32
Women in the UK Intelligence Community
“A culture of ‘serving
your time’ was still
seen to be operating.”
“Throughout my career I have never experienced any issues around
my gender. My managers (men and women) have always encouraged
me to stretch myself, take on new challenges and to seek promotion
and I have benefited from formal and informal mentoring at various
points in my career and particularly since becoming a senior manager.
I have never felt disadvantaged compared to male colleagues. We keep
a watchful eye on whether our promotion processes are favouring
people on gender grounds. I haven’t found that to be the case for
me or my peers, but there is always potential for unconscious bias
to come in and we can’t be complacent. I use moderation processes
to check for gender bias in my own teams on performance grades
and promotion, and am confident that my managers are doing the
same when considering my own talent review. My particular concern
is that our system may favour loud confident people rather than
those who are quieter, more reflective and that this will not lead to
a diverse workforce in the future. Gender could be a factor in that
too.”
Senior woman at MI5
“A year on, attitudes
towards promotion
prospects for women
seem slightly more
positive.”
49. Building women’s ambition. If the new processes are resulting
in more women being promoted, then that is very encouraging.
However, just as with recruitment, you have to get women to
apply in the first place. Women often lack the self-confidence to
push themselves forward – this is self-limiting. Women need more
encouragement from managers and mentors to set ambitious goals
and to realise them.
“The nature of promotion in the Department is that it is driven by
the ambition of the individual and their own assessment of their
readiness to progress. My personal experience is, it takes women
longer to build the confidence required and they need greater
encouragement than their male counterparts to put themselves
forward. I believe these are cultural issues rather than a bias built
into the Department’s processes and policies.”
Senior woman at GCHQ
“Women can be their own worst enemy by self-limiting and selfcensoring. I still consciously have to challenge myself and check that
I’m not holding myself back unnecessarily. In recent years, with the
support of, and advice from both male and female senior officers
(some female officers have by now made it to senior positions in SIS)
I have been able to progress to senior overseas operational positions.”
Senior woman at SIS
50. In SIS, ‘Leadership Learning Sets’ were introduced in 2011 to
examine the progression of women in the organisation and to make
recommendations to the Board. The feedback we have received
indicates that they have played a positive role in raising the ambition
of women. However, as we explore later in this section, there is much
more that can be done.