Catherine Becker (Geography and Marketing, 1988, Pendle) tells how her time at Lancaster University influenced her career in media, advertising, marketing, business and making a difference in the world.

“I remember the careers fair in the main hall. There was a massive queue for the advertising chap from Saatchi & Saatchi. He told me I would never get into advertising, I wasn’t the archetypal tall, white, good looking male that was employed in the business at the time. He told me to consider other professions. It just made me more determined.

30 years on, having got a graduate trainee role in the “University of Advertising” JWT, I worked through the (predominantly male) business to hold board positions at the big ad agencies and then run and sell my own ad and mobile businesses. Although there are now many women running those businesses, it wasn’t fast or diverse enough based on the varied talent available.

I was invited to join WACL (The top 200 Women in Advertising and Communications Leadership in Marketing, Media and Comms) and last year joined the Exec to head up Campaigning. I’m immensely proud of what we’ve achieved in the last 6 months.

We did a lot of research into why there wasn’t gender and ethnic equality in our profession and beyond, and the key reason we identified is that many women rose through the ranks only to fall off when they had children, or needed to care for elderly relatives, or even wanted some variety and balance in their lives. Because the businesses they were in were inflexible to these requirements, they ended up leaving. This lead to a gender pay gap that has actually got worse in the UK, not better.

Then came lockdown. Suddenly everyone realised that although tough, flexibility of work location and hours was possible, acceptable and even beneficial.

We saw from case studies and business research, that by giving women flexibility in the workforce and advertising all jobs as flexible that employers could retain more women, close the gender pay gap and accelerate gender equality. And most importantly, deliver better business results.

Data out currently shows that jobs advertised as flexible has tripled this year, so our campaign is starting to work – and we are delighted that we have a campaign across the UK as above.

We have developed tools and guidelines to help businesses move to #FlexibleFirst working. If you visit the WACL.info website you will find a checklist (here: https://wacl.info/flexible-first-campaign/checklist/) that I recommend any business that you’re in, big or small, to fill in to see where you are on this journey and how you can improve for both the financial health of your company and the well-being and motivation of your teams.

I currently work at Electronic Arts, an amazing company that balances the gender and ethnic diversity in its games, teams, marketing, and media which I head up across EU. It has been a privilege to be involved in this #FlexibleFirst campaign (see our campaign above in lights round the UK) to make our lives better, but we are at a key pivot point where we can either revert back to old habits once we come out of lockdown, or build on all the benefits that this flexibility delivers."