Michelle RyanThank you, its absolutely wonderful to be here. Now women have made unbelievable strides when it comes to workplace equality, theyre graduating from university at greater rates than our man and theyre seeing incredible success in particular professions and in particular sectors such as education, GPs and in the retailing service industries. But there is still much to be done. Women continue to be underrepresented in many professions still: in surgery, in science and in the police force and armed forces as well. And they continue to be underrepresented in particular roles such as senior and executive management. Indeed, if you search for CEOs in Google images the first 80 images that come up are of men, the first woman to appear at number 81 is Barbie! [laugh]Now some may argue that this underrepresentation of women is about the choices that women make themselves. They choose not to go in particular roles or into particular sectors, and often this choice is because of the hours of dedication and sacrifice required for success in those roles. What sort of sacrifice do you need to become a surgeon, to become a scientist and those sorts of ideas. People argue that women have a greater need for men for work-life balance and therefore they are not prepared to be as ambitious or make those sacrifices that are needed. This sort of argument is reflected by comments for women as well. A number of years ago, the New Your Times Magazine published an article called The Opt Out Revolution where they talked about the many women that are leading long before they hot the glass ceiling because they wanted to spend more time at home with their families. One woman interviewed for the article said this: I dont want to conquer the world. I dont want that kind of life a baby provides a graceful exit. Now Im not sure how many of you the audience have had children, I have and graceful is not a word I would associate with having children. But at any rate I think its incredibly important to look at the decisions that women make and the priorities that they have but I do worry that if we do take such decisions purely at face value what we might end up ignoring is the continuing existence of societal barriers such as the glass ceiling. I actually think there are more complex things going on. We need to look at the circumstances and contexts in which women make these decisions. Why might they be less ambitious? Might they be less willing to make sacrifices? Is there something innate about the work-life balance that women have? Now I dont want to question the priority that some women and indeed some men place on home, over work. You know, this is an incredibly valid and important decision. But what I do want to do is look at the complexities that may involved in such decisions. What I would like to do is to present some reasoned, cutting-edge research into ambition and into work-life balance that might shed some light on why it s that women are unwilling to take these sacrifices. So one of the first questions that we can ask is, are women innately less ambitious? Weve done work with science students, with police officers, and with surgical trainees that suggests that at the beginning of their careers, at the beginning of their training, men and women have absolutely the same levels of ambition, but that for women this ambition erodes over time. You can see this erosion for science. By the third year of their undergraduate degree, women are less likely to say that they want to be scientist, or to have a career in science. You can see this erosion for police officers so that in the third year of their training women express much less ambition. You can also see this sort of erosion for surgical trainees, so that over the course of their training and its a really long period of training as well women show less and less desire to become top surgeons and indeed women drop out of surgical training at much higher rates than men and its a really long period of training as well women show less desire, even though theres no demonstrable evidence that women perform any worse in their surgical training. So some people might argue that these figures, this drop in ambition over time for women is because of the biological clock. As the clock starts ticking, suddenly womens ambition starts to wane. But whats really interesting about the research that Ive just talked about is that it pertains to students in their late teens, in early twenties, to police officers in their mid twenties, and to surgical trainees in their mid thirties. So whats consistent here is not particular time in their life when their biological clock just kicks in. But whats consistent here is systematic exposure to rather male-dominated environments the operating theatre, the science laboratory, the police force.What we can see tough is that womens ambition drops over time as they have an increase in the perceptions that people that have been successful before them are very different from themselves male scientists, male surgeons, male police officers. So you can see that womens ambition is dropping off as they come to believe that the chance that they will be successful is getting smaller and smaller as they get further and further on. What we can see then is not some innate differences, but rather you can imagine asking this question. See that highly prestigious job over there, the one that youre on likely to have, do you want it? Now do you say: that thing that I cant have, I definitely want it! Or do you say: that thing I cant have, actually, I dont want it anyway! Could this be what the women interviewed for the New York Times could be saying?So this brings us to the idea of work-life balance then. If we look traditionally at what we think of work-life balance, we think about issues of time the time that we spend at work versus the time that we spend at home with friends, with family, or engaging in hobbies. And if we look at the research you can see that when you ask people about their work-life balance, whether they think that they have a good work-life balance, you see that time does play an issue.But whats just as important as the work life balance is the workplace. So consider surgery again. And I know that least one of you, from looking at the chalkboards during lunchtime, has a desire to become a surgeon before they die. Im now sure who that is but lets just consider surgeons for a moment. Why is it that less 10% of the surgeon consultants in the UK are women. Some may say that is the long hour its the night shifts, its the being called out in the middle of the night for an emergency and that these sorts of things are just incompatible with the sort of life that women want with the work-life balance that they want.But now consider nursing or mid-wifery professions where women are absolutely abundant. Long hours, night shifts and you dont get any more unpredictable hours than mid-wifery! So we can see that its not just about time. Its also about something else thats going on. So if we ask surgeons, and if we ask Navy personnel, which is where weve done some research recently about their ideas of work-life balance, we see that perceptions about work life balance are a little bit about time, but they are also about how people feel about their workplace, not just the number of hours that they spend there. Here, for both men and women, feeling that you have a good work-life balance is just as much, again, about feeling that youre similar to those that have been successful before you. You feel that you have a good work-life balance if people like you have made it. And this totally irrespective of the amount if time that you might spend at work. Now we can explain this relationship in two different ways. The first is that being similar to successful others reinforces your identity. Who you have to be to be successful at work is compatible with whom you are at home. It this way we can see a balance between our identities at home and our identities at work. Being similar to successful other also tells us something about whether we can succeed in the future. And if you feel that we can succeed in the future were willing to make sacrifices, youre happy to make sacrifices at home for your career. And its not too far a stretch to see that it may be women that dont feel theyre not similar to those that have been successful before them. So this brings us onto the idea of sacrifice then. Who is willing to make sacrifices for their career? One of the biggest differences between men and women at the middle management level is that women are much less likely to say that they will make sacrifices for their career. So it seem that maybe its just quite simple. Women just dont make these sacrifices. So we can see that women say that theyre unwilling to say that they are unwilling to make sacrifices purely because they believe that their sacrifices wont be rewarded. That if they make sacrifices, they wont see the benefits for these. So you can then see that its not just about an innate difference in men and women in an unwillingness to make sacrifices, but rather, what the pay-off is for these. And indeed if you ask middle managers both men and women who feels like their sacrifices will be rewarded is those who expect to succeed in the future, its those who have clear role models and support networks within their organization, its those people who feel like their organizational success is meritocratic. So if were to draw all these idea together, weve got evidence that women are less likely to be ambitious, theyre more likely to feel that they have a poor work-life balance, and theyre less likely to make sacrifices in their career. But far from being innate, the research suggests that these decisions and these priorities are very much about workplace experiences, and in particular about issues of identity and belonging.So this research has a number of implications. The first of these is that work-life balance is not just about women, anyone can feel that they dont belong, anyone can feel that their identities at home and at work are incompatible. This can be on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, class, age, disability. So all types of people can feel that they dont belong. And therefore if we have an explanation around work-life balance thats about identity and belonging, we can help explain why all sorts of different people are underrepresented in particular roles, and we can have an explanation that doesnt rely on the biological clock either. The second implication is about what can be done. If we look at the initiatives and interventions around work-life balance, most of them concentrate on time part-time working, work from home, job share. And I think while all of these are incredibly important because they give women, and indeed men the opportunity to balance time in their life what these may do is inadvertently exacerbate issues of identity and belonging. If you work from home, if you work part time, youre less likely to feel that you belong, and youre less likely to feel that you can succeed. So such interventions may inadvertently unbalance issues of identity and sacrifice. So what is it that we are to do, then? I think we need interventions and initiatives around work-life balance to go well beyond time, to focus in identity and belonging. We need to send a message that all types of people can make it so that women, and people of colour, people from working class backgrounds can all imagine themselves in particular roles, that they can imagine succeeding in those roles, and that they can be confident that the sacrifice that they make, and that indeed we all make, will be worth it in the end. Thanks very much.