WHERE ARE THE WOMEN IN MAJOR PROJECTS LEADERSHIP? AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT DECEMBER 2016
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 2
01. INTRODUCTION
The genesis of this project was through another research project. Working with boards, senior teams and enterprises to help them improve leadership and delivery of major and complex projects, the absence of women in the room, let alone in leadership, was quickly apparent. In the time I’ve been involved in the world of projects and programmes (ten years), the discipline has grown in profile and significance. My involvement first came through work I did both as a Chair of a NHS board, and as a consultant, working with boards and leadership teams. My background, though, is not in project management. Rather I’ve had a portfolio career as a consultant, researcher and practitioner, in leadership, change, action learning & research and in ‘whole systems’ development (with longstanding interests in diversity, sustainability and community regeneration). So when I encountered this world of projects, programmes, portfolios, it introduced me to a whole new set of language, practices, processes and, more importantly, cultures, mindsets, assumptions and values. At first, my chief interest was (and indeed continues to be) to introduce to career project managers concepts and practices from different worlds - indeed different paradigms - complexity, systems, critical theory, organisation design and development, and to help integrate them into their practice, in order to improve the leadership and outcomes of socially politically important major projects. But the absence of women; and the need for a gendered perspective on project management continued to call me. The turning point came in a conversation with four other women in 2014, from the Major Projects Association, University of Leeds and National Audit Office. We met for lunch in the Portrait Gallery in London. Our question to ourselves and each other was: “Is it just me...?” and if not… “What do we want to do?” Two significant things (for us at least) arose out of that conversation. Major Projects Association began a campaign for gender balance in major projects and subsequently, with their members, commenced a series of initiatives, workshops and events designed to raise awareness of the issues and share strategies for addressing it. Second, I set up a separate research strand and a new action research consortium, to develop the research base, at The Bartlett School for Construction and Project Management, University College, London. The early research questions and methodologies for the research programme were crafted in a series of meetings and an event with women from ‘major projects’ organisations. As the key researcher, my questions emerged from my work and research over thirty years in leadership, change, equality and diversity1.
1. Why haven’t the gains seen in other sectors shown up in projects leadership? 2. What accounts for the rise of project management as a dominant paradigm 3. Is there a relationship between the culture and practice of PM and the relative absence of women in leadership positions?
1
Knight, J and Pritchard S (1994) “No We’re Not Colour Consultants” in Tanton M (ed) Women Managers: a developing presence. Palgrave.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 3
Other women brought different questions:
1. Why, when we’re told the gender equality argument has been won, are there so few opportunities for women
2. Why is my lived experience so different from what I’m told I should be experiencing (by my company, in the press)?
3. What do I need to do to break through this glass ceiling? And looking up, at the nature of the work, do I want to?
4. Where are the diverse role models - eg, women leaders with families? To provide oversight and support, we formed an Advisory Group of women themselves occupying senior positions in project leadership or in projects organisations. The Advisory Group comprises women who are themselves leaders in the project management community of practice, from government, professional bodies, professional services, practice. They were invited because they bring a thoughtful, intelligent and curious orientation to the work, willing to inquire into their own and other experiences. With financial support from sponsors, the first part of this process has been about scoping the territory and setting the terms of the inquiry. PHASE
ACTIONS
First phase: understanding the Through desk based research, and data from organisations, we will be building a clearer current state. picture of the current reality First Report
We will report on the current state, what is already known. This will build the clear, grounded and well evidenced picture on which to assess and measure the effects of the cycles of action research that follow. Armed with this, people will return to their organisation with fresh questions derived from critical inquiry into the data and, supported by researchers, will begin to craft cycles of action, reflection, learning and adaption appropriate to their particular organisation’s concerns and aspirations
Second phase: exploring what works (and what doesn’t).
People will share their experiences of setting up and leading their change initiatives; through ‘action learning’ inspired processes of questioning, challenge and support. People will develop and adapt their plans for the next iteration within their organisations
Third phase: testing insight
People will begin to shape and craft their learning and experience into recommendations for a report, map or framework (the particular artefact will depend on what is most appropriate for sharing the learning and insight arising).
Fourth phase: sharing learning People will design and host a conference to share their experience and learning. We will seek to expand this community of inquiry and practice and identify areas for further work.
Second Report
A final report (and other artefacts) will be shared publicly.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 4
02. CHOOSING THE METHOD
We are choosing to conduct this programme through action research underpinned by particular feminist and critical theory. Traditional research tends to separate out the processes of ‘inquiry’, normally conducted in academic institutions, from action on the ‘problem’, normally encountered in the organisation or policy context. Action Research is different from traditional research because it is about people taking action and developing knowledge to support improved practice, in the company of colleagues who have similar commitment. Action Research bridges the often cited gap between academic theory and the messy, unpredictable world of the practitioner’s experience, developing ‘actionable knowledge’ which draws on good theories in service of improved outcomes. Coghlan (2002) defines four characteristics of action research is
• • • •
research IN action rather than research ABOUT action participative concurrent with action a sequence of events and an approach to problem solving
The central purpose is that action research uses a scientific approach to study to resolve important social or organisational issues, together with those who experience these issues directly. it uses the four stage cyclical & iterative process: planning, acting, evaluating, adapting. It is participative; members of the system participate actively in all stages of the process (Unlike traditional research, where members of the system are the ‘objects’ of the research). It is concurrent with action, so that improvements are made whilst simultaneously building up a rigorous and robust body of knowledge. Finally, it comprises iterative cycles of study to feed into the system to solve important problems, not just to solve immediate problems but to develop system-wide capacity for learning and adaption (increasingly important qualities in today’s fast moving, volatile, uncertain and complex world). Gummesson (2000) sets out ten key characteristics, developing Coghlan’s definition above. Action Research
•
is fundamentally about change - and as such knowledge of organisation dynamics and change processes in large and small groups is necessary
•
requires an explicit ethical framework. In AR this is about an authentic relationship between action researcher and the members of the client system about the process and actions
•
requires a depth and breadth of understanding of the system environment, as well as related, interconnected disciples - it is often transdisciplinary drawing on fields of knowledge outside the conventional within the system.
•
has its own quality criteria, best expressed by Reason and Bradbury key questions o does it develop a praxis of relationship participation, that is, how well does the research illustrate the co-operation between researcher and members of the system? o Is it guided by a reflexive concern for practical outcomes o Does it engage in significant work - is it worth doing? o Does it result in sustainable change?
Sometimes, immediate practical outcome is what is most important. Sometimes what is most pressing is to learn how to do something better. But sometimes in action research what is most important is how we can help articulate voices that are not being heard. How we can draw people
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 5
together in a conversation that is not taking place? How we can create space for people to articulate their world in the face of power structures that silence them? Sometimes, action research will be about finding ways to open ourselves to different sorts of realities, or finding different ways of telling stories. The Western mind, it is often said, is hugely individualistic, and that individualism drives the frenzied consumerism that is Western capitalism, with terrible consequences for the majority human world and the morethan-human world. Maybe action research could explore how the Western mind can open itself to a more relational, participatory experience. Sometimes action research will be an in-depth exploration into values, into what purposes are worthwhile pursuing, and into what issues most deserve our attention. And sometimes action research will be about creating tentative beginnings of inquiry under very difficult circumstances, planting seeds that may emerge into large fruits.
More than this, though, Reason (2006) is clear and explicit about the politics and ethics of choosing action research. Action research has a similar ontology and epistemology as feminist research. That said, it’s important to note that feminist research is a broad, diverse and contested field: that is, there is no straightforward definition of what constitutes feminist research and there is much debate in feminist epistemological practice (and others) about it. However, what is important for our purposes here, is that there IS a longstanding body of knowledge. Visible as far as (arguably) Aphra Behn in 17th C, through Mary Wollstonecraft and Jeremy Bentham (the enlightenment philosopher & ‘spiritual founder’ of UCL) in the 18th C; the property, employment and rights campaigns of the 19th C; through to what is generally known as the first wave of feminism (as we understand it now) the Suffragist movements of 19th C and 20th C. The second wave of feminism came in the 1960s through to the 1980s, in which women’s liberation focussed on cultural, political and social emancipation, with an emerging perspective on ‘multiple feminisms’, including race, class, sexuality. Third-wave feminism, originating in the 1990s, attempted to redefine what it means to be a feminist and what needs attention, partly in response to perceived failures in the second-wave, with its focus on white, middle class, liberal women’s experiences and perspectives as if they are all women’s experiences. Third-wave feminism is arguably characterised mainly by individualism, and inter-sectionality - that is, the intersection of women’s experience of being a woman AND black; and/or queer; and/or poor - ultimately allowing women to define feminism for themselves, incorporating their lived experience. Fourth-wave feminism is still a somewhat contested term, though popular in the media, and might be characterised as a technologically-enabled version of feminism, in which younger women are able to refine (and reclaim the word) feminism through online (and global) communities of practice, action and identity (such as Everyday Sexism, UK Feminista, One Billion Rising, The Vagenda). Fourthwave feminism, as well as further developing notions of inter-sectionality, also pays attention to interconnections, ecology and spiritualities, reconnecting feminism to what might be called an overarching vision of emancipatory change (something which we might argue has become dissipated in the last thirty years). These broad social movements heralded, and were informed by, a growth in academic attention and research about gender, in sociology, organization and management studies. Calas, Smircich & Holvino describe the changing theoretical perspectives in the gender and organisation literature from the second wave feminism (1960s). In doing so they highlight the continuing, sticky, persistence of sex/gender inequality in organisations and society and say: “We cannot imagine a more general explanation for the staying power and proliferation of this [research &] literature, as well as for the variety of theories that have appeared” 2.
2
Calas Smircich Holvino Theorizing Gender-and-Organization - Oxford Handbook of Gender
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 6
They argue that what is required now is not a “neutral evaluation of which theoretical explanations may be better, to account for” this persistence. Rather that it is “an outcome - a manifestation - of various social dynamics and social processes” which are themselves finding ever more ingenious ways to reproduce gender inequalities in organisations. In simple and anecdotal terms, this is illustrated by an inter-generational conversation between me and a young, enthusiastic researcher at the Theorizing Women’s Leadership conference in June 20163. In my paper, I set out the case for taking a more rigorous and critical view of (the many examples of) organisational initiatives to improve women’s participation and experience in work, that have been run out over the last thirty years, so as to craft new more useful action inquiries in future. With some evident frustration, she said to me “Don’t be quite so negative! All the old dinosaurs will be dead soon!” The facts, however, are these. Whilst the percentage of women participating in the formal workforce has increased, income disparities and other inequalities continue, in what has become recognised as ‘stalled progress’. This has become so concerning to even mainstream organisations (such as World Economic Forum and International Labour Organisation) that they are becoming increasingly vocal about the economic and social consequences of the persistent gender gap and gender inequalities worldwide. In short, the old dinosaurs are not dying; they are reproducing in new generations. To explain this more substantially: Calas et al differentiate the ‘meta-theoretical’ approaches in gender and organisation research. The first they call the ‘gender in organisations’ lens. This follows what might be construed as a more ‘common sense’ orientation, focussing on sex as the biological characteristics and gender as the social categorisation associated with a person’s sex (eg what we commonly mean by masculine and feminine). This theoretical orientation tends to dwell on representations and experiences of women in organisations (as opposed to studying men). It usually assumes, also, that that the organisation (and organizing processes) are the ‘neutral container’. The second position they call the ‘gendering organisations’ lens, which, instead of focussing on binary constructions like men or women, masculine or feminine, our attention is drawn to gender as a social institution which is produced and reproduced through (among other things) organisations and organizing processes. It is important to understand the implications of this analysis for us in this research. Since the 1970s, women in management has been a significant field of inquiry. From the start, the underpinning and connecting question has been “why don’t women do as well as men?” This was predicated on the assumptions that women “are as good as men and therefore deserving the same rewards as men”. The research, whilst talking about gender in organisations, nonetheless focussed on the position of women and the problems they face. Women were the problem needing to be fixed, whilst men were the norm against which women’s experiences must be judged. The ‘think manager - think male’ association persists. Many research studies4 illustrate that women are held to different standards, in, for example, interviews, performance conversations, and pay negotiations, even when, in experimental conditions, they behaved identically to men. In other research strands, researchers observed how women were disadvantaged because they didn’t ‘fit the mould’. This explains the persistence of the glass ceiling, where women struggle to break through to the places where men predominate (largely but not solely in senior leadership, but also in those STEM professions from which projects leaders are often drawn). More recently, researchers have identifies the ‘glass cliff’, where women who do break through are appointed to the ‘poison chalice’ roles, with an increased risk of failure. 5 “If it’s risky it’s better that a woman fails to deliver it.” This has been particularly apparent in major projects leadership, where in the few cases where women
3
University of Roehampton, June 2016 Heilman et al 1989, Dodge et al, 1995, Schein et al, 1996 ,Schein, 2001, 2007, Ryan et al 2011 5 Ryan et al 2007 4
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 7
have led major projects, and ‘failed’ to deliver, gender has been an apparently legitimate line of discussion to account for their ‘failure’. So how have researchers explained these phenomena? The gender in organisations researchers locate this as the outcome of certain ‘cognitive mechanisms’ - thinking processes, such as social judgement, theories of leadership - in which inaccurate stereotypes interfere with accurate perceptions of women. This shows up when certain competencies are attributed differently to men or to women - assertiveness, goal orientation, collaboration, communication. Further, when each sex is expected to exhibit certain characteristics, and when they don’t, it provides further evidence that they ‘don’t fit’. The double bind for women is that to be seen as a proper leader they must act in ways to disconfirm gender stereotypes, but in doing, so they risk coming across as socially deficient and ‘not a proper woman’. Moreover, women face a backlash when they act counter-stereotypically - labelled too pushy, too emotional, too assertive, too angry. It falls to women themselves to work out the ‘work-arounds’ - making extra efforts at self-monitoring to fit in, and adopting more stereotypical (often low status) behaviours (indirect influence, self deprecation, talking less and more quietly). Moreover, those initiatives designed to improve women’s participation do not remain gender blind; for example, apparently neutral policies, such as flexible working, quickly become gendered (Smithson and Stokoe 2005) and have little impact on advancing equality. Instead of inquiring into gender inequality more deeply, it is instead taken for granted that the organisation as system is gender-neutral, and the norms by which all members are judged are value free and indeed desirable. It is women who have to engage in more training, or education, or mentoring, to learn how to be different; it is women who have to be ‘fixed’ to fit (as if it could ever be possible, in this world of essentialist sex and gender categorisation.) As Calas et al says “That these theoretical approaches have been followed for so many years, while there has been so little progress in remedying the situation of gender inequality in organisations, is sufficient to make us wonder whether these lines of research should continue.” Indeed. As an antidote, they highlight the alternative promise of the ‘gendering organisation’ approach. First of all, they point out that, academically, this orientation has as rich a tradition as the former, but in the sociology of management field, and it has typically been under represented in business schools (no need to ask why…) First, in common with action research, it is different from the functionalist and positivist traditions. Instead, gender is understood, ontologically, as a a social process - “not something one has, as an individual, but something humans ‘do’ to each other”. Second, gender is understood as a historically and culturally institutionalised system, through which social power is exercised. Organisations are already gendered through a social system that is replete with stratification by sex, race, class and so on. Third, gender in organisation theorizes from a liberal humanist perspective which believes that neutrality and just outcomes are the norm. Gendering organisations comes from the critical and feminist philosophies, in which power inequality is the norm; “the point is not that women are different, but that gender difference is used as the basis for unequal distribution of power and resources”6 Fourth, they start from fundamentally different ontological and epistemological assumptions.7 The positivists believe that there is an objective reality out there waiting to be known discovered, explained and generalized. (As Adrienne Rich, the feminist philosopher and poet, said, “objectivity is the term men give to their own subjectivity.”) Feminist theorizing instead requires a reflexive relationship between ontology and epistemology - that is, an awareness that who is doing the researching determines what they find. Like action research, gendering organization theorizing requires closeness and intimate relationship to the where the action is, and explicit reflexive awareness of the researcher’s relationship with self, other and system.
6 7
Wajcman J (1998) Managing Like a Man; Men and Women in Corporate Management, Polity Press Epistemology - the study of the theory of knowledge, the nature of knowledge; Ontology - the study of the nature of being
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 8
Gendering organisations research asserts that sex/gender equality is the outcome of ‘doing gender’ in every day life. In truth, the critical question must be, then, why it is that gender in organization research still persists in repeating, in ever more detail, what we already know - that “women face multiple difficulties in organisations and they are judged as inferior to men.” This brief historical context of feminist research is important for this work. In my work in this field, of women in major projects leadership, I have been struck by the absence of historical context; and the absence of relevant rigorous theorizing. It sometimes feels as if the PM world has only just discovered inequality and is still rather disinclined to apply rigorous inquiry informed by feminist, or even critical, theory. To try to understand how (and why) this could be, I wanted to understand more about the rise and rise of project management. It has proven to be quite the challenge to find a well-theorized account of the emergence of project management, either as a practice or as a paradigm. On the one hand we have Kozak Holland ((2011) ascribing every construction or human effort since the pyramids to project management; on the other we have (for example) Morris’s (2015) precise identification of 1953 as the start of project management, out of the US defence and aerospace sectors. As Bredillet says, project management is, in fact, a young discipline, with a robust, foundational theory of knowledge only emerging in the last twenty years or so. The first International Research Network for Organising by Projects (IRNOP) was held in 1994; the European Academy of Management (EURAM) held its first PM track in 2001. Bredillet (2010) makes the case for more effort in developing an ontology and epistemology of project management. “I could argue that we are moving from an old paradigm - positivist - to a new one or to a more balanced one combining positivism, constructivism, and subjectivism, enabling us to address complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, because the old one is not working any more”. However, he also says: “I am constantly surprised by the way the world sees project management; as a set of methods, techniques, tools… The problem is that most [of these] involve a conceptual approach based on a specific paradigm, which is mostly, in project management, a positivist one… This leads to nonsense, to a dynamic of fad, where hype and advocacy of one’s own practice is the rule, reinforced by a lack of critical thinking by the practitioners.” He goes further: “It is often more convenient and lucrative to reinforce accepted belief systems built on many centuries of thinking based on the positivist paradigm.” “It is claimed to be a transfunctional paradigm and this situation contributes to a reinforcement of the positivist paradigm that pervades the teaching, research & practice of the discipline.” Trans-functional, but perhaps not very trans-disciplinary, with the reluctance, it would seem, to draw on a broader range of management theorizing from outside the field. However, the rapidly growing field of PM has not been without its ‘critical friends’. For example, Hodgson and Cicmil (2006) in ‘Making Projects Critical’ bring a much needed antidote to the positivist worldview. They quote one of the earliest contributions to the field, (Weick, 1969) “Projects do not exist ready made for us to scrutinise and classify. They are of course enacted and thus constituted by the actions of independent actors.” Later, Packendorff (1995) agrees: “Project management has become a scientific field in its own right...defined by the habit of human beings to label a variety of undertakings as ‘projects’”. From this comes the ‘reification’ of projects; or what Chia (1995) calls ‘false concreteness’, which, he says, “starts with speculating on the existence of a particular object, which becomes a legitimate focus for investigation, and which then takes on a life of its own, as if it exists “separate and independent of our apprehension of it.” The reification of the ‘project’, based on a positivist world view, reinforces a particular idea that the organisation is a rational, neutral and objective entity, that management theory is analogous to natural science (discovering laws and truths that already exist ‘out there‘). Hodgson and Cicmil identify the specific effects - and dangers - of this particular formulation. Writing about the rise of
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 9
PMBOK (project management body of knowledge) they point out that “…’black boxing’ definitions, knowledge, techniques and procedures [so that they] become set in stone, effectively removes the ethical and political questions from the agenda.” Further, this leads to gatekeeping the membership of the community of practice associated with the discipline, “It is in the process of learning-asmembership and participation that you forget the strange and contingent nature of its categories seen from outside.” Bowker and Star (1999). Challenges to this ‘one-club’ version (Morris, 2015) are coming from many sources. Bredillet identifies nine schools of thought; organisations such as International Centre for Complex Project Management have been set up to stand for (and support and curate) a particular approach to projects (in their case drawing on the complexity and systems approaches). Why does this matter? Why, indeed, is it important and necessary to understand the development of feminist theories of gender and organisation alongside the rise of the project management paradigm and practice? Well, because in spite of the growth of new inquiries into project management, and the growth of critical perspectives, there has not been a concerted effort to apply this epistemological perspective to the question of women and gender in project management. In its cartesian, positivist guise, the project management paradigm is essentially ‘masculinist’ 8. It is characterised by (and privileges) notions of order, control, structure, performance, linearity. Judi Marshall’s ground breaking work in 1984 demonstrates how the notion of management, leadership and organisation is constructed and in doing so, demonstrated that normative masculine characteristics were seen interchangeably with good management and leadership. It certainly raises a whole suite of questions ripe for inquiry.
8
“In Meditations, where Descartes outlines “a mathematically based way of taming rampant (and feminine) nature by the use of rational (and masculine) scientific method.” Stanley and Wise (1990)
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 10
03. THE FIELD OF PRACTICE
Many of the world’s most complex challenges are being addressed through multi-national, multimillion pound, national-critical, politically sensitive projects. The World Bank estimates more than 20% of global economic activity takes place as projects: with 22% of the worlds $48trillion GDP spent on capital projects. There are around 140 projects in the governments major projects portfolio (GMPP) with a value of approx £550billion. But in spite of considerable investment and attention, NAO identifies that 30% still report red or red/amber prospects for delivery, and a ‘capability gap’ which is growing across all sectors for the leadership and delivery of major projects 9. It is an oft repeated refrain that such extra-ordinary challenges require extra-ordinary projects leadership. What this looks like is, however, more contested. What is clear is that, in answer to the challenge, how to improve project delivery, the answer is almost always “better leadership” with the skills to deliver the practical benefits and to implement radical change. 10 One of the critical success factors is leadership diversity11, including appropriate gender balance. The business case for diversity in organisational leadership has been established: more diverse teams make better decisions and achieve better outcomes12. This is especially true for complex situations which have to address the needs of multiple and unaligned stakeholders 13. In recent years, however, the projects paradigm has reached across many different organisational settings: from its origins in defence, engineering, construction and technology it now reaches into public health, hospital and health care, environment, behaviour change, education. In fact, Sir Francis Maude said, in 2011, “Ninety percent of government policy is now delivered through projects.” So the delivery mechanisms across all areas of public life are managed through projects and programmes. However, women are seriously under-represented in the leadership teams of major projects. The world of work is being reshaped by a particular project paradigm. Just at the point when we need more diversity, more criticality, more inquiry, the dominant paradigm is becoming more positivist, more masculine, more gendered. This could be seen as a controversial assertion. But let’s just refresh our memory on the numbers. First, we need to add the proviso that, since projects take place in ‘temporary provisional enterprises’, the data that is normally collected within organisations is more difficult to find. But since we are specifically interested in the leadership of major projects (those national-critical activities with most impact on society) it’s a reasonable proxy to look at the figures we do have, in the leadership (and ownership) of UK government major projects. Government organises its most important projects through its GMPP. Under the leadership of the Major Projects Authority (now Infrastructure and Projects Authority) established after the 2010 election specifically to turn round the civil service’s performance, this was a much needed attempt to understand, organise and improve the performance of the big complex projects in defence, transport, infrastructure, health, technological innovation and so on, which consume so much of government spend. But first, by way of setting some context, let’s remember the gains being made in the general population of the senior civil service, (taken from EY’s annual survey) 14. As they point out in their narrative, only three departments are close to parity and one of these DCMS is small. DH was 9
Infrastructure UK’s National Infrastructure Plan for Skills (Sept 2015) calculates that the profession is short of 100,000 PMs in the UK alone for the projects pipeline forecast. 10https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Delivering-major-projects-in-government-a-briefing-for-theCommittee-of-Public-Accounts.pdf 11 ICCPM 2011 Taskforce Report (https://iccpm.com/content/taskforce-report) 12 Katzenbach & Smith (1993) The Wisdom of Teams; Harvard Business Review 2005/06 13 Attwood Pedler Pritchard Wilkinson (2003) Leading Change; a guide to whole systems working, The Policy Press 14 EY Women’s Leadership Index 2016
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 11
helpfully boosted by a big influx of NHS managers into the new national agencies. At the foot of the table are the departments traditionally heavy on major projects.
The gender pay gap - the difference between men and women’s earnings in comparable work - is also revealing. But we are, for this research, interested in the growth of the project management cadre, and the impact it’s having on the representation and experience of women in leadership. So what do the numbers look like here?
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 12
04. GMPP GENDER ANALYSIS
There were 139 Projects on the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP) as of Q1 2016/17, with a combined total of 243 Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) and Project/Programme Directors (PDs).
•
Of the 243 SROs and Project Directors leading GMPP projects, 60 are women and 183 are men.
• •
At Director General level the ratio of men to women is approximately 6:1. At Director level and the grades below the ratio decreases to 3:1.
•
The overall gender balance of SCS members of the profession is 33% female and 67% male which gives an approximate ratio of 1:2 (Female to Male). This split is fairly even at SCS 1 level (31% F) and SCS 2 level (33% F).
•
The departments with the largest percentage of male senior project leaders within their populations are MOD (84%), DECC (83%), ONS (80%) and DFT (76%).
•
The departments with more female senior project leaders than male are DCLG, DFE and DH, whilst HMRC and DCMS have a 50% split.
March 2016 It is beginning to look as though the growth of the project management profession - the thing intended to improve project performance - is creating a more homogenous, more unequal work force. There have been many attempts at explaining the absence of women in the management and leadership of major projects. The growth of the profession gives us some insight into why there are so few women in project management. Typically, project managers are drawn from the STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) professions, on the basis that projects in the past were largely located in construction, infrastructure, technology, defence, engineering; the expectation is that people (therefore largely men) are promoted from within the field.
•
The pipeline explanation “There aren’t enough women in the pipeline - we need to go back to schools and universities to improve this”
•
The culture explanation “Major projects tend to be in quite tough cultures and women don’t fit in so well there”
•
The work-life explanation “These jobs are really demanding; women don’t want to make the sacrifices for work.”
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 13
•
The readiness explanation “There aren’t enough women ready for these leadership roles they just don’t come forward; we offer training and mentoring to help, though”
•
The experience explanation “Women tend not to have the right background & experience for these complex roles”
•
The women are just different explanation “Women don’t choose these lines of work because they prefer to do other things” “Women’s essential skills lie in different types of work”
Project organisations - professional bodies, membership organisations, professional services firms have responded to these explanations with a series of initiatives. MPA’s Gender Balance Initiative aims to tackle the issue through:
• • • •
Endorsing WISE’s Ten Steps Campaign Sharing best practice on themes such as leadership, recruitment, retention, promotion, Signposting to networking groups, inspirational role models and awareness raising Supporting this research
The WISE (Women in Science & Engineering) Ten Steps campaign is this.
In one of MPA’s workshops, Three Things that Work, those things were: Reverse mentoring - where young junior more diverse people, mentor partners so that they understand (and empathise with, presumably) other’s experience Leadership that provides safe spaces for building confidence and giving new opportunities Flexible working policies. APM’s Women in Project Management Special Interest Group (WiPMSIG) has run a conference for the last three years, which have grown in significance, participation and profile. Over 350 women attending the conference in September 2016, entitled World Class Women, to hear presentations on developing confidence, taking up the challenges, finding the right coaches and mentors.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 14
As a speaker at that conference, and a partner and collaborator in these initiatives, I noticed that the majority of initiatives are largely in the ‘gender in organisation’ paradigm; of treating the organisation as a neutral container; construing project management as a profession informed by set of objective, technical tools and processes; and defaulting to the ‘fix women to fit’, in just the double bind identified by Calas et al earlier. And so we return to Calas et al’s challenge. Since we have evidence now that decades of research, theorizing, and repeated initiatives to improve women’s participation in leadership, are falling short of their promise, what can we do now, that’s different? This is a radical challenge - and one I take seriously, having run many positive action programmes designed to improve women’s participation for over thirty years. Working with others who want to understand the evidence and the explanations; who want to explore ‘promising practices’ - what helps to address this (and indeed, what doesn’t); and to craft strategies, with partners with real skin in the game, to work together to improve the situation. In summary, major projects are often delivered through temporary and provisional organisational forms, partnerships or bespoke enterprises: they can be highly visible - and high stakes. These projects are often politically sensitive, nationally or internationally significant, high cost, often contested, using novel technologies. Such conditions can lead to more conservative, more opaque and arguably more inequitable processes for recruitment, retention & promotion. Furthermore, project leaders have historically come from the STEM fields; these are disproportionately occupied by men, which in turn, impacts upon the leadership pipeline. We also know that the culture and practices of projects-based industries are still infected with what we might kindly call ‘unreconstructed’ sexist behaviours in the workplace - harassment, bullying, marginalisation, gaslighting and worse. Meanwhile, the capacity (and capability) gap is growing across all sectors for the leadership and delivery of major projects15. These are practical challenges which require urgent and practical solutions. But for these to work and to do more than they have done in the past, we need to take a long hard look, a critical, reflexive perspective.
15
Infrastructure UK’s National Infrastructure Plan for Skills (Sept 2015) calculates that the profession is short of 100,000 PMs in the UK alone for the projects pipeline forecast.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 15
05. NEXT STEPS
I started this paper with a short personal story about how this research project started out. I hope the purpose of doing this is now clear, both for the method and for the purpose of the project. Critical action research and feminist research methods require an honest, transparent account from the researchers of our place in our work AND a call to action underpinned by rigorous, serious inquiry. It is not an abstracted topic to be studied ‘out there’, with us observing the objects of the research, as if we are somehow objectively separate from the story. It is a story of the changing nature of our professional (and personal) lives nested in the changing structures of work and social systems. Our research start from our first observations and the questions provoked. The observations, when shared, become more than personal interest, and develop into a collaborative inquiry. The inquiry deepens through cycles of reflection, action, adaption. “Is this how you see things? How is it different in your world? How do you make sense of what you experience? What might happen if we try this? And then what actually happens? Did we get what we expected? How do we explain the differences? What should we do next? Who else wants to be involved?” The next steps for this action research are guided and informed by what I’ve concluded (for now) from this first stage in the process. It is a sobering experience to reflect on the last thirty years of research and action to improve women’s experiences of organisation change (which was, as it happens, the topic of my first research degree in 1993). Rather than the progress we anticipated through the myriad initiatives, from government out, we’ve also seen (or rather not seen) a backlash. As we made inroads into making organisations more open to women, another version of organisation was growing, where big important work was being done; and it is more gendered than ever, where women were systematically excluded from the ground up. So what next? First of all, all those players who have an interest in changing this system have to play their part in addressing it. This is not an issue for women or about women, instead the position of women in the leadership of major projects represents a sentinel indicator in the line of sight this research. Its impact goes much wider, into how we understand and lead projects, organisations, and social systems. Engaging in the gendering organisation perspective, the players in the leadership systems in view will need to shift to another level of involvement. Organisations are already gendered, project enterprises even more so. The language, culture, work design, is gendered, since it is both nested in and reproduced by unequal social systems, as well as, apparently, emphasising and amplifying masculine norms. This is not a reason to despair; rather it becomes a requirement to design processes which engage ‘self and system’ in a plan for change; it must be relational, participatory, curious. We need more trans-disciplinary inquiry, drawing on the critical and emancipatory fields, and not just the technical fields of projects management, leadership development as an underpinning theory and practice to support this level of work. We avoid binary constructions. This is not about theory OR practice, but theory AND practice in dynamic relation to each other. It is not about women OR men, but how gender is constructed and how it affects differently on people and the institutional structures we create. Shining a light on this improves the position of women and men and moves us towards a more just and sustainable world.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 16
06. ACTIONS
•
We’ll share these observations and challenges with a diverse community of practice who shares our interest and concern in making real, practical and sustainable progress
•
Through research methods which are congruent with the challenge, we’ll engage in cycles of experimentation, action, reflection, learning and adaption, as members of a community who want to work together to act on the problem
•
We’ll hold ourselves to account for (by which I mean tell the stories of) what we learn, with the intent to engage others in similar cycles of inquiry (as opposed to ‘writing up best practice’ only to be lost in moribund knowledge management systems)
•
We’ll look for ways, through cycles of action research, to demonstrate HOW cycles of action research provide the theory and the practice more likely to support and sustain change and progress
•
We’ll widen the community of interest and practice to create, first pockets and then critical mass for change, by joining up actions.
•
We’ll encourage professional bodies and academic communities to take up their leadership in stepping up the challenge and the quality of the discussions.
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 17
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Attwood, M. Pedler, M. Pritchard, S. Wilkinson, D. (2003) Leading Change - a guide to whole systems working. Policy Press Acker J (2004) Gender Capitalism and Globalization Critical Sociology 30(1) Alvesson M and Billing Y D (1997) Understanding Gender and Organisations, Sage Bartol K M and Butterfield D A (1976) Sex Effects in Evaluating Leaders Journal of Applied Sociology Bowker G C and Star S l (1999) Sorting things out: Classification and Its Consequences, MIT press Bowles HR and Flynn F (2010) Gender and Persistence in Negotiation, Academy of Management Journal, 53(4) Bredillet CN (2010) Blowing Hot and Cold on Project Management, PMJ 41(3) Brescoll VL and Ullman LE (2008) Can an Angry Woman get Ahead? Psychological Science Brescoll VL (2012) Who takes the floor and why: Gender Power and Volubility in Organisations Administrative Science Quarterly 56 Calas, M B, Smirchich, L, Holvina, E, (2014) ‘Theorizing Gender and Organisations, Changing Times...Changing Theories?’ in Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organisations Carli LL & Eagly AH (1999) ‘Gender effects on Social Influence and Emergent Leadership’ in Handbook of Gender in Work, Sage Chia, R (2004) Strategy-as-practice; reflections on the research agenda, European Management Review 1/1 Coghlan D, (2002) Action Research for Operations Management in International Journal of Operations & Production Management, January Eagly AH Makhiljani, MG. Klonsky BG. (1992) Gender and the evaluation of Leaders; a meta evaluation. Psychological Bulletin, 111 Eagly, A.H. and Carli, L.L. (2007) Through the Labyrinth: the Truth about How Women Become Leaders, HBS Press Gummesson E (2000) Qualitative Methods in Action Research (2nd Ed) Sage Heilman ME (1989) Sex Bias in Work Settings: The lack of fit Model, Research and Organisational Behaviour Heilman ME, Block C, Martell R, and Simon M (1989) Has Anything Changed? Current characterizations of Males Females and Managers Journal of Applied Psychology 74(2) Hodgson D & Cicmil S, (2006) Making Projects Critical, Palgrave Katzenbach JR & Smith DK (1993) The Wisdom of Teams, HBP Knight J & Pritchard S (1994) “No we’re not colour consultants” in Tanton M Women in Management; a developing presence, routledge Kolb, D.M. (2009) “Too bad for the Women - or does it have to be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the past Twenty Five years” Negotiation Journal (Oct) Kozak Holland M, (2011) The History of Project Management, MMPInc Marshall J (1984) Women Managers. Travellers in a Male World, Wiley. Maume D (1999) Glass Ceilings and Glass Escaltors, Occupational Segregation and Race adn Sex Differences in Managerial Promotions, Work and Occupations 26 MIlls A and Tancred P. (1992) Gendering Organisational Analysis, Sage Morris PWG, (2013) Reconstructing Project Management, Wiley Packendorff (1995) Inquiring into temporary organisation: New directions for project management research, Reason P. (2006) Choice and Quality in Action Research Practice, in Journal of Management Inquiry (15) Reason, P and Bradbury H (2001) Handbook of Action Research, Sage Rudman LA (1998) Self Promotion as a Risk Factor Women: The costs and benefits of Counterstereotypical Impression Management, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 Rudman LA & Phelan JE (2008) Backlash effects for disconfirming gender stereotypes in organisations Research in Organisation Behaviour 28 Ryan MK & Haslam SA (2007) The Glass Cliff, Exploring the dynamics of surrouding the appoinment of women in precarious leadership positions. Academy of Management Review 32(2) Ryan MK, Haslam SA Hersby MD and Bongiorno R (2011) Think Crisis - Think Female Journal of Applied Psychology Smithson J & Stokoe EH (2005) Discourses on Work Life Balance; Negotiating “Genderblind” tems in Organisations, Gender Work and Organisation 12(2)
The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management | Where are the Women in Major Projects Leadership? | Page 18
Smyth HJ & Morris PWG (2007) An epistemological evaluation of research into project management methodological issues International Journal of Project Management 25(4) Stanley L & Wise S (1990) Breaking out Again, Routledge Tutchell E & Edmonds J (2015) Man Made, Gower Wajcman J (1998) Managing Like a Man; Men and Women in Corporate Management, Polity Press Weick K ( 1995) Sensemaking in Organisations Sage Weiner, G (2004) Critical Action Research and Third Wave Feminism; a meeting of paradigms, Educational Action Research, Volume 12, Number 4, 2004 West C & Zimmerman D (1987) Doing Gender, Gender and Society 1(2) West C & Zimmerman D (1995) Doing Difference, Gender and Society 9(1) Whyte, W.W (1991) Participatory Action Research, Sage Williams CL (1992) The Glass Escalator Hidden advantages for men in the ‘female’ professions Social Problems 39