Is Della a hard act for women to follow?

WHETHER you loved her or loathed her, there is no doubt North Yorkshire's recently- departed chief constable, Della Cannings, broke the mould.

She was, after all, the first woman ever to hold the top job at North Yorkshire Police. And she was one of only five women in the country to hold the rank.

She was often described as a "beacon" for aspiring female police officers. And, in an interview with this newspaper in 2004, she gave the impression that she was keen to see more women in senior ranks in the police.

She joined the police in 1975 - the year the Sex Discrimination Act became law.

"I watched the bill going through parliament," she confessed. "It helped my decision (to join the police)."

By the time she came an assistant chief constable with Devon and Cornwall Police in 2004, however, there were still only six women of her rank or above in the whole country.

By 2004, the number of women assistant chief constables-or-above had risen to 20.

But she still clearly felt that was far too few.

Police forces needed to look at whether women officers were putting themselves forward for promotion or not, she said. And if not, they needed to ask why.

"Is it lack of confidence?" she asked. "And if they are putting themselves forward, why aren't they being successful?

"We've got to keep asking that and make sure we don't have any obstacles."

Those questions are all the more relevant today. Because as The Press revealed yesterday, not one of the eight candidates long-listed to replace Ms Cannings as chief constable is a woman.

The sad truth is that the charismatic chief may have been more of a Mrs Thatcher than a woman who truly opened the floodgates for women in the police: in other words, a rare exception rather than a sign of real change.

The issue is not one of simple sexism. The chairman of the North Yorkshire Police Authority, which will appoint the new chief, is after all a woman: Jane Kenyon.

And, if no women applied for the post, "how could they be long- listed for the job?" asked police authority spokeswoman Claire Craven-Griffiths quite reasonably.

But what does it tell us about our society that no women either wanted to or were sufficiently senior to be able to put themselves forward for the job?

We might like to think we live in an age of opportunity for all. But the Sex And Power Index 2007, produced by the Equal Opportunities Commission, suggests that, more than 30 years after the Sex Discrimination Act became law, the reality is very different.

Just ten per cent of senior judges are women; 13 per cent of university heads; a quarter of top civil servants; and 17 per cent of national newspaper editors.

Only one in five local authority chief executives are women.

Despite this evidence, the idea that we still live in an age of sexual inequality is just nonsense, storms Godfrey Bloom, the outspoken UK Independence Party (UKIP) MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber.

He's not sexist, and he's got nothing against women who rise to the top, Mr Bloom says.

There are a lot of women in the caring professions and in law who reach senior positions, he says. And his former boss at financial management company Merrill Lynch was a woman.

"She was one of the most powerful people in the City, and I was bloody terrified of her, make no mistake," he says.

The whole glass ceiling debate is so out of date, he insists. "It's a very, very 1970s feminist agenda."

So what if all the long-listed candidates for North Yorkshire chief constable were women?

"We have so many poor quality chief constables that, for goodness sake, let's get the best chief constable we can," he said.

"Does it really matter whether the chief has got breasts or not?"

Jackie Knights, a York solicitor and managing partner with Harrowell Shaftoe, agrees any form of "tokenism" in shortlisting for such an important job would be wrong, and what is needed is the "best person for the job".

But given there are now a number of excellent women moving into senior positions in the police, it is rather surprising there are none on the long-list, she says.

She wonders whether there may be something in police selection procedures that is somehow skewed, so it discriminates, perhaps unintentionally, against women.

The debate over equality of opportunity for women in top positions is emphatically not a debate from the past, the solicitor insists.

Yes, it might be the case for young women starting their careers today that there is more opportunity.

But the same is not necessarily true for older women who are ten or 20 years into their career, and who are the ones who might be hoping to break through the glass ceiling.

"We have not had anything like equality for the last 20 years," she said.

The sad thing would be if Ms Cannings did turn out to be another Margaret Thatcher, she said.

"Mrs Thatcher was exceptional. That was not the opening of the floodgates."

Sally Hutchinson, the chief officer of Age Concern York, alsosees a likeness between Mrs Thatcher and Ms Cannings.

Both were in a sense heavily armoured to protect themselves against the criticism and sniping women in such senior positions could expect, she says.

"I think the pressures on a woman in such a public position are so great, because it is such a male environment," she said.

She worries part of the reason there were no women applicants for the top job this time around may be because women were put off going for such a job by the hostility and resentment they might encounter - and by the experience of women who had gone before, like Ms Cannings.

It should, she agrees, be the best candidate who gets the chief constable's job. "But it would be very sad to think her (Ms Cannings') experience had deterred some very good women police officers from coming forward."

Sue Lister also thinks the best person for the job should be appointed. But what we should really be doing, says the co- ordinator of York's 50-plus Festival and administrator of Wentworth College at the University of York, is looking at the criteria by which we judge who is the best person.

She suspects those criteria are weighted towards qualities that men rather than women tend to have - as a result of us still living in a patriarchal society.

And that in itself is a real shame, she says. Because if we could allow more people from different backgrounds - whether in terms of sex, race, age, or disability - to move into influential positions, society would be better for it.

"It is so much better to have diversity," she said. "The more diverse perspectives in life you can get, the more rich and nourishing a society we will have."

Women on top: Yorkshire's dynamic dozen

Name: Jane Kenyon

Position: Chairman of North Yorkshire Police Authority

Name: Penny Hemming

Position: Yorkshire CBI chief

Name: Dorothy Thompson

Position: Chief executive of Drax Power Station

Name: Dorothy Thompson

Position: Chief executive of Drax Power Station

Name: Gillian Cruddas

Position: Head of York Tourism Bureau

Name: Dianna Bowles

Position: Head of University of York Centre For Novel Agricultural Products

Name: Dianne Willcocks

Position: York St John University vice- chancellor

Name: Ann Reid

Position: City of York Council's city strategy chief

Name: Carol Runciman

Position: City of York Council's education chief

Name: Sue Galloway

Position: City of York Council's adult social services chief

Name: Sue Sunderland

Position: City of York Council's housing chief

Name: Anne McIntosh

Position: Vale of York MPThere clearly are plenty of women in positions of authority in York and North Yorkshire.

Della Cannings may be gone. But police authority chair Jane Kenyon is - obviously - a woman, as is Yorkshire CBI chief Penny Hemming, Drax power station chief executive Dorothy Thompson and English Heritage's regional director, Maddy Jago.

Other women of influence in the area include York tourism boss Gillian Cruddas, Dianna Bowles, head of the University of York's Centre For Novel Agricultural Products, and York St John University vice-chancellor Professor Dianne Willcocks.

Four of the nine cabinet members on City of York Council are women - Ann Reid, Carol Runciman, Sue Sunderland and Sue Galloway - as is the MP for the Vale of York, Anne McIntosh.

Nevertheless, figures from the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) for the UK as a whole reveal that these women tend to be the exception rather than the rule.

At North Yorkshire Police, now that Mrs Cannings has gone, just four of the force's 22 superintendents or chief superintendents are women.

According to the EOC's Sex and Power Index 2007, women make up only:

* 19 per cent of Members of Parliament* Ten per cent of directors of FTSE 100 companies* 17 per cent of national newspaper editors* 20 per cent of local authority chief executives* Ten per cent of senior judges* 0.4 per cent of senior armed forces officers* 12 per cent of senior police officers (with only four out of 43 chief constables in the country being women)* 38 per cent of health service chief executives