The UK Labour Party recently made headlines with a pledge to legislate for a four day working week earlier this autumn, but whereas doubts remain about the viability for such a proposal (in legislative terms at least), there is still a degree of support for moving away from the traditional 9-5 existence that has dominated for much of the industrial era.
A recent study from Lancaster University Management School explores how job sharing can help improve the number of women working in senior leadership roles.
The paper describes how just 27% of Chairs of Governing bodies in UK higher education are women, with the number of female Vice-Chancellors the same number. The authors suggest that one reason for this may be a lack of women in academia full stop, with just 26% of professors being female. Job sharing, they believe, could help matters.
“The culture of long working hours, job uncertainty and recent financial constraints across the sector, with multiple reorganisations at HE establishments, together with often an entrenched male leadership community, mean sometimes women make a decision not to apply for senior leadership roles,” they say. “Job sharing enables women – and men – to remain in or be recruited to senior management roles where greater working flexibility is valued, for example to accommodate caring responsibilities or whilst studying part-time.”
Flexible leadership
The research highlights a number of issues and benefits of such job sharing via a case study of a British university that has two women in a job sharing role. The example provides a positive illustration of the possibilities, with the authors believing the function allowed each to play to their unique strengths and work effectively together.
If the two parties have complimentary skills, the researchers believe there is considerable potential for each to learn from the other, thus increasing productivity and allowing each person to function effectively.
“Increased confidence can help to counter the stereotype of a lack of confidence in pursuing a climb up the career ladder,” the authors explain. “Job sharing creates a mentor-type relationship where both can boost the confidence of the other and promote the strengths of the other to stakeholders. As such, it also addresses the self-promotion deficiency to better place them in line for higher-level posts.”
Whilst the study focused primarily on the higher education sector, the authors nonetheless believe their findings have relevance across a variety of sectors, especially a time when so few boardrooms are achieving gender equality.
“Job sharing provides an opportunity to increase women’s representation not just in higher education leadership, but in all sectors,” the researchers conclude. “There are concerns over the pipeline of female leaders in FTSE 250 companies, with an increase seen in the number of male-only boards, so the possibility of job sharing senior leadership roles should be considered.”
