Stop squandering women’s potential

 

Consider Clara Peeters. Or rather, since little is known about the Flemish painter, consider her work: some 40 exquisite still lifes dating from the early 17th century.

Peeters painted herself into some of these pictures, faintly reflected in a polished pewter flagon or gilded goblet and wearing a high-shouldered dress with a tall collar and headpiece.

And that, more or less, is it. Peeters was probably born between 1588 and 1590, and the first paintings date from 1607. After 1621, when she would have been in her early 30s, there is nothing.

Her story is important and, in every sense, illustrative, because although nearly four centuries have elapsed since she was active, her trajectory is still strikingly similar to that of many talented women in the workplace – startling early promise, suddenly curtailed as she reaches maturity.

As the notes to a recent exhibition of Peeters’ work at Madrid’s Prado museum point out, Peeters included the echo of her image in the shiny surfaces of her still lifes as “a way of procuring acknowledgement”, which was not easily won by female artists in the 17th century.

Of course, there are multiple differences between her life and that of working women now. Open misogyny is much rarer. Young women join big companies with equal opportunities, and in equal (or in some cases greater) numbers than men. Laws, targets, and campaigns are in place to level the playing field for everybody, and keep it level. Companies encourage women to apply for high-potential jobs. Once there, enlightened managers foster, mentor and sponsor them.

As algorithms are put to work to filter candidates, so organisations will spot more talented women – and men – who would otherwise not have risen to the top of the pile. Social and educational background, even exam grades themselves, will become less important, bringing people with less orthodox profiles to prominence.

Applied is a UK start-up that uses insights from behavioural science to eliminate bias in recruitment. When it tested its platform on graduate applicants for its team, the group found it would never have hired, or even met, 60 per cent of candidates to which it offered jobs had it relied on humans sifting applications.

Yet even in these propitious 21st-century circumstances, many women quit and do not return.

Having children is not always a direct trigger for their departure. Sometimes, says Lisa Unwin, founder of She’s Back, which works to improve opportunities for women returning to work, female professionals are put off by the lack of role models, or flinch from the extreme working lives they think lie ahead. “If I’d stayed, there was no way I would have ever had a boyfriend let alone started a family,” said one respondent to a She’s Back survey.

When they try to restart their careers, Ms Unwin says, women hit new obstacles and find their pay and prospects have suffered an irreversible cut.

The quest for gender balance is based on equity and fairness. But ignoring or opposing it also has profound economic and societal implications.

Organisations that do not explore how to hire, keep and, if needed, rehire the best workers are simply wasting human potential.

KPMG estimates 96m skilled women aged between 30 to 54 are on a career break worldwide. Some 55m had reached at least middle-manager level when they left. Ahead of Wednesday’s International Women’s Day, Vodafone, which commissioned the KPMG study, has launched a programme to bring some of them back.

It is possible Peeters died in Antwerp in her 30s. Or she may have married, had children and put down her palette forever: a “career break” that turned into a career ending.

Compare another exhibition running at the Prado when I visited last month – a selection from scores of drawings by Peeters’ contemporary José de Ribera, the Spanish artist.

By 1616, Ribera was living in Rome, refining his skills at a well-known academy, and on the brink of receiving vital patronage from the viceroy of Naples – all professional routes that were in effect closed to women.

Ribera is just one of hundreds of men whose work has merited solo exhibitions at the Prado since it opened in 1819. Peeters is the first female artist to have had such a show.

So consider Clara Peeters. Consider the four centuries since her all too brief flowering and what they represent in billions of missed opportunities to realise the potential of women in art, literature, politics and business.

Think, above all, about what your organisation can do today to stop squandering the promise of your female staff. Otherwise you will catch a glimpse of their reflection, years on, when it is already too late, for them and for you.

 

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Twitter: @andrewtghill