It was announced yesterday on the BBC sport website that former Lincoln City Ladies and England women’s footballer Casey Stoney is to become the first women to be on the PFA committee. As sponsors of our local women’s football team Nottingham Forest Ladies, we were very pleased to read this news. The first woman being a member of the PFA, the Professional Footballers’ Association, is a huge step forward for women, and especially women in football. Football is dominated by male figures and players, when women hardly get a look in in comparison. More involvement by women in football, besides playing, is a step in the right direction to creating a female-friendly industry. Similarly, this is a great step forward for woman in society in general, who despite the modern world we live in, still experience lesser jobs and pay than most men.
In response to this, we have decided to take a look at a few of the most powerful and influential women in business in Britain today.
First of all we have one of the most high profile business women in all the country. She’s now one of the judges beside Lord Sugar on business reality television show, The Apprentice. Karren Brady is one of the most well-known business women that the UK has to offer, due to her involvement in television and football. She is known as the “Lady of Football”, and is the Chief Executive of Birmingham City FC and vice-chairman of West Ham United. Her involvement in football is very significant in the progression of the employment and rise of women in football, and has proven herself to be quite a formidable character is what is called “a man’s game”. Away from football, Karren Brady is a board member for the clothing brand company Arcadia, which includes high street fashion stores such as Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Burton Menswear.
Our second representative of women in business is Dame Marjorie Scardino. Dame Marjorie is the former CEO of the company Pearson PLC, which is a publishing and education company. When she was appointed this position, she was the first female to be the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company. This is the list of the Financial Times Stock Exchange top 100 listed British companies, affectionately known as “footsie”. She was born in the USA but has now taken on British citizenship. She was a former CEO of the Economist Group, a multinational media company based in London and is a non-executive director of the phone company Nokia.
One of the most powerful women in Britain’s retail industry is Laura Wade-Gery. As the chief executive of Tesco.com and Tesco Direct, she ran Britain’s biggest internet retailers. Laura Wade-Gery took the new position of executive director of multi-channel ecommerce at M&S as part of their e-commerce drive to increase sales online.
Our final example is a woman who formulated her success and influence over the business world during the “dotcom” boom in the early 00s. Martha Lane Fox is an English business woman and is the co-founder of the holiday booking website lastminute.com and she made a sweet £18 million when the company was sold. She is a non-executive director at high street store Marks and Spencer’s and Channel 4. Lane Fox chairs the board of the digital skills charity Go On UK, which works to improve digital skills of people in the UK.
These are excellent examples of women in business, and of course there are many more. At The Workplace Depot we have a small workforce but the women are outnumbering the men in our company! We have a sales team run by women, and a female majority in our web department. We certainly cannot say that The Workplace Depot is a man’s world!
See our Meet the Team page to get to know our female and male team members!
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