// John Lewis boss Sharon White says she struggles to find men who will work for her
// White has been criticised for attempting to change the “strong male culture” at the retailer
John Lewis chair Sharon White has expressed her struggle to find men who will work for her as she faces backlash for hiring and promoting women.
White has also been criticised for attempting to change the “strong male culture” at the retailer as she tries to “rebalance” the organisation away from its masculine “command and control” culture.
Speaking at an International Women’s Day event at King’s College London, she said: “I definitely had emails saying, oh my goodness, there are too many women.”
She was referring specifically to when she brought on a female deputy chair at John Lewis Partnership in late 2020, The Telegraph reported.
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“I do find it quite hard to recruit men. One of my issues around gender in the workplace is how do we make sure we can have a decent balance.”
According to the report, more than 60% of leadership positions at JLP are filled by women, compared to 40% of director posts across FTSE 350 companies.
White said the Waitrose leadership in particular had been “all male and all white”.
“It’s a very democratic organisation, so I’ve got a balance between in some ways being quite directive and influential in terms of recruitment but also being sensitive in how I’m trying to facilitate a conversation where the organisation and also our customers feel there’s not a disjuncture between who we are and who we show out to our customers.”
Prior to John Lewis, White was a former senior civil servant and joined the department store chain from media regulator Ofcom.
She said she was concerned about the growing backlash against feminism among young men and blamed a failure to have “healthy” conversations about the importance of gender equality with boys and teenagers.
