Vicky Truter interviews Fiona Counsell, Head of Open Access Operations & Policy for Taylor & Francis, about the projects she works on in the publishing industry, her experiences as a woman in the workplace, her work with co-founding a ‘Women in Publishing’ group, and her advice for early career project managers.
“It’s important to acknowledge and work to erode the additional barriers experienced by women of colour, women who have less socially privileged backgrounds, women with disabilities, that are in addition to the barriers they experience because they are women.”
Vicky Truter: Let’s start with an introduction. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you landed up managing projects in your current role?
Fiona Counsell: I’ve been working in publishing for 14 years. My current role is Head of Open Access Operations and Policy at Taylor & Francis. The remit of my team has always been really wide, with lots of competing priorities. I found quite early on that organizing our work into discrete projects was a really helpful way to manage the workload. It also helped define the roles and responsibilities or spheres of influence within the team. It’s also worked for us as we work cross-functionally most of the time bringing together colleagues from different parts of the business. Having a defined project around which to structure the work has helped us to gather the commitment of those colleagues and helped us manage some of those really sensitive relationships. Sometimes the work we do isn’t necessarily called a ‘project’. Sometimes it’s a ‘working group’ or a ‘task force’. But ultimately, they are all run like projects.
VT: What are some of the challenges you face as a woman in the workplace or that you see other women facing?
FC: Well, I think there are a lot of different challenges of different scales. There are the daily microaggressions in the workplace that will be familiar to many women, such as being in a meeting and having your idea restated by a colleague – maybe a male colleague – to rapturous applause when it fell flat when it first came from you. Interestingly, I often see this more clearly as an observer. I can see the women colleagues displaying traits and strengths – such as directness or assertiveness – and then I hear other people give negative feedback about that. A trait like being assertive is typically criticized in a woman, yet praised in a man. Seeing that play out with colleagues you are close to is really disheartening. There’s a lot of research on the gender differences in performance appraisals and colleague feedback, which seems to support what I’ve seen anecdotally.
Probably the biggest challenge for myself is the pressure I put on myself to achieve and excel in all areas of my life. I think this stems from societal and structural systemic causes, as well as from my own traits and personality. I definitely don’t subscribe to the idea of ‘fix women and then you fix gender inequality’, because in some ways that’s a victim-blaming approach. There are still societal and systemic underpinnings for many of the inequalities that we see.
On reflection, when I look back over my whole career, I would say that one of the big things is not having understood the challenge of being a woman in the workplace early enough. If you’d have asked me this question 5 years ago, I might have said there isn’t any gender inequality in the workplace, that there are no challenges for women. The longer you’re around, the more you see the inequity, and I think realizing those systemic and personal barriers earlier would have caused me to think differently about career-planning a lot earlier. I would say that the experience of being a working parent during the global pandemic has thrown this into sharp relief. Although I would say that it’s more of a challenge of being a working parent than being a woman. And within my company, it is a common experience that’s been shared and commiserated with fellow working parents of all genders. But my understanding is the research has shown that parenting challenges have fallen more heavily on the shoulders of women than those of men typically.
Another personal challenge I’ve experienced is people’s assumptions about me, and what my priorities are. Each time I’ve returned from maternity leave, I have always returned to work full-time for a host of personal reasons. Yet, I’m often asked what hours I work, or if I’m part-time. There’s a lazy assumption that because people know I’m a working mother, that I must be a part-time worker. That’s not to say that flexible working or part time working is a bad thing, it’s a really great thing, and it should be available to all colleagues who need it. But it’s that lazy assumption that ‘mother who works’ equals ‘doesn’t work on Fridays’ that I struggle with. The second example is having lost some travel opportunities because of an assumption that I wouldn’t want to travel because I had a young child. Irregardless of whether that was meant with the best intentions, the upshot was that I was losing opportunities to network within my company and within the industry.
VT: Has your industry or your workplace made any strides when it comes to gender equity? And what are some areas that you think could still improve?
FC: There are lots of women – lots of very successful women – working in publishing. But generally, that has not been matched by representation at senior management levels, and there is also a known pay gap for the publishing industry, which, in the worst-case scenarios are shown as a 40% gap. The average pay gap is about 20%. The causes of this are well documented and include the ‘motherhood penalty’, the ‘broken wrung’, and they all play a part in women not progressing at the same rate as men. I think this is slowly changing, but slower than it should. There’s been some interesting programs, such as mentoring and leadership development, but these do tend to focus on the experiences of more senior women. And they also tend to focus on the individual causes of why that might be, such as shaming women to say that it’s about imposter syndrome, or that individual women’s skills need to be developed, rather than addressing the systemic and structural issues that that cause those things.
Some companies are making significant gains by tackling some of the systemic issues, revisiting HR policies for instance and focusing on their frameworks of support for colleagues at all levels. These companies are reaping the benefits that diversity of thought and action bring. Publishing is definitely having its ‘DEI’ moment. And given the socio-economic, educationally racial background of much of the publishing industry, those of us who are working on gender equity, need to be sure that we’re working intersectionally. It’s important to acknowledge and work to erode the additional barriers experienced by women of colour, women who have less socially privileged backgrounds, women with disabilities, that are in addition to the barriers they experience because they are women.
VT: Could you tell me a bit about the work you’ve done with the ‘Women in Publishing’ project group at your company?
FC: ‘Women in Publishing’ started as a small book club to read and discuss books about working women and feminism in the workplace. A couple of months later, it had snowballed from a book club to a huge event series. Our events are inspired by the things that are important to women, but we’re not exclusively for women. Everybody within our company is welcome to attend the events and learn from them. Some of our most successful have explored the intersection of publishing and technology. We’ve had events on personal development aspects like imposter syndrome. We’ve also taken a look at some of the more ‘taboo’ topics in the workplace that tend to impact women such as the experience of menopause or miscarriage. The aim is to provide a space for women to explore those issues affecting their working lives. But also, on a really positive note, to celebrate the successes of women in the company, to find role models, to network, and to help other women develop personally and to develop their careers. Being involved with this initiative has been the most valuable thing I’ve done to grow as a person and be the best ally I can be in that intersectional work that’s needed. Publishing is still very dominated by white middle-class, university educated people. But the face of publishing is changing. And I’m proud to be a little part of that.
VT: What do you think or hope that the future holds for women in project management or in the broader workplace?
FC: As project management gains traction in more industries, there will be more and more opportunities for women. This is a huge generalisation obviously, but women often possess the skills and qualities that make for great project managers, such as fostering collaborative cultures. I hope that these relational skills will become ever more valued as automation erodes the value of technical skills.
VT: What advice would you have for women who are early in their careers?
FC: I’d advise anyone to look for ways to incorporate project management and the associated skills into their existing role. I would also recommend starting an achievement log where you dedicate five minutes of your working week to record all the things that you’ve achieved in that week. You can use this when you start creating your career narrative as you move forward. If you get a base level of competence in some hard skills early on in your career, you will not be playing catch-up later – remember that. Finally, I’d strongly recommend thinking about your career strategy as early as possible. Don’t just coast along – think about what you want and how you can get there.