only ask them once. I don’t want to look a fool.” Whereas a man would just sit there and ask.

ER: It’s the fear of being rejected.

MP: I don’t just mean for the money. I mean actually asking for help.

LA: Is that actually happening at source through education? Are girls, when they’re being educated, not being encouraged to look at running their own business or doing something for themselves?

Women have to work a lot harder to achieve the same thing as a man, It might be through the old boys’ network or not having imposter syndrome – just naturally being more confident.

ER: The networking side of it is key. You need a network that can show you what is available and who to go to, while trusting in people as well. If I’m speaking to anybody with this job now, it’s mostly on the phone. You don’t know who they are; you’ve never met them before. It’s about striking up that rapport.

I don’t get into the nitty gritty with them so much; they might be calling, and it’s nothing to do with finance; they might need some help with marketing or looking for premises, it could be anything. And part of the problem today for women – as it is for men - is that you don’t have that one-to-one scenario.

There is a lot of telephony, but it’s all a checklist, it doesn’t look at the person or their background. As a woman, I can see that when women are talking to me, they will interact better with somebody who’s going to listen to them, and want to know about them.

MH: LET’S JUST COVER THE AGE OLD THING OF IMPOSTER SYNDROME. I SEE AND HEAR IT ALL THE TIME. I ALWAYS START OUT BY SAYING, “I SUFFER FROM IMPOSTER SYNDROME.” BLOKES HAVE IT, BUT WE’RE JUST SO GOOD AT HIDING IT. WOMEN WILL PUT ON THEIR RESUMÉ EXACTLY WHAT THEY’VE DONE AND PRECISELY WHAT THEY THINK THEY’RE GOOD AT. GUYS WILL PUT ON THE RESUME, “OF COURSE I CAN DO THAT; WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?”

SAM, DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU EVER SUFFERED FROM IMPOSTER SYNDROME?

SMI: Regularly. I’ve been in commercial banking for 20-plus years, and apart from the women’s events, every networking event I go to, I’m still in the minority.

You need to take that step back and think, “I know this, this and this.” If I don’t know something, then you just got to find out. As I’ve got older, it’s got a little bit easier. Being open with people helps.

There are lot of people who still do suffer from it – male and female. Perhaps females admit it more than men do.

MH: Sam, have you ever suffer from impostor syndrome?

SHA: Yes, of course.

MH: You say, ‘of course’. It’s not something that the majority of men will admit.

SHA: It’s part of becoming more proficient at your role and being put into a certain situation where you don’t have all the answers or the experience but you get to learn as you go along.

MP: You have to remind yourself of what you’ve done what you’ve achieved in your career. You can look at what you’ve done, and what you can do. Know your limits, by all means, but push your limits as well, because that’s how you learn. I am always learning new things. It’s about just pushing yourself – hopefully not to the point of breaking.

As an aside – regarding gatherings and networking, I was chairman of Chris Nash’s benefit in 2017. My wife came with me to the first event, and there were probably about a dozen women in the room amongst 500 men.

Fast forward to now, and I went to a Best of British event recently, and the noticeable thing was 40-50% of the room were women, and predominantly of a younger demographic. Some of these event organisers really have to catch up, because, for instance, the comedian needs to reflect the room and not upset half of it.

MH: I was at an excruciating event recently, and you’re feeling uncomfortable in the company of women at your table. There does have to be that adjustment.

Meanwhile, is it enough for a female to walk through that – using our own vernacular here – man-made door? A lot of women who are trying to fund their business, find that the door is shaped like a man and when they walk in, the rules will be the man’s rules, and they already suffer from imposter syndrome.

MH: WOMEN WANT TO PITCH THEIR BUSINESS PRIMARILY TO WOMEN. IS THAT A HISTORICAL THING?

SHI: I’ve been told that a man doesn’t want to deal with me, because I’m a woman. I’m not suitable for their business. Women are going in with the knowledge that they are going to get more success if a woman is there, and that’s a big challenge to overcome. All organisations need to ensure that their training covers the men as well – and bring them along.

MH: Training / education is a huge factor in this, and it should have been done years ago. I just fear that we’re just not moving fast enough with our current coterie of women, and this generation of women will suffer for it and that’s a real problem for the economy.

ER: I feel more optimistic than you. I think it’s changing faster than what the statistics say. From what we are doing, there is a step change there. With our startup loans team, it’s 50/50 women and men. One of the men I work alongside there, to him there’s no difference with how he deals with a woman’s application to a man’s application.

Perhaps the difference there is for the people coming to us is that you’re talking to somebody, rather than being left to get on with it. But rather than just send out a website link and let them try and do the application by themselves, they’ve already got somebody that they can speak to and we offer to help them complete that application. Women business owners are very resilient women; they are very adaptable. It’s just getting that confidence in the first place. And now we’re seeing more women coming through and asking for help.

MP: If you turn it on its head, there is a massive opportunity for the country. It’s definitely moving, probably faster than any of us actually realise. Awareness creates movement. And for women, it’s an exciting period of time to get involved and be thinking about these things.

I’d say to women – and men – ask for help. You are more likely to succeed and outperform your rivals if you seek consultancy advice.

If you look at the advisory community, the legal advisory committees are almost up to about 40-50% women who are partners in legal firms. There are more and more female bankers around, so there is this groundswell and this will be great for the country.

MH: I COULDN’T AGREE WITH YOU MORE. BUT WHY SHOULD WOMEN HAVE TO WAIT FOR WOMEN TO GET IN CONTROL BEFORE THEY FEEL COMFORTABLE TO RUN THEIR BUSINESS? WE NEED THE OTHER 49% OF THE POPULATION TO BE SUCCESSFUL. DOES THAT MEAN WE HAVE TO RESORT TO POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION?

SHI: I don’t like it. You then get issues of tokenism. Playing devil’s advocate here, women perhaps have to be a bit more accepting that they will have to go to a man to talk about it, and just accept that they may put a barrier up themselves. They don’t think they’ll get their funding. So there’s some unconscious biases there. Perhaps the individuals coming in ought to try and see it as just as an organisation as opposed to a male or female person that they’re going to pitch to.

MH: Regarding education, there has been a huge drive over the past decade to get more girls into STEM subjects. It’s still only 30%. Therefore, we’re not actually pushing new kids through into the finance section that would push the finance section towards equal gender, because there’s still huge bias towards men. That said, I see a huge move of women coming through in banking. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any male bankers at the moment.

SHI: Within our industry, especially at Metro, when you look at the staff population as a whole, it’s almost 50-50. It’s only when you go further up into the more senior roles, that that starts to fall away, for all sorts of reasons.

MH: SO DOES ANYONE ELSE AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION?

SHI: No. When we look at our most recent opportunities programmes internally, all applications were totally anonymised. I’ve been a woman in a minority situation, you always do get ‘minority’ thrown at you – i.e. ‘you’re here because you’re a woman or you’re making up the numbers.’ You get that across ethnicity, LGBT+, and that’s not a place to be. You’ve got to try and make sure that the work environment is such that everyone can succeed in the same way.

SHA: We worked on an exercise where you were positively discriminated against if you’re a white male. You were turned down as you didn’t meet the eligibility criteria. This was for female-led businesses only, but to understand what the barriers are to go through that process, and then trying to improve things for everybody afterwards.

MH: ACCORDING TO THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND, LESS THAN 2% OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTION CEOS ARE WOMEN. FOR EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBERS, THE FIGURE IS LESS THAN 20%. RECENTLY OVER LUNCH MIKE, YOU RECOGNISED THAT THERE WERE NO WOMEN IN YOUR BUSINESS. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU’RE CHANGING RAPIDLY, SOMETHING YOU’RE WAITING FOR ORGANICALLY, OR DO YOU NOT SEE THE REASON FOR THE CHANGE?

MP: We absolutely are seeking to address that. We believe that our business will be improved by having more women onboard. It will change the nature of the team, particularly in terms of lead advisors and we believe we will have a better business as a consequence. But it’s about meritocracy, the important point for us is to get someone who fits in to be able to have the qualities that we want, in terms of the experience, the commitment to servicing clients and the mentality that it’s the client that matters more than anything else. Because if you get that right, then everything else flows.

LA: Going back to something you said earlier. I’m interested in your rationale for the solicitors, lawyers – why there are more women now?

MP: There was something that I’d put out there was Ally McBeal and a couple of other US legal programmes lawyers. Though without the figures, what I believed I saw was a shift change in girls going to law school, joining legal firms and wanting to be a lawyer rather than just being a paralegal or secretary. Suddenly, law became ‘sexy’.

MH: Ally McBeal was in the mid 90s, and here we are in 2023 and it has finally tipped over that 52% of trainee lawyers are female.

ER: I was chatting with one of the bosses at Let’s Do Business. He said when we’ve got a vacancy coming up, wherever it is within the group, they’ve got to be able to do the job. We’ve got to know that they’re going to fit in, and be right for the team, and right for the clients. So it’s irrelevant whether you’re a man or a woman; it’s just ‘are you going to be the right person in the job?’ That’s always what it should be. It’s the same with lending. You’re doing it for the right reasons to the right person, for the right outcome. Nothing else.

MH: I guess an accepted form of positive discrimination is when a company has an opening for their next partner, and the candidates are equal in every way, taking the female is a way of balancing the team.

MP: In this instance, if that’s the case, then you should try and take both, if they are equally good enough.

SHA: If you factor in the historical, extra difficulties that the female has had to overcome, then you can argue the female is more qualified to get to that same point with the male. So potentially, unless you unpick some of that, there are going to be some structural issues within recruitment there that need to be taken on.

MH: GIVEN THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE CHILDCARE, HOUSE-CARE, CARE OF ELDERLY PARENTS, AS WE FOUND OUT IN THE PANDEMIC, FALLS TO WOMEN THEREFORE YOUR POINT THAT SHE’S ACTUALLY ACHIEVED MORE TO GET WHERE SHE IS ABSOLUTELY SPOT ON. DO WE HAVE TO ADJUST THE NATURE OF THE WORKPLACE; THE WORKING FROM HOME ISSUES TO SIMPLY COMPENSATE WOMEN FOR THE EXTRA THEY HAVE TO DO?

SHI: I think we were seeing it already. There’s a lot of change in working hours, more flexibility around both sexes on how they work, and specifically to just try and cover the extra responsibilities women have.

Childcare availability needs to be reviewed. There’s a lot there that needs to be tackled. We’re seeing some gradual changes in terms of hybrid working, and technology, so there are some changes coming through.

MH: Childcare is the biggest issue that I hear about every time I speak to women with kids and work, and not just the cost. There’s surely a strong case to make childcare free of charge as the exchequer stands to gain huge sums in taxes fro working women.

MP: Just make childcare tax deductible. So if you’re lucky enough to afford to go and employ a nanny, you make it tax deductible, and that will then both boost the economy in terms of childcare economy and the nursery sector. It also means nursery workers will be able to be paid more.

MH: And the Treasury gets taxation from 49.6% of the population who aren’t working now. The availability of childcare and cost of child care are just extraordinary.

ER: My firm is happy for me to do my hours slightly differently because I’ve got childcare responsibilities. But the pandemic and the change of working practices has meant we have seen many more women coming into starting up businesses. Technology and the nature of hybrid work, combined with working at home means they’re not showing on unemployment figures. But yes, childcare needs sorting out.

Why is it the woman who

childcare?

MP: As long as we, as a society, believe that working and business is the best use of your time, we will always be dismissing motherhood as a second rate job. The first thing you have to do is actually get over that point, and recognise that it is a choice.

MH: That’s what happens to the majority of women who decide not to have children, but mainly the men who will drive through the business. The woman that decides to have kids maybe takes three or four years out of her profession, should always come back in at the point her male peers are otherwise she is penalised for having children.

MP: That’s the point, isn’t it? Because you’re penalising them when they have children; not actually “what a great thing I’ve had children.”

ER: It also comes back to the thing that has never changed. Why is it the woman who needs to do the childcare? Why do we think that the man must go out and have his full time job?

MH: Not enough men take full paternity leave. It’s only 3% in the UK.

SHI: Now with the flexibility, if only there were more men who are able to step in and do that side of things, and take more responsibility. As a bank, we’re trying to really push paternity leave to try to create parity.

That’s a real difficult seismic attitude to shift. But if we have in place flexible working, more hybrid working, and men have that ability, then you’d like to think that that will help sway women as well in what they do.

LA: Perhaps the main reason for women being led to care is that the man has historically had the greater income? So it made sense, purely from a financial point of view, for the woman to be the one who stayed at home.

SHI: Historically, yes. And are women more caring? Perhaps. But I think things are changing, and men can do it now. It will take a mindset change.

MH: A survey that was done a while ago asked men why that’s the situation. They said, “because I’ll fall backwards in my career.” Well, so will she. But this is probably my point.

MH: ON THE SUBJECT OF FEMALE FUNDING FOR BUSINESS, I’D LIKE A FINAL STATEMENT FROM EACH OF YOU WHERE YOU THINK WE ARE? DO YOU ACCEPT THAT THERE’S AN ISSUE WITH WOMEN FINDING FUNDING FOR THEIR BUSINESS? IF YOU DO, HOW DO WE FIX IT? AND IF THERE ISN’T, WHY DO THE MAJORITY OF WOMEN’S SAY THERE IS?

SHA: Yes, I do accept there’s an issue of disparity. I think it’s about more on the representation side, so that female entrepreneurs can see themselves and see ways to access all of the bits and pieces that they need. We need balance and transparency, with more reporting on this across every aspect, more setting targets and sticking to them, generating more of a conversation, and ultimately affecting where the money’s going behind the scenes.

SHI: Yes, there does seem to be an issue with accessing finance. How can we change that? From a bank perspective, we’ve taken initiatives from the Rose Review, and we’re putting those in place. We’ve got a clear accessibility statement for women in business on our website, signposting various sources they can use to access finance, and given them availability of any sort of manager – male or female – they want to try and process an application. Having that visibility for us as lenders, and also for us facilitating things like networking groups, women’s events, women’s training events, will encourage women to take that next step.

MP: There’s clearly an issue with women accessing finance. There is an increasing acceptance of this within financial institutions. But what I would say is that women ask for help and advice in accessing finance – as I would say to any business.

ER: Yes, there is an issue. We’re making changes too slowly but there are changes happening. The key to it is ensuring that women are aware; better advertising and marketing of different networking events, and help events for women starting up in business. The knowledge is out there. But before that, it needs to be fixed in universities and schools, that there should be finance and business education for future generations.

MH: AND THAT IS ALL WE HAVE TIME FOR. THERE IS SO MUCH MORE WE COULD EXPLORE, BUT FOR NOW, I THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THIS VERY IMPORTANT SUBJECT.

With reductions in tax reliefs and allowances looming for the 2023/24 tax year, SAMANTHA KAYE from Wellesley discusses why it’s important to make the most of these valuable allowances before April 5th.