The benefits and drawbacks of women's leadership initiatives

23 Apr

Written By The Equality Conversation

with Rachel Higham, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Marks & Spencer

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Episode #56: The benefits and drawbacks of women's leadership initiatives with Rachel Higham

Series 8, Episode 4, Wednesday 23 April 2025

In this episode, Joy Burnford interviews Rachel Higham. Rachel is Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Marks & Spencer and has previously held technology leadership roles at companies including WPP, BT and HSBC. She is also a Board Member at Macmillan Cancer Support. Rachel talks about her commitment to building more diverse and inclusive working environments, helping women to achieve their full potential, and the benefits and drawbacks of women’s leadership initiatives.

Key takeaways

Advice on progressing your career as a woman in tech: Firstly, be clear on the role you are aiming for and collect the experience and skills you need for that role. Secondly, let people know what you want to do and what experience you want to acquire. Finally, get to know the business and the customer and their experiences first. Technology leaders today have to be brilliant at designing experiences, and they have to be really strong at understanding the commercial impact of what they do.
The benefits and drawbacks of women’s leadership initiatives: Rachel speaks about the BT Techwomen programme that she led. She explained that they spoke to women and they valued having a women only space: they felt safer, they had equality of voice around the table, and they could go deeper in sharing their personal stories, their lived experiences and challenges. In response, they designed a year long bespoke development course and also realised that they had to train line managers just as much as the women themselves so that managers could be supportive and find opportunities for the women to exercise their new skills and behaviours. The results were incredible; 67% of women secured a bigger role within 12 months but the most powerful outcome was developing a vibrant, ambitious go-getting alumni of 2,500 women. Joy explained that she has tended to veer against women only leadership programmes because women can complete a programme and then be in the same place as they were before without the line manager support. Rachel explained that at BT they found opportunities to bring in male leadership from across the organisation into every session so there was a very strong ally wrap around the programme as well.
Barriers to retaining women: A lot of women look at roles above them and can't see a way of doing them in the way they need to be able to do them, or want to do them. Often that can be differences in style. It can also be a difference in the time they think the role requires and what they're able to give it given other responsibilities. It can be internal confidence or a lack of support that organisations provide people in their progression, whether that be a vertical or a horizontal shift. Rachel encourages women who are struggling with this, to step back and think about how they would approach the role their way, and how they could possibly do it. So flip it. Don't think about all the reasons you can't. Think about what needs to be true for you to be able to do it the way you would like to do it and can do it, and then go and have that conversation. And you might be very pleasantly surprised.
How we can move the dial faster when it comes to gender equality at work: Rachel highlights the importance of bonus affecting measures on EDI outcomes, and also conducting research to understand the specific barriers that women in your organisation are actually facing. Don’t assume you know what the problem is. Fix the organisation and everything that sits around women, because we're putting the barriers in place and we can help break them down.

Insights from Rachel

“So many people I've met wait for their career to be done to them, rather than taking control of it, and was a big shift and light bulb moment for me earlier on in my career.”
“I think there's a place for both single gender and mixed gender programmes, always. I'm not anti mixed gender programmes at all. I just think there is a special quality about female only spaces when you're doing very deep work, these are emotional topics, they're very personal, they often go back into people's histories about your why certain behaviours, certain triggers, certain barriers exist. And I'm all about safety. And I listened to what women told me, and it worked.”
“The organisations I've seen move the fastest towards a truly inclusive culture and a truly equitable workplace, have actually put in place bonus affecting measures across all hiring managers on the EDI outcomes they want to see. You get what you measure. You get what you incentivise. And I think it's every line managers responsibility to build a fantastic culture and to have the right set of diversity characteristics represented around their top table and deep in their team. Until we really lean into that, I think we let too many people get away with not playing their part, and culture only comes if everybody plays their part.”
“I think going and running a deep set of research to understand the specific barriers that women in your organisation are actually facing today, in being at their best and seeing the next step in their career as attainable, and then designing a set of initiatives that specifically solve for what they tell you. I think all too often, we assume we know what the problem is. We go about fixing the women, as you clearly articulate in your fabulous book, that's not the problem. Let's fix our organisation and everything that sits around those women, because we're putting the barriers in place, and we can help break them down.”

Keywords

Gender equality, women in leadership, mentorship, technology leadership, diversity and inclusion, career progression, hybrid working, workplace culture, tech, women programmes, organisational barriers, inclusive workplace, career development, professional growth, confidence, flexible working, representation, equity, leadership initiatives, career advancement, organisational support.