Late black-tie dinners not woman friendly - British business chief

By Joseph D'Urso LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Late night business dinners should be replaced by more female-friendly events which finish earlier, the new boss of a major British business lobby has said. Sporting events and black-tie dinners are often seen as the default places to network and strike deals, said Carolyn Fairbairn, who became first woman to head the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) this month. "I have never been a fan of the business dinner. A lot of women aren't. They'd rather go home to their families in the evening," she told the Independent, adding that she plans to miss all but the biggest CBI dinners. "Why not have more early evening events like a panel discussion, a nice glass of wine or two and then everyone off home by 7.30? Maybe the business dinner is a vestige of old business life." Just 31 percent of British women said they have access to the same types of business networks as men in a major poll published last month by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The G20 average was 39 percent. Almost half of the British women surveyed said they thought men have better access to professional development and career growth opportunities. Fairbairn is an opponent of gender-based quotas, but thinks a greater push is needed to get women into senior positions, perhaps through targets. "We still have a position where less than 10 per cent of executives are women. We really have to get more women into really senior management roles, running companies," she said. Women working full-time in Britain take home about 5,000 GBP ($7,500) less than men, according to a report published earlier this month by the Fawcett Society, a campaign group promoting women's rights in the labour market. Prime Minister David Cameron has called the pay gap "scandalous," and pledged to force large companies to publish the average pay of male and female employees. Fairbairn said this is unlikely to help because figures are clouded by such distinctions as full-time and part-time employment, City AM newspaper reported, although she welcomed the government's focus on the issue. (Reporting By Joseph D'Urso; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)