Women in Leadership
So what can I, as a cis gendered white man in his sixties, offer on this month’s theme of women in leadership, when I am part of the generation that has benefitted from systemic privilege? How can I own that? How can I be a good feminist? How can we as an organisation really push to nurture, challenge and support young women leaders when as we have seen internationally, we desperately need them?
I will offer some observations of an extraordinary woman leader whose work lives on as it informs and imbues the very values we espouse and aim to live at U&K.
Beryl Robena Martin (1926-2011) was an extraordinary leader who always pushed against the expectations of her times and the societally projected images of what she ‘should be’. Born into a working class family in Liverpool as the fourteenth of fourteen, she would wryly observe, ’the result of some of the first experiments in contraception’! The life of her devoted mother was full of service, duty, care and zeal in spite of domestic oppression and the criminal waste of women’s abilities at the turn of the twentieth century. Beryl’s father was a skilled decorator, beautifying the rich folks’ houses with his own creative talent.
Both parents were passionate and fiery socialists - their Bible: the much thumbed copy of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Beryl left school at 14 with not much of an education but a passion and sensitivity to the written word that would inspire her throughout her life, not least challenging the status quo by doing O level English Language in her 40s. The lack of schooling so common for working class women rendered a generation of intelligent, creative, skilled women unable to lead other than in their domestic setting and local communities. She was driven by a sense of justice and fair play and her mantra of service to ‘give and not to count the cost’ did in fact in many ways cost her dear. This was inspirational and powerful leadership.
She found her own leadership through a faith founded on a profound belief in equality and she quickly started to lead groups of young women. Her husband, 9 years her junior, decided to ‘better’ himself’ and leave his profession as an electrician to go to Theological College leaving Beryl and her young child to live in poor housing with no money. In the 60s there were no food banks and with the help of other women she made do the best she could. Her passion for a self-found feminism informed her parenting, ensuring that when there was a little money her son had a toy hoover and ironing board as presents.
Then becoming a pioneering vicar’s wife when the expectations of such a role were subservient, she went out to work. She fought for the lives of the women in her parish. One evening in winter, there was yet another knock on the door and a young homeless couple, baby in arms, had come for help. Without a moment’s hesitation she invited the mother and child in, bathed them both, and fed them. Not a grand gesture but one that demonstrates the unquestioning prosociality that imbues the work of Useful and Kind. Not simply kind but useful too, ‘phoning social services and housing the next day to do everything it took to make things better for this young family. Her very own Cathy Come Home.
Eventually the domestic situation fell apart, her husband having had an affair with a parishioner which led to the birth of a child and a high profile scandal. Again she got up after the ‘nights of pain and suffering to do what needed to be done for the children’. In the days before women priests she led the way by co-creating a national organisation, Broken Rites, to work to support the considerable and unrecognised women in the church in general and clergy wives in particular.
Later in life she kept passionate about the power of socialism, the need for education, the rights of women to be seen and heard whether leading or not, became a Samaritan and she was always keen to meet new people and explore new ideas.
What can we learn about women in leadership from Beryl?
that even in recent times there has been a criminal waste of what women could do - were she alive today she would certainly have been either CEO of a homeless charity or a Bishop
that you need a strong set of values
that you bash every door down, or break every glass ceiling there is, in fighting for those values
that you live your leadership and model it in every transaction
that you are positive and hopeful about change and the part you play in bringing it about
So as that ageing cis gendered chap, I am left angry at the waste, embarrassed to have been the beneficiary of such historically gendered injustice, passionate to do all I can to fight for those opportunities for young women and to support them and glad that I have worked in the creative and caring sectors which have been at the forefront of righting some of these wrongs and oh so very proud to have called Beryl my mother.
Duncan Fraser
Resources
C and J Burton, A Atkins Public People, Private Lives: tackling Stress in Clergy Families, Mowbray 2009
Caroline Criado Perez Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Vintage 2020,
Helen Lewis Difficult Women: A History of feminism in 11 Fights, Cape, 2020
Ken Loach Cathy Come Home, Film 1966
Oriah Mountain Dreaming The Invitation 1994, 1999 https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-invitation-by-oriah-mountain-dreamer
Robert Tressell The Ragged trousered Philanthropists, Wordsworth Classics
UN SDG5 Achieving gender equality and empower all women and girls. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5