Women need an old girls' club to get ahead at work, urges Cherie Blair

WOMEN need to club together if they are to achieve equality in the workplace, Cherie Blair told a conference of female business executives yesterday.

The Prime Minister's wife insisted women should be "optimistic, but realistic" about current challenges facing women at home and in employment.

Addressing the Global Banking Alliance for Women World Summit in Glasgow she said: "We have some things to celebrate, but I also know that whatever country is our home, whatever area we work in, there's still a long way to go before the barriers to equality are removed.

"It's also the case that unless and until the barriers to equality are removed, our society and indeed the whole world will not develop in the way it should."

Emphasising the need for a change in workplace culture, she said achieving work-life balance was crucial to allow women equality of opportunity.

"Women need to come together to fight for the changes in practices in the workplace, that are needed to make work-life balance a reality," the senior lawyer and mother of four said.

The only way that could be done, Mrs Blair added, was through the development of self-help and support groups among businesswomen.

Stating that "mentoring matters, networking helps", she said research showed women still felt excluded from traditional methods of career development.

She said: "In 2004, I launched a report titled Girlfriends in high places for Demos. That report was based on a survey of 235 professional women, mainly in the public sector.

It found many men still relied on the traditional informal networking to enhance their careers and women feel excluded and a large part of the problems were down to the differences between the way men and women at work interact. A younger man can go for a drink with a senior man and talk about his career. But a younger woman, if she asks a man for a drink for the same purpose, we know what happens: gossip."

Mrs Blair also explained how her husband was crucial to her ability to juggle a career with family responsibilities. She told how she had benefited from Tony Blair entering politics as he had the flexibility of hours to look after their children, allowing her to pursue her legal career.

She added that this highlighted how men can face life-balance pressure, recalling how her husband, at the start of his political career, was told by a senior colleague that he would not get anywhere if he insisted on leaving work at 7pm to spend time with the couple's children.

Mrs Blair added: "This is not just a women's issue, you can't ghettoise work-life balance as something for the girls."

The two-day conference is being attended by 200 women from all over the world.

Photo ban gaffe

CONFERENCE organisers were embarrassed when, just 20 minutes before Cherie Blair's arrival at Glasgow Concert Hall, they were told to remove press photographers from the event. "It was all a bit embarrassing for the conference organisers really," said a source.

A spokeswoman for Mrs Blair's office said it was believed the engagement was to have been a private event.