The future is female… as long as it's flexible
A recent survey run by Caterer.com, Caterer‘s Web site, found that women accounted for only 22% of hotel general managers, catering managers and restaurant managers.
And figures from the latest edition of the Labour Market Review from the Hospitality Training Foundation paint an even bleaker picture. They suggest that only one in 10 hotel, pub or restaurant management positions are filled by women, even though women account for two-thirds of hospitality employees.
Notable exceptions
There are, of course, a number of notable exceptions - not least this magazine's Hotelier of the Year 2001, Karen Earp, general manager of the Four Seasons Canary Wharf in London.
And women are not totally absent from hospitality management positions. Both the Labour Market Review and Getting Ahead, a report from the Higher Education Funding Council published last May, show that women are fairly well represented up to senior management level, filling about 50% of management jobs.
But why does that number drop so steeply when it comes to senior management positions? What is stopping women breaking through the glass ceiling and taking their share of the senior management roles?
Not overt sex discrimination, apparently. According to Liz Doherty, principal lecturer in human resources management at the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Oxford Brookes University, plenty of chief executives and chairmen would love to see more women in top managerial roles, and most have no concerns about women's abilities to run businesses.
The problem instead, she says, is that women are not applying for the jobs. There are two reasons for this - long hours and mobility (having to move around the country, or abroad, as suitable jobs arise).
"Long hours make it impossible to balance work and family," Doherty says.
Doherty, the author of Getting Ahead, says she came across several women during her research who had had to step down from more senior positions to jobs that required fewer hours once they had children.
The need to move with the job at senior levels is also a barrier for women in national and international hospitality companies. "There is often a requirement to go where the job is and it's difficult for many women to do that," Doherty says.
Janet Gray, human resources and IT director at Jarvis Hotels, thinks women may not be reaching the high-level management jobs because they tend to enter the industry as a stopgap.
Flexible hours
The Labour Market Review survey supports Gray's view. Women are represented to a much greater degree among waiting staff, bar staff and catering assistants, finds the survey, because of the flexible hours on offer. Doherty believes the key to getting more women into top managerial positions is to introduce flexible working hours in these roles.
On the other hand, Gray says, more women might take up management positions if they realise that the hours at senior level are not as unsocial as those typically worked by lower-level workers such as waiting staff. She believes the situation is improving.
Doherty is optimistic, too. "There is some indication of improvement," she argues. "Companies are looking much more favourably on qualified managers and, given that women are better represented on management courses, we should start to see more coming through."
She adds: "Twenty per cent is a hell of a lot better than it was 20 years ago, anyway."
