Women may need a house husband if they are to reach the top, according to the fund manager and mother of nine who is leading a campaign to ensure that a third of boardroom jobs are occupied by female directors.
Helena Morrissey, whose husband Richard runs the family home, manages nearly £50 billion as chief executive of Newton Investment Management.
She is founder of the 30% Club, which is campaigning for 30% of director posts to be held by women by 2015. The group will hold its first meeting tomorrow. Only 13% of the board members of FTSE 100 companies are female.
The group’s target is more ambitious than that set by Lord Davies, the former trade minister reviewing female boardroom representation for the government, who has said the 100 biggest companies should aim for a quarter of board members to be women by 2015.
The powerful women whose husbands have scaled back their careers to fit in with their wives include Indra Nooyi, chief executive of PepsiCo. Her husband left his full-time job and became a consultant.
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Morrissey, 45, said that if more women were to fill top-level jobs, they would need to be realistic about the prospects of combining the role with children.
“The idea that a woman can have a family and friends and hold down a difficult, highoctane job when both partners work full-time — that is a very tall order. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s a bit unrealistic,” she said.
“Something has to give. What we really need is change in society. Maybe there is a sense of slight stigma if men stay at home, but I think it’s one of the things that definitely helps unlock that pipeline of women.”
Morrissey urged any woman aspiring to boardroom heights to talk to her husband about which of them should give up or scale back their career to take on more of the childcare.
“Women should have that discussion,” she said, adding that social change was already happening.
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“I recently chaired a panel at a City women’s network entitled ‘extreme jobs’, which was all about having 24/7 jobs,” she said. “Three out of four of the panellists, including myself, had husbands who stayed at home.”
Morrissey had the discussion with her husband Richard, a journalist, when her fourth child was on the way. The couple agreed he would stay at home.
“It was a conscious decision we both took and it’s an important part of the equation,” said Morrissey.
“It’s very difficult having two parents who work full-time bringing up children who are happy and stable.”
Richard has since become a Buddhist priest and takes care of their six daughters and three sons, aged from two to 19. The couple also have a nanny.
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Morrissey’s worst moment in the City came in her twenties, when, as the only woman in her team, she was passed over for a promotion at Schroders after her first maternity leave.
“Two of my colleagues were promoted and I wasn’t,” she said. “I asked my male boss why and whether I was doing something wrong. He implied that it was more, you know, the baby.”
She quit and joined Newton, where she is the only woman on the five-member board, although women occupy 26% of senior professional roles in the company.
Morrissey works a 55 to 60-hour week, getting up at 5am to organise the children’s uniforms and breakfast. She tries to get home by 6.30pm.