Niamh Corbett is Vice President of the Equity Capital Markets division at Morgan Stanley and a mentor to a number of start-up businesses. She is a steering committee member of the Thirty Percent Club, a campaign group established in 2009 which aims to get 30% women on FTSE 100 boards by 2015. She also sits on the Global Advisory Board of Astia – a not-for-profit organisation committed to building women leaders and helping women-led start-ups across the world.
Do you think women ever will rule?
I think we are in a time where it is very important to have a balance. As some of the data behind the Thirty Percent Club initiative shows, the momentum is there (when the club started in 2009, there were 12.5% of women on boards; the figure now stands at 22.3%), but getting to the point where we have 100% of women in control is almost the flip side of the argument. What we are saying now is that we have too many men in power, a phenomenon which creates group-think and a single-minded train of thought driven by a very masculine approach to leadership.
If you flip that around to a position where you have 100% female leadership, 100% women ruling, you simply find yourself dealing with the same argument. We’re arguing for balance and equality. If you have a greater representation of women, then you have a better balance in the boardroom, which should in turn help to decrease group-thinking and allow for different leadership styles to really come to the fore.
Is it always a good thing to have variety in a leadership body, or is there an argument for having a unified force instead of a fragmented approach?
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