Women should state their ambitions loudly with a proud voice.
Jacki Hughes thinks doing that will help ‘accelerate action’ for individuals and women as a whole group.
The Executive Principal of The Guernsey Institute told Express that she thinks there is still a glass ceiling holding women back both in life and in the workplace.
She moved to the island five years ago to bring together the College of Further Education, The Institute of Health and Social Care, and the Guernsey Training Agency.
As with other places she has worked, education and childcare settings in Guernsey predominantly employ female staff. But, during her career she has seen progressive but slow moving change, with some of the most senior leadership roles across those sectors and others now occupied by women.
Ms Hughes said women still face additional challenges to achieve their ambitions though.
Her own mentor earlier in her career helped her to overcome some of those challenges by encouraging her to speak out for herself.
“I would say 30 years ago, almost all college principals in England were men. At that time, there were more than 350 colleges in England and there was a real move towards to get women into leadership posts, and funded centrally was a program called ‘Women into Leadership’ that, as a woman teacher, I could apply to see if I could get on this course.
“I was given a place on this ‘Women into Leadership’ course, which gave me a mentor. And that was, I would say, the single most powerful thing that changed my career.
“(My mentor) was Alison Malik. She worked at the college, and she worked in special education needs in the college, and I remember meeting her for the very first time.
“I walked into her office. We’d never really met before as it was a big college with 1000 members of staff, and her first question to me was, ‘are you ambitious, Jackie?’ And I muttered ‘yes, I am’, and she said ‘no, I asked you, are you ambitious?’. I said, ‘yes’ and she said ‘no, are you ambitious?’ So, in a big voice I went ‘yes, I am ambitious!’ And she looked me in the eye and said to me ‘never, ever be afraid to say so’.”
Ms Hughes said with Alison Malik’s encouragement she was able to act on her ambitions and within a few years she had reached a new pinnacle in her career.
“30 years ago we were still sort of hiding our lights under a bushel and it’s not seen to be feminine to say ‘I’m ambitious’ but she taught me that it was perfectly okay to say that.
“If I fast forward 10 years, I remember having a conversation with the Principal at the college, and he was talking about careers, and he said ‘what job do you want Jacki?’ and I had the audacity to say ‘I want your job. I want to be the Principal of this college’. 10 years after that, I was the Principal of that college.”
Ms Hughes hopes that events around International Women’s Day, which this year has the theme #AccelerateAction can help other women achieve their ambitions too.
“I refer to your career as being a shopping basket. If you think ‘I want that job’ then okay, what do you need in your shopping basket to be able to do it? You might need some leadership experience, some budget experience, or to network more widely than just the group of people that you usually see. And it’s not luck.
“I have had people in my career saying ‘oh you’ve been really lucky’, oh no, no, I’ve made my own way and yes, sometimes it is about being in the right place in the right time, but it doesn’t come easy, and I think that’s what women can do for other young women in school.
“I’m a firm believer you’ve got to see it to even want to be it. So for young women to be able to see leaders, they can think ‘yeah, I can do that’.”