role models - business

Anita Roddick
Anita is of course best known for her business 'The Body Shop' which changed the face of cosmetics around the globe. Starting with one shop in Brighton, comically nestled between two funeral parlours, in 1976, by 2004 there were 1980 shops serving 77 million customers. She famously described The Body Shop phenomenon as 'a series of brilliant accidents'. She was well known for her campaigning work on the environment and for children, and when she died in 2007 she gave away her entire estate, worth 51 million pounds.

Perween Warsi
The 'curry queen'! Perween began her career making finger foods from her kitchen. Now she is CEO of global foods company S&A Foods. In 2003 she was awarded a CBE in the Queens Jubilee Honours List.

Martha Lane Fox
Founder of lastminute.com, after founding lastminute.com in 1997, Martha sold the business in 2005 and is now a champion for 'digital inclusion'. She sees the need for all people to have equal access to the internet and be computer literate, as a major factor in our strive for equality. Martha was listed as one of the 50 most influential people in technology, in the Daily Telegraph in September of 2009.

Liz Jackson
Liz is the managing director of Great Guns Marketing. She started her business with a £1000 grant from the Princes Trust in 1998, and now has an annual turnover of more than 3 million pounds. Her amazing achievements are no less amazing considering that Liz is totally blind. She was awarded an MBE in 2007 and our favourite quote from her is 'If you think you can, or you think you can't.... you're right'.




facts

Women working full time earn just 87 per cent of the male median full-time hourly wage or just under 83 per cent of the male mean full-time hourly wage.
Women and work comission 2009

Girls are outperforming boys across a range of subjects at GCSE and A level. In 2005, girls in the UK outperformed boys at GCSE by 8.4 per cent at grades A* to C, a difference which has remained virtually unchanged over the last few years. At A level the gap is smaller: nearly two per cent more girls achieved grades A-E than boys
Joint Council for Qualifications

Men start to earn more than women almost as soon as they enter the
labour market, and the pay gap rises with age. In 2005, the mean gender pay gap for full-time workers aged 18-21 was 3.7 per cent. For those aged 40-49, the age group for whom
the gender pay gap is largest, the mean gender pay gap was 21.7 per cent
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings

There continues to be a substantial difference between the earnings of male
and female graduates. Purcell (2002) and Elias et al (1999) find that
just three years after graduation women earn, on average, 15 per cent less than their male counterparts.