Originally published at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html
Parents and teachers should encourage girls to play team sports to help them in their future careers, says one of Britain’s top woman bosses.
Lady Barbara Judge, the first female president of the Institute of Directors, says that joining in a sport such as hockey, netball or soccer may help girls grow into more confident women who are more likely to succeed at work.
‘I have been thinking that one reason women are not as confident and not as collegiate as men is that men play team sports whereas women don’t so much,’ she says.
‘Men are not so afraid to fail, because if you lose a game or a match, you all lose together as a team, and you all pick yourself up and play again.’
‘Women tend to play more individual sports, they ride, they swim, they play tennis. They do not develop the team mentality that helps men to help each other.’
She added: ‘You don’t stop playing football just because you lost a match. You don’t stop rowing just because you lost one race. You go back with the team and you play again and you try harder without a sense of failure.’
‘Women have a more individualistic view of themselves so when they lose it is harder for them to get up and play the next time.’
American-born Lady Judge, who trained as a lawyer and has sat on a number of corporate boards, has been dubbed ‘Britain’s best-connected woman.’
She has chaired the Pension Protection Fund, and been deputy chairman of insurer Friends Provident and of the corporate governance watchdog the Financial Reporting Council.
Her other posts include governor of the School of Oriental and African Studies and a trustee of the Royal Academy and the Wallace Collection.
She says women are not breaking through the glass ceiling because they are conditioned from a young age to think they are secondary to men.
‘From being very young, they are told they are the weaker sex and that their job is to help people. Women are told that their job is not to give instructions to others but to ask what they can do to assist. So I do think women grow up to be less confident than men.’
She said she is delighted Theresa May is in Number 10 and provides a role model for young women and girls.
‘I’m so pleased that Theresa May is Prime Minister and that Margaret Thatcher was, because little girls in school can see them as role models. They can see that they could do it too.’
‘If Hillary had won the US election they would have seen that a woman could be President.’
‘We should be encouraging little girls to want to be the boss, the CEO, the president, but we do not.’
Lady Judge added that the UK has a problem with ageism for both sexes: ‘I haven’t thought about whether women face more ageism than men at work. I rather think this is one area in which women are not more disadvantaged than men, but I do think there is a lot of ageism in the UK against men and women. In the US we have a president who is 70 and Hillary is 69 and nobody makes an issue about it.’
‘I am very concerned that we are all going to live to be 90 or 100 and I do not think society is prepared for that. We will have to keep our older population in the workforce longer, because pension funds, both private and public, will not be able to afford to keep paying people for such an extended period of time.
‘At least as important, I believe, is the fact that it is very difficult to have a satisfying life without something serious to do.’
‘If you have no reason to get out of bed, you might not bother.’
‘People are physically staying younger longer. I recently read that 75 year olds today are walking at the same rate as 65 year olds did twenty five years ago. This is a very good measure of increasing physical vitality.’