After nearly two centuries as a men-only private member’s club, the Garrick Club recently surrendered to progress by voting to admit women. The club had previously rejected proposals to allow women to join, but pressure mounted after the disclosure of some members’ identities in the Guardian. After a two-hour discussion, it voted to open its doors to women. 

But that’s not the whole story. A staggering 40% of Garrick members voted against admitting women, amid bad-tempered complaints that ‘presumably, men should now be allowed to join the Women’s Institute’. Of course this argument entirely misses the point. Unlike the WI, Garrick members are politicians, high court judges and captains of industry - the people holding the reins of power.

Exclusionary policies have perpetuated a system that has marginalised women from influential networks. While the Garrick’s decision to admit women marks a long-overdue step towards gender equality, it also serves as a reminder of the persistent barriers women continue to face in accessing spaces of power and influence.

Despite women constituting more than half of the global financial sector’s labour force, they hold only 19% of senior leadership roles – with a mere 2% occupying CEO positions. The earnings disparity between men and women persists; 78% of employers still paid men more than women on average in 2023-24, with women still overrepresented in lower-paid, part-time roles. While the UK’s gender pay gap has fallen to its lowest recorded level, it will take an estimated 29 years before the earnings disparity between women and men is eliminated at the current rate of decrease, according to ONS data.

Organisations urgently need to tackle the gender biases that continue to exist in recruitment and career advancement. A US study found that female employees are less likely to be promoted than their male counterparts, despite outperforming them and being less likely to quit. The report showed that women received higher performance ratings than male employees, but received 8.3% lower ratings for potential than men. 

Other barriers to advancement include lack of childcare support, absence of family-friendly workplace policies and lack of healthcare support for women throughout all life stages including the menopause. Parental leave for fathers also has the potential to have a big impact, with a report from the Centre for Progressive Policy showing that extending paid paternity leave to six weeks could reduce the gender pay gap and boost the UK economy by £23bn.

The provision of flexible working is critical to the advancement of women. Meta reported that candidates who accepted remote jobs in its workforce were more likely to be women. Companies that only require people in the office for one or two days a week hire 27% more women than those with five-day mandates, according to a report by digital services firm Nash Squared.

In the marketing industry, many roles now offer flexible, hybrid working and are no longer tied to a 9-6, office-based day. But there is still an ‘always on’ culture, and managing deliverables continues to be an exhausting juggle for most families.

Employers need to trust their employees more and give them autonomy over their work lives, allowing genuinely flexible working and being supportive to each individual’s needs and lifestyle. Crucially, championing work-life balance has got to come from the top. Workplaces need to celebrate leaders who exhibit these behaviours and allow their teams to follow suit. Similarly, this flexibility needs to be written in at early stages of job specs and reiterated throughout the recruitment process to give reassurance that a business culture embraces flexible working and empowers their team.

After voicing her interest in becoming a member of the Garrick Club, actor Juliet Stevenson told Radio 4 that institutions dedicated to fostering creativity and intellectual exchange must embrace diversity to remain relevant. This principle applies to every sector of our society. Exclusion based on gender stifles the richness of ideas and the diverse perspectives essential for success. The evidence shows that companies with gender-diverse executive teams achieve significantly better performance metrics. The need for diverse voices and perspectives in shaping the future of the creative industry has never been more critical.

We need to highlight the fact that the fight for advancing diversity is about power and influence. Perhaps renaming it the Gender Power Gap would help to give this crucial mission more urgency and meaning among today’s predominantly male powers-that-be.