 The only known lesbian on the board of a top City of London company blames business leaders today for the climate of fear that forces corporate gays to keep their sexuality secret.
Ashley Steel, from the accountancy giant KPMG, believes that gay people in the Square Mile are scared that their careers will be blighted if they are open about their orientation. She admitted having lied at work about a ring given by her long-term lover, pretending that it came from her grandmother, to conceal her lesbianism from her colleagues.
“There are going to be thousands and thousands of people who will leave work this evening, go home and feel that they have had an awkward day because they have not been able to be themselves,” Dr Steel, 48, said. “That cannot be right.”
“It’s about CEOs [chief executive officers], chairmen of the UK’s biggest companies. They can’t be silent on this. They actually have to take a very active role themselves. They have to be outspoken and they have to demonstrate to their people and to customers that they are very happy about working with gay people, that gay people are welcome in their organisations.
“What they can’t do is send a memo to their human resources department and say ‘Could you please put in a diversity programme?’. This is not something that chairmen and CEOs can delegate.”
Dr Steel has worked for KPMG for 23 years but came out as a lesbian only after being appointed to its board. She was the sole City woman named in a newspaper “pink list” of influential British gay people in 2006 and was still the only one there a year later. When Dr Steel was posted to California seven years ago she wanted to take her partner too. She went to the human resources department “and came out to someone who was, in our hierarchy, junior to me. I had to say, ‘I have something to tell you and can you keep it a secret?’.”
Once stationed near San Francisco, Dr Steel at last felt free to be open about her sexuality in the liberal work-place environment of Silicon Valley. When she returned to Britain two years later and was appointed to the KPMG board, she decided to be as upfront as she had been in America. In what must be one of the most unexpected pieces of “any other business” in a British boardroom, she chose a discussion about diversity policy.
“I found it very difficult to make eye contact, which is not like me,” she said “It was very difficult to articulate. I spoke for about five minutes. I have never heard the board be so silent, it felt like [the board was] hanging on every syllable.” When she finished, directors were fighting with each other to say something, “putting a blanket around me saying, ‘Ashley, it’s OK’. That’s how it felt to me.”
Previously she had been asked by a male colleague about a ring on her wedding finger, a gift from her lover, Angie, before civil partnerships were introduced. “One of our rather senior partners asked me ‘Have you got married?’ and I absolutely felt with this particular individual that I couldn’t say, ‘Actually I have a female partner and we’ve exchanged rings because we are unable to marry because the law doesn’t allow us’. I decided to say that my grandmother was approaching 100, she wanted to buy her grand-children a gold ring and that was the best finger that it fitted on. That particular individual now knows Angie well and gives her a kiss on the cheek.”
With clients, Dr Steel often fudges the issue, referring to her now civil partner as “they” rather than “she” and finding ways around being frank. “But it’s wrong and that’s why I just have to work harder at making the business environment more open and gay friendly,” she said.
Because Dr Steel experienced support rather than scorn from colleagues when she told them about her private life, have City workers nothing to fear but fear itself? Should not the business-women and men leading secret lives just come out now?
Dr Steel is cautious. “What they risk in coming out in an environment that’s not truly people-friendly, they will inevitably be risking their future career within that organisation. Unfortunately, that is still the case in so many different businesses in the UK. Therefore, I think there is a duty on behalf of organisations, CEOs, chairmen to create the environment in which [employees] can then make that courageous step of being out and open.”
Source: The Independent |
