Sex appeal is a woman’s best weapon to break the glass ceiling in business

It is clear that education will not close the gender pay gap. As the EHRC’s Scottish commissioner, Kaliani Lyle, points out, more and more young women are graduating from universities, and with better qualifications than their male counterparts. Yet still the glass ceiling remains intact. Nor are quotas the answer. The truth is that if women are to increase their representation on the boards of Scottish quangos or private companies, at Westminster or Holyrood, paying attention to their public image and appearance could be hugely beneficial.

In this country, we tend to downplay the role appearance plays in scaling the career ladder. The French have never been so short-sighted. Take Christine Lagarde, whose professional history includes being the first female chairman of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie, the first-ever female finance minister of a G8 economy (France) and, most recently, the first woman ever to head the International Monetary Fund (despite no formal training in economics).

Lagarde’s starry career does not prevent her from being perennially elegant, stylish and beautifully coiffed. Slim, attractive and charming, she has impeccable social skills -- in addition to complete mastery of her professional role. Delivering the keynote speech to last year’s Financial Times Women At The Top conference, Lagarde, then France’s finance minister, paid tribute to her mother, who played a key role in her daughter’s success by teaching her how to dress well and talk to people. Like most French women (and men) Lagarde knows that an attractive appearance and courteous manners are just as important as qualifications and talent for getting on in the world. Investing effort in what I call “erotic capital” makes as much sense as investing time and effort in education.

I coined the term “erotic capital” to cover a mixture of beauty, social skills, good dress sense, physical fitness, liveliness, sex appeal and sexuality -- qualities people like Marilyn Monroe have always used to their advantage. Attractive people find life is easier all round and develop positive personalities. Doors open for them, people remember them and are more inclined to co-operate with them. They are more persuasive in debate. They are assumed to be clever and honest and are treated accordingly. They are even slightly more intelligent and on average, they earn 10%-20% more.

In politics, attractive candidates are more likely to get elected, especially if they are newcomers about whom little is known. My guess is that being handsome as well as clever helped Barack Obama to become the first black president of the United States. Conversely, lack of charisma and stylish good looks probably helped Gordon Brown to lose the last General Election.

Erotic capital can even be a worthwhile alternative to academic achievement, for the sizeable minority who do not succeed in the educational system. As increasing numbers go to university, the financial value of a degree has fallen steadily, due to what might be termed qualifications inflation. So it makes sense to utilise other talents as well, or instead. Beauty pays, as top models such as Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen have always known.

Why, then, have British women been slow to learn from the French that paying attention to their appearance, as well as their professional skills, can make all the difference in advancing their careers? In a recent survey of Scottish businesswomen, most respondents said that flexible hours and family-friendly working practices were the best way to promote gender equality at board level. But a glance at the FT’s 2010 list of the world’s top 50 businesswomen provides little support for this notion. The list includes 19 Americans -- more than any other nationality -- along with several Chinese, even though those countries offer few concessions to women’s special needs in the workplace. By contrast, there are comparatively few Europeans, despite those countries’ more progressive approach to things like paid maternity leave. European family-friendly policies do not in practice appear to assist career paths to the top.

Good grooming can matter more. The career résumés for the FT’s top 50 businesswomen display the usual business attributes of intelligence, experience, talent, courage and vision. The accompanying photographs, however, are illuminating. These show slim, shapely women who are well-groomed, stylish and elegantly dressed, and who exhibit positive personalities and social skills. The top businesswomen almost always have high erotic capital and good grooming as part of their portfolio of talents. Slim and attractive Helena Morrissey, the chief executive of Newton Asset Management, has broken the glass ceiling despite having nine children.

Although erotic capital is a highly visible personal asset, its role in career advancement is routinely overlooked, despite the fact research shows that it is just as important as qualifications and work experience (human capital) or networking and contacts (social capital). What’s more, although women are generally rated as more attractive than men -- probably because they make more effort -- they earn a smaller “beauty premium”, in that their looks and charisma are less highly rewarded than men’s.

Attractive men earn 17% more than unattractive men, compared to only 12% more for women, after taking account of qualifications and other factors. This is illustrated most dramatically in Hollywood, where the top male movie stars are paid vastly more than the top female film stars. According to Forbes magazine’s annual list, Leonardo DiCaprio currently earns the most at an estimated $77 million per year, followed by Johnny Depp with $50m. Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker, who top the women’s list, earn an estimated $30m each.

Why are women failing to exploit their erotic capital? My answer is that patriarchal men took steps long ago to ensure that women could not benefit from their one major advantage over males. Men divided females into “good” and “bad” girls, marriageable virgins and disreputable whores. We pretend to have moved on from this crude stereotyping, but it still pervades our thinking. Women’s public dress and behaviour are still controlled, ideologically and morally, much more strictly than men’s.

Of course, employers have a legal right to specify workplace dress codes, with cleavage either expected (Hooters restaurants) or prohibited (schools and banking). But in their private lives, women are entitled to dress however they please, without men assuming that low-cut tops or short skirts mean that their crude sexual advances will automatically be welcomed.

In effect, men have argued that if women are reckless enough to display their erotic capital, men cannot be blamed for sexual harassment (or worse). The slutwalk marches that are spreading across Canada and Europe are a welcome sign that many women now reject this male repression of their appearance and behaviour. These women are insisting on their right to reclaim their own erotic capital and advertise its value, without being subject to patriarchal controls.

In fact, women’s erotic capital is higher than men’s, mainly because of what I call the male sex deficit. Contrary to received feminist wisdom that men and women are equal in terms of sexual desire, national sex survey results show that even in sexually liberated Scandinavian countries, men want more sex than women. The result is that men are frustrated for much of the time, and there is evidence that male sexual frustration is actually increasing. This is important because it raises the value of women’s erotic capital higher than men’s.

The women’s movement has always devalued and belittled the importance of looks, charm and sex appeal. In doing so it is colluding with patriarchal men and selling women short. Of course, beauty is shallow. So is money, but it still has value. There is no point in advising women to reject make-up, grooming and so on and to look plain or unattractive, as the feminist Sheila Jeffreys does in her book Beauty And Misogyny, which argues that the emphasis on looks harms and oppresses women.

Nor is there any merit in puritanical objections to the use of beautiful female models in underwear advertisements, given that men -- such as David Beckham -- appear in similar commercials. Beautiful women feature more frequently in these adverts because men’s sexual desire exceeds women’s. Advertisers are not slow to exploit the male sex deficit, and profit accordingly. Yet women are made to feel “cheap” or stupid if they do the same.

Alternatively, they are reviled as “gold-diggers” -- an accusation I have never understood. Attractive women who marry into money are offering a perfectly fair bargain, exchanging rare beauty for mere money. Puritans argue that beauty has no value, unlike intelligence, or that it is unfair to reward beauty because it is innate. However, the latest genetic research shows that 50% of intelligence is innate, yet we are happy to reward it.

For most people, being above-average in looks is down to effort or time in the gym, not luck, as Victoria Beckham, Madonna and Carla Bruni would testify. Erotic capital does have substantial social and economic value -- it has been found to sell goods, services, ideas and policies, and it makes companies more profitable. Since it pervades all social relationships and all social interaction, it is strange that we dismiss it so systematically.

Scarce commodities are valuable, as any economist will tell you, so it’s not surprising that rare qualities such as beauty and charisma, have economic as well as social worth. Yet while men ruthlessly exploit their own assets to bargain for status and power, they demand that women’s erotic capital should be a free gift to all men; an act of selfless generosity.

Feminists who go along with the notion that women shouldn’t profit from their looks or sex appeal are unwitting victims of patriarchal brainwashing. Surely those who care about redressing the gender imbalance would do better to encourage women to use their assets to make an impact in their chosen field. Stylish clothes, a flirtatious manner, charm and warmth can all play a part in being noticed, liked, and helped up the ladder.

In modern knowledge economies, looks are never irrelevant, because they deliver visible gains in most jobs. As economies shift away from manual jobs to white-collar and service occupations, social skills become increasingly important.

Sports stars and politicians have always known that in any contest, there is usually only one winner, who will walk away with all the fame, power or money. In our globalised economy, this is increasingly true across much of society, including in the workplace. What it takes to win can be a minor, even trivial advantage -- a fraction of a second’s extra speed, a handful of votes out of millions cast ... or impeccable good looks, a smart appearance and a smile at every public event. Tiny margins can make huge differences. In the race for a promotion, all the applicants may be equally capable, but there is only one winner at the top of any large organisation. To get there, you need to have the X-factor, as Simon Cowell might remind us.

Over the course of our lives, most of us have to compete for university places, for jobs, for promotions, for contracts, for attractive transfers. In most cases there will be very few winners, and many more losers. And while some of the prizes, such as jobs or promotions, may seem relatively minor, the cumulative benefits of a marginal advantage at each stage of a career are huge in the long run. Only one person becomes president of a country, the chief executive of a global bank, the world champion in a particular sport or the head of the IMF. Erotic capital typically contributes only a small advantage to workers seeking jobs, promotion, or wage rises -- but that marginal difference can be hugely important in its consequences.

Barely perceptible quality margins can spell the difference between success and failure. High erotic capital can offer that marginal advantage, in business, politics, sport, the arts and in public life generally. Women would be well advised to stop ignoring it and start using it, not only in the workplace, but also in the daily politics of private life.

Dr Catherine Hakim is a sociologist at the London School of Economics. Her book Honey Money: The Power Of Erotic Capital is published this week by Allen Lane, £20