We are marking two important milestones in civil service history this year: 70 years since Evelyn Sharp became the first female permanent secretary, and 100 years since women were first permitted to take the civil service entrance exam.
Late last month, CSW’s Winter Reception brought together civil servants from across government to celebrate these anniversaries, and the launch of Trailblazing Women – our new project celebrating the changing face of leadership in public service.
The event took place in the British Academy’s Beatrice Webb room. It was a fitting location since Webb herself was a trailblazer: not only the first woman to be elected a fellow of the British Academy but a prominent campaigner and co-founder of the London School of Economics.
It was also Webb who came to mind when, in 1964, Labour MP Richard Crossman arrived as secretary of state in the Ministry for Housing and Local Government and met his permanent secretary, Evelyn Sharp.
In his diary – published a decade later much to Sharp’s annoyance – Crossman said of The Dame (as he called her): “She is rather like Beatrice Webb in her approach to life: to the left in the sense of wanting improvement and social justice quite passionately, and yet a tremendous patrician, utterly contemptuous and arrogant, regarding local authorities as children, which she has to examine and rebuke for their failures.”
Leaving aside his swipe at her attitude to local government (many have argued that Sharp was actually a great champion of local government), his characterisation of her as someone who passionately wanted improvement is one that can be said of so many civil servants. That’s why we at CSW care deeply about supporting and celebrating the civil service and why we have launched the Trailblazing Women project to shine a light on one part of that service: the roughly 60 women who have served as permanent secretaries since Sharp.
Over the coming months, on a dedicated section of our website, we’ll share the stories of those women through profiles and in many cases, interviews. We’ve published the first six already. In time, we’ll expand our project to include other trailblazers like Dame Karen Pierce, the first woman to be appointed ambassador to Washington, and Jeanie Senior, the first female civil servant.
These trailblazers happen to be female, but they are an inspiration to men and women alike because their stories and experiences show there are many different ways of doing the top jobs and having an impact in government. Leadership isn’t one size fits all.
They offer not only inspiration but a lens through which we can look at the evolution of government itself, how the civil service has changed, how it has developed, selected and supported its leaders; and of course how women in senior roles have navigated the opportunities and the barriers that come with that territory.
We hope this project contributes to a shared understanding of leadership in government, a deeper insight into the experiences of women who have shaped it, and a clearer sense of what leadership can look like – today and tomorrow.
Visit the Trailblazing Women hub and to read the biographies of Evelyn Sharp, Anne Mueller, Stella Rimington, Mary Smieton, Barbara Mills and Mildred Riddelsdell – with more profiles and interviews to follow in the coming months.