October 5, 2014

"I often walked away from the school playground thinking, why am I doing this? I am disheveled, I am tired, I am exhausted, and it is just relentless. But then I'd get to work and think, 'This is what I am doing.'" - Carola Hoyos

"When you look at the whole career path it’s such that women just can’t be bothered. They think the workplace they’re in, at universities especially, is just so lousy that they leave.” - Curt Rice

23 minutes.

Carola Hoyos

So much attention is focused on women in the workplace these days that you might think progress is everywhere. Yes, more women are joining company boards, and some prominent women have top jobs. But other numbers haven't shifted much. In this show Financial Times journalist Carola Hoyos laments the slow pace of change in Britain in particular. But she says one upcoming move could turn things around.

One country that seems to be getting a lot right on work and life is Norway. Curt Rice has lived there for 25 years. He's steeped himself in research on why women lag behind. Still, he's optimistic about gender balance in his world of academia and at companies - partly because of an experiment his university carried out.