'Nigel Farage? He makes me want to f****** scream': City mothers fight back against Ukip leader

As the Ukip leader tells a conference that mums who take time off to raise their children are ‘worth less’ as employees, Lucy Tobin talks to the Square Mile’s top women about value, assets and how they make it work
22 January 2014

Somewhere in London, an entrepreneur looking for a gap in the market should start manufacturing dartboards with Nigel Farage’s face in the centre. Because among working women in the City, there's exceptionally high demand.

“Farage? He makes me want to f****** scream,” is the sanitised version of the outburst from one high-flying City analyst and mother on hearing the Ukip leader’s views that women who take time off work to have children are “worth less” to City employers than men.

Farage — a former trader — told a City of London conference that women should sacrifice having a family if they want to succeed in the City. “If a woman has a client base and has a child and takes two or three years off work, she is worth far less to the employer when she comes back because her client base cannot be stuck rigidly to her,” he said. Farage claimed gender imbalances are caused by “biological reasons”.

“Young, able women who are prepared to sacrifice the family life and stick with their careers do as well, if not better, than men,” he concluded.

Not according to working mothers in the City. “I doubt very much that Farage’s comments are factually accurate,” says Anne Richards, chief investment officer of Aberdeen Asset Management and founder of women’s networking group Backroom to Boardroom. “It’s almost difficult to know where to begin in refuting them. The idea that your only value is the names in your address book is rubbish. It’s not how sensible businesses consider people’s worth — it’s to do with years of skills and training.

“I know someone who runs the derivatives desk at a big City bank — she’s highly skilled mathematically and in derivative management, and those skills didn’t suddenly evaporate over her maternity leave.”

Speaking seconds before her plane takes off for the World Economic Forum at Davos, Richards, who took four months’ maternity leave for her now teenage twins, says her working style didn’t alter when she became a parent. “I’ve always been well organised and I’ve certainly had to be when managing children at same time. But in the City we are fortunate — although the long hours culture is sometimes a challenge, generally the jobs are quite well paid, so parents can afford good-quality, wrap-around childcare. In many other areas, the pressures are the same but it’s less well-remunerated so it’s far harder.”

Most working mothers in the City are angry with Farage for “stamping all over the reputation of women succeeding in banking,” as one female equity analyst puts it. Only 12 per cent of City managing directors are women, and it’s worse in client-facing jobs: only 19 per cent of corporate brokers and a quarter of private equity workers are female. And just 29 per cent of female senior managers expect to reach board level in the next 10 years, according to research by the Institute of Leadership & Management and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Which is why Ruby McGregor Smith, working mother of two children and chief executive of FTSE 250 outsourcer Mitie, bellows “how demotivational can you be?” on hearing Farage’s remarks.

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“I’m just so disappointed that anyone could think this is true,” she says. “Why make comments like this, when women are just beginning to have a much better understanding that you don’t have to sacrifice your family for a career? As for client lists — organisations change anyway, people move on all the time. This isn’t a gender debate, it’s a family debate: many men today want to stay home and spend time with their kids.”

At McGregor Smith’s office, Farage’s comments have become a talking point. The chief executive waves over her finance director and fellow working mother, Suzanne Baxter, who rages: “We don’t live in a society where we can rely on anybody else to support us — women need to be financially independent and equal in partnerships. So [Farage’s] picking on the stereotype of women in the City has a terrible impact on women who need to work.”

Baxter, whose children are now 14 and 12, took nine months’ maternity leave with her first child, and seven with her second. “My husband — now a cycling events organiser — then started working more flexibly to fit around the children,” she says. “Technology means we can run our jobs in very different ways from 20 years ago — I take on huge amounts of work but I fit it around my children’s commitments and it works. As long as you get the job done, how you do it doesn’t matter.”

For every Helena Morrissey — mother of nine, and running the £50 billion funds and 400 people who make up Newton Asset Management — there are thousands of working mothers flourishing in the City every day. Morrissey moved to Newton after going on maternity leave as a bond fund trader (the only female on a team of 16) and being passed over for promotion.

The opposite has been true for Lindsey Rix, managing director of Santander Wealth Management and mother of a toddler and an eight-month-old baby. “I took six months’ maternity leave for my first baby, then five for my second, and on both occasions Santander promoted me to more challenging jobs,” she says. “Having kids means I now work better — sometimes I may be working flexibly or at home but I’m far more productive, and much more disciplined with my time. Others in the office have commented on it too.”

Rix’s husband also works full-time, and they have a nanny. “It’s a juggling act but you can do it with the right support.” she says. “So my blood was boiling when I read Farage’s comments. It’s important to have a supportive culture — as Santander has. His old-fashioned ideas just aren’t accurate.”

That’s the message being pushed by Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of London, who has said campaigning for more women to be promoted to executive posts would be her key message as Lord Mayor. “The world has changed since I became the first female partner at my law firm 30 years ago but it has not changed fast enough,” she told the Standard. “A lot of CEOs recognise London will lose out if it does not capture the benefits of diversity — only by employing a true meritocracy can City firms ensure they give themselves the best chance to succeed over the long term.”

Not quite corporate governance Farage-style, then. Kleinwort Benson chief executive Sally Tennant adds to the debate: “I am sometimes asked if it is tough to multi-task and to be in a man’s world. My response is that it’s a bit like Ginger Rogers when she was asked how amazing it was to dance with Fred Astaire. She said, ‘Well, I have to do the same steps only backwards and in high heels’.” Tennant continues: “When I first went into the City you used to have to go to these women’s networking things where people would moan about it all. I would think, ‘Just get on with it, whoever said life was fair?’”

Eileen Taylor, chief executive of Deutsche Bank’s operations in this country, DB UK, points out that it’s not just women who take career breaks. “We’ve got men here who take sabbaticals and come back in very senior roles — so why is maternity leave seen differently?” she says. “More and more senior men are also focused on their families and want to be at school or have a day off with their children.”

Taylor says her experience — she’s worked at Deutsche Bank for more than two decades — is that women return from maternity leave “more efficient, more focused, and with new perspectives that are incredibly useful in the office. Taking leave for a period of time is a good thing. Our newest recruit to join the board of Deutsche Bank UK is a woman with five-and-a-half-month twins. The majority of the people interviewing her were men — and at that time, her babies were three months old. But what they focused on was her experience and her capability to do the job. And that’s why she got it.”

Twitter @lucytobin

WE CAN WORK IT OUT

Ruby McGregor Smith

Chief executive of Mitie

‘As for client lists — organisations change, people move on all the time. This isn’t a gender debate, it’s a family debate: many men today want to stay home and spend time with their kids’

Anne Richards

Chief investment officer of Aberdeen Asset Management

‘I know someone who runs the derivatives desk at a big City bank — she’s highly skilled mathematically and in derivative management, and those skills didn’t suddenly evaporate over her maternity leave’

Lindsey Rix

MD of Santander Wealth Management

‘Having kids means now I work better — sometimes I may be working flexibly or at home but I’m far more productive, and much more disciplined with my time’

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