Women with balls of steel

The appointment in January 2001 of Katherine Garrett-Cox (a.k.a. Katherine the Great) as £1 million a year chief investment officer of Aberdeen Asset Management would seem to confirm fund management is a good place to be if you’re an ambitious City female. More than a third of the most senior and highest-paid fund management chiefs in London are now women. When Garrett-Cox revealed, much to the Daily Mail’s horror, only one month after her appointment that she would be taking time off to have a baby, her employers were, publicly at least, very supportive.

With talented and savvy women like Horlick and Garrett-Cox leading the way, it’s hard to believe that women won’t eventually manage to obliterate the glass ceiling altogether. And if they won’t smash through, they’ll simply move out of that arena into the fresh air and freedom of going it alone.