Powerful Women: Dancing on the Glass Ceiling

by Sam Parkhouse

The facts are irrefutable. Women hold only five per cent of directorships in the UK's 200 largest companies. Only one woman is Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company. This book gets to grips with exactly what is happening for women in the world of business today - the opportunities they have, the pitfalls they face and the triumphs they achieve in what, in many ways, is still a male-centric society. Despite the statistics, there is a whole raft of talented women battering down the doors of the UK's boardrooms. Sam Parkhouse skilfully pulls out some of the common threads that bind together this elite group of women. We see how certain industries have glass ceilings that are tougher to break through than others. We also learn exactly how many of the traditional qualities associated with women - multi-tasking, creativity, networking, the rejection of corporate life - hold true across the board, and what new skills are required and new opportunities offered to women working in a connected economy. We are also invited to delve into their private lives, to see exactly how they juggle the requirements of an intensely demanding job and a balanced personal and family life. We discover that there are many fundamental values held by these women that we could all learn from, irrespective of gender. From this book we Sam Parkhouse brings us face-to-face with the most sassy, brave, switched-on and entrepreneurial women who are driving business forward in the UK today. All the women featured have bags of attitude, grit, determination and a sheer bloody-mindedness to succeed. New and first-hand accounts are provided on such women as Martha Lane-Fox (lastminute.com), Beverly Hodson (WHSmiths), Gail Rebuck (Random House), Marjorie Scardino (Pearson) and Nicola Horlick (Societe Generale). Often the very public faces of their businesses, and there to be shot at by all and sundry, these are the women that are shaping the business landscape today.

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2001