WOMEN IN BUSINESS:Considerable advances in equality have yet to deliver gender parity in the workplace - so why are women still struggling to succeed?

The thorny issue of gender equality in the workplace is always guaranteed to generate a spirited debate. Some argue that the playing field in Ireland has never been more level, that the days of the marriage ban, the old boys' clubs and blatant discrimination are long gone, replaced with equality legislation, positive action and flexible work arrangements.

If a woman doesn't make it to the top of her profession in this enlightened age, it's due to lack of ambition or talent, and not because men have pulled the corporate ladder up behind them - or at least so the argument goes.

Those on the other side of the fence say that the marriage ban has simply been replaced by "the child ban" and that only superwomen can juggle the demands of being both a domestic goddess and a corporate high-flier. And indeed the facts support both sides of the debate to a certain extent. Yes, women are still conspicuously underrepresented in key decision-making roles, but more opportunities are now open to them than ever before. The Irish Management Institute's annual salary survey has shown a dramatic increase in the number of respondent companies with female chief executives, rising from 5 per cent in 2005 to 19 per cent this year*.

This trend is also reflected in the wider business world. The 2007 Female FTSE research carried out by Cranfield School of Management reveals that 20 per cent of new FTSE 100 director appointments went to women over the last year, the highest level since the first report was published in 2000.

Nevertheless, the glaring fact remains that women are still nowhere near gender parity at the upper echelons of the corporate arena.

The World Economic Forum has said in the past that achieving gender equality is "a grindingly slow process", as it challenges one of the most deeply entrenched of all human attitudes.

Given its elusiveness, is the Holy Grail of gender parity really worth pursuing? Is there even a compelling business case for increasing the number of women in positions of power and authority?

According to the extensive research done in this area, the answer is a resounding yes. Studies have shown that companies with female chief executives or board directors achieve a 10 per cent higher return on capital.

Also, the recent Innovation Potential report produced by the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at the London Business School, which explored the impact of gender balance on the potential of teams working on business-critical innovative tasks, found that the key drivers for innovative processes are positively influenced by have a 50:50 proportion of men and women working together.

"Equal gender representation can help to unlock the innovative potential of teams," the report concluded. So why does an imbalance still persist in the corporate world? A variety of metaphors have been used to explain the underlying cause of this phenomenon, from "the glass ceiling" - first coined in the Wallstreet Journal in 1986 - to "the labyrinth of leadership" outined in an article published recently in the Harvard Business Review.

Unlike the glass ceiling, which suggests an impenetrable barrier at a specific, high level in an organisation, the labyrinth theory accommodates the increased complexities of the issue.

"In truth, women are not turned away only as they reach the penultimate stage of a distinguished career. They disappear in various numbers at many points leading up to that stage," authors Alice Eagly and Linda Carli explain. "For women who aspire to top leadership, routes exist but are full of twists and turns, both unexpected and expected."

Many different obstacles have been identified in studies of this issue, from fewer social networking opportunities and lack of mentoring and role models, to issues of leadership style. But the crux of the matter is really very simple - the demands of family life impede the full development of a woman's professional career.

"For many women, the most fateful turns in the labyrinth are the ones taken under pressure of family responsibilities," according to the study. "Women continue to be the ones who interrupt their careers, take more days off, and work part-time. As a result, they have fewer years of job experience and fewer hours of employment per year, which slows their career progress and reduces their earnings."

Faced with the unalterable biological fact that women need time off to have children, surely corporate Ireland will never succeed in resolving the gender equality conundrum? Not necessarily so, says Dr Eileen Drew, associate professor at Trinity College's department of statistics and leading expert on gender issues. "Social behaviours do respond to policy shifts," she says.

"Everything in terms of policy interventions has deliberately, or sometimes quite inadvertently, been helping women to reconcile [family and work commitments]. We've targeted women, but we haven't targeted men.

"So, you've had paid maternity leave extended, and then you've got a supposedly neutral intervention like parental leave for both parents. But it's now seen, and is taken up by women, as an extension of maternity leave."

Under the current parental leave scheme in this country, both parents are entitled to take 14 weeks off work if they have a child up to the age of eight, but the take-up rate amongst fathers has been dismally low. This is partly because parental leave is unpaid, but also because male employees who don't conform to the norm of constant availability to the job find themselves exposed to a glass ceiling of "effemination", Drew explains.

"The more you can distance yourself in your working environment from [family commitments], the more successful you're likely to be," she says.

The current maternity/parental leave model in place in Ireland means that employers view men as "safe employees", because even if they have children it's unlikely to interfere with their working pattern.

Women of child-bearing age, on the other hand, are regarded as "an extremely suspect parallel group of workers", Drew says. "What they don't tend to take into account is that men are much more mobile," she observes. "They're tending to leave for other reasons, so you've the same loss of human capital."

So what can be done to change this deeply-ingrained attitude? Drew believes that the introduction of paid, non-transferable parental leave rights for men would increase take-up levels, and go a long way towards levelling the playing field.

Iceland, which is considered one of the most family-friendly countries in the world, is a prime example of the effectiveness of such a policy.

Statutory paid parental leave has been increased to nine months, with three months allocated exclusively to the mother, three months given exclusively to the father, and the parents can then divide the remaining three months between themselves as they prefer.

Unlike in Ireland, at least 90 per cent of eligible men take up their entitlements, and this is believed to have levelled the status of men and women in Iceland's labour market.

However Carmel O'Connor, human resources partner at accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCooper does not believe that Government policy intervention is necessarily the best way to narrow the gender gap. "I wouldn't be in favour of a sledgehammer approach of forcing businesses to do things," she says.

"I think that in a lot of senses the market will dictate the best way of moving the agenda forward."

Some 56 per cent of PwC's Irish employees are female, and there are now 20 female partners out of a total of 91, one of the best ratios amongst the big four accountancy firms.

"What has probably had the greatest impact [in PwC] has been the implementation of flexible working policies," says O'Connor. "Even before there were formalised flexible working policies in PwC, the culture was one of people being able to advance through the ranks irrespective of their gender if they were contributing and performing at the same level as their peers . . . And that may be why women have succeeded disproportionately to other professional services firms."

But she admits that it can be tough combining a high-level job with the demands of family life. "It doesn't make for an easy life," she says. "We try to do as much as we can to help women in that situation, so that they don't find it too overwhelming. We try and lighten the burden where we can."

For employees who decide to take several years out to raise their children, is it possible to make up the lost ground career-wise? O'Connor says that is, citing the example of a senior female partner in the firm who took six years out during the 1980s and still managed to make partner after returning to work.

Rosemary Delaney, editor of Women Mean Business magazine, who has "experienced at first hand the trials and tribulations of establishing a business and indeed of working in corporate Ireland, where you are more likely to sit on an all-male board than a balanced one", is optimistic about what the future holds for women in business.

She points out that over 15,000 women are now enrolled in honours degree programmes in Ireland, compared to just 5,000 men. "Projecting forward once they graduate, more women are likely to become the decision-makers of tomorrow in Ireland," she says.

"Looking at a global perspective, more women are being elected as leaders - Angela Merkel in Germany, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina," she observes. "Perhaps it will take Hillary Clinton to succeed in the White House before we experience a truly level playing field," she says.