Well, there’s a thing. All sorts of arguments you could have around the stats of course, female advisers comprise only 10% or so of the total, smaller pool, if there were more they’d be diluted, they have to try that much harder…However, from my anecdotal experience, they are more often than not better at both aspects of the job than we male counterparts. In general, they’re more-recently qualified, and to a higher level than the old, male guard who assume, as we’ve ‘been around the block’, we know it all already. And being an adviser is, actually, 10% the technical stuff, 90% the people. It’s a caring profession. There will, in not-too-many years to come, be more female than male doctors; for similar, very good reasons.
Happy Days are here again?
The ’70s were for my coming-of-age time, as they were for Stuart Maconie, author of ‘The Nanny State Made Me’. It’s when I took my 0 and A Levels, went to uni and started my first job. My view of the decade will always be rose-tinted, I’ll remember the music, discos, student grants (wouldn’t have known what a tuition fee was) and monthly inflationary pay rises negotiated by unions of which I was not a member. The strikes, high taxes and IRA bombs were background noise to me and, yes, I was the first in my family to go to university and, yes, despite everything, felt more secure with a nanny state in charge than at any time since. I’d happily pay more tax to give my kids and grandkids the same.
