No more Ms. Nice Girl if you want to be the boss

Has Linda Cook made headlines as a favourite to be the next chief executive of international oil company Shell because she's a woman?

Certainly Cook - who is already on Shell's executive committee as director of gas and power - is one of the few women at the top of the macho oil and gas industry. But like her female peers in the boardrooms of Britain's biggest companies, she is also still something of a novelty.

Women make up just 11 percent of total directorships in the FTSE 100 index of blue chip firms, according to the Female FTSE 2007 report from Cranfield School of Management.

But the trend is moving towards seeing more.

"It's the highest it's been," said Val Singh, visiting fellow at Cranfield. "It's looking at the moment as if there will be an increase in 2008," she said.

Progress is slow, partly because of low turnover of directors. However, women took a fifth of all new board appointments last year, according to the Cranfield study.

There is still some major catching up to do on pay as well.

Women working full-time earn, on average, 17 percent less an hour than men working full-time, according to data from Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The average woman working full-time misses out on around 330,000 pounds over her lifetime.

Some of this is due to discrimination by employers - paying women less than men for the same work.

But it may also reflect subtle differences between men and women's attitudes towards pay and promotion.

GENDER

Although it is difficult to pin down hard facts, gender does make a difference.

"Men are more focused on status, power and influence," said Chris Park, managing director at executive coaching consultancy Talking Talent. "And a big part of how we measure status and power is how much money you are being paid."

"Women are far more relationship and values driven."

In the business world, the way women approach negotiating pay and promotion for themselves is seen as an important reason why they might fall behind male colleagues.

"This is a common phenomenon in organisations," said Elisabeth Kelan, at the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at the London Business School. "Women often don't ask for a promotion, they wait to be noticed."

There are also assumptions made about women in terms of their gender, which means they may be judged negatively for initiating a discussion about pay.

"It's this double-bind situation that we see so often," said Kelan. "If a women speaks out and says, I want to be promoted, she is likely to be seen as aggressive. For women that is seen as something negative. But if she does not say anything, she is less likely to be promoted.""

This is also evident in attitudes towards women as managers.

If women behave like male managers they are penalised for not being feminine enough. But if they are too feminine they may be seen as less-than-effective bosses.

DON'T APOLOGISE

Companies have made progress in retaining women who have had children by introducing career breaks and flexible working.

But women who do return to work after maternity leave can feel even less able to push for more money.

"They find themselves either consciously or unconsciously feeling like they've had a huge favour done for them being given flexible working," said Park.

"As a result, they don't feel they are in a position to negotiate hard around pay rises or promotion."

Park said some organisations say they actively go out and try to recruit women who've taken a career break.

"This is really fabulous," he said. "But then they say it's because they know they can get them slightly cheaper."

Women also tell their career histories in a different way from men.

"What you find is women attribute their success to others who facilitated it, a male colleague, or friend," said Kelan.

"Men tell it in a different way - they present it as if it was always planned or due to their own achievement."

The business culture probably needs to change, but women may also need to be more assertive and less apologetic.

"They are often not starting out with winning language," said Glenda Stone, chief executive of Where Women Want to Work. "They often fall into the trap of going into justification mode."

Women are also often at a disadvantage because there are fewer of them in senior jobs and that makes less of a network to reach for at a high level and less of a say in decision-making.

But a change in boardroom demographics could help.

"There is a younger generation of men coming through into CEO roles," Singh said.

"They perhaps have working wives and are much more in tune with the reality of managing family and career for women and that women can be ambitious."