We tried remaking women to fit into business – but it’s work that needs to change to fit women

That of course did not happen in practice, although we have come a long way. At times, I think we underestimate the powerful societal and other barriers to women progressing in their careers, the caring and other responsibilities that have tended to fall to women, and the choices women often make along the way to balance those responsibilities.

We need a multi-faceted approach to addressing this issue, one that recognises women may sometimes choose to slow down or take time out of their career, but facilitates their engagement in the work force in a way that enables us to harness their invaluable talent and perspective.

In the early years of my career, the focus in much of the thinking I encountered on getting women into leadership positions was on how to change women so that they could be effective leaders.

I think it is now widely accepted that it is the world of work that has to change to accommodate women and men’s aspirations at different life stages and to ensure that we get the full benefit of the different perspectives and thought processes that diversity brings to the table.

The Covid pandemic and the move to facilitating remote working that resulted from it has been something of a game-changer

In order to make lasting change, more focus on achieving gender equity and on removing the systemic barriers that inhibit high-performing women from reaching senior leadership positions is needed.

The evidence is clear that this is an area that needs to be accelerated. While good progress has been made at board level, progress at leadership level has been slow. The latest Balance for Better Business report shows that 2023 saw a stall or decline in representation of women in leadership positions in Ireland. The financial services industry deserve some credit for the undoubted progress that has been made in recent years, being the only sector to rank in the top three for female representation at both board (31pc) and leadership level (37pc), but there is still more to be done.

The Covid pandemic and the move to facilitating remote working that resulted from it has been something of a game-changer. The CSO reports that the number of women working from home increased by 306pc between 2016 and 2022.

It has been a paradigm shift in the way we organise the world of work which for so long has been arranged to facilitate traditional work patterns. While the benefits of flexibility are clear, it does also increase the possibility of highly capable women being side-lined into hybrid roles and missing out on opportunities through lack of “face time” – we need to be mindful of that risk

It is often said that you cannot be what you cannot see. That’s why it is incumbent on senior leaders, of all genders, to role-model the behaviours that will support women in advancing to leadership positions.

I am very proud of the fact that PTSB ranks highest of the Iseq 20 boards for gender balance, with 57pc of directors being female.

But we know that our leadership team, as in other organisations, needs more women. While the level of female representation at that level has improved to 39pc, we still have more to do to ensure that high-performing women will advance to senior leadership positions.

We know that to achieve this on a sustainable basis, we need to increase the pool of women who have the right levels of support and reasonable accommodations throughout their professional careers to build up the skills and the experience that will make them a success in senior positions.

We cannot lose sight of other aspects of diversity, whether that be neurodiversity, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ or disabled communities

And we know that although this cannot be resolved overnight, we have confidence in the measures we have put in place in recent years, which have included a wide range of initiatives from mentoring and leadership development to flexible working options. Our efforts are working and 50pc of our senior hires last year were female.

I am a firm believer in the principle of “what gets measured gets managed” and the enhanced reporting on diversity and inclusion metrics will deliver results over time. Gender pay gap reporting is an excellent example of what can be achieved by focusing an organisation on a metric that can be improved substantially – and needs to be.

We know in PTSB that our gender pay gap remains too high at 15.9pc and that, while it has declined in recent years, it should not exist at all.

And it’s not just on the gender front where we need to accelerate change.

The issue of gender diversity is far from done and dusted, but collectively we cannot lose sight of other aspects of diversity, whether that be neurodiversity, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ or disabled communities. We need organisations that look more like the communities and customers we serve and which bring diversity of thought to the tables where decisions are made.

We need the nation’s boardrooms and management teams to get better at seeking out diversity in all its forms. Collectively, we have done well over recent years but the challenge now is to build on that awareness with authenticity by putting words into action to drive lasting change.

Addressing these problems is undoubtedly complicated. But business leaders address complicated problems all the time. Achieving true equality of opportunity and harnessing all the benefits that workplace diversity brings should be no different.

It would be a grave mistake to think that the heavy lifting has already been done and that there are no more hard yards to put in.

We need to keep striving to do better next year – and even better the year after that.

Julie O’Neill is chair of PTSB