Hard-line feminists may interpret what follows as critical of women achievers. This is not the intent, but should they consider it detrimental to the cause, I apologise in advance. This writer bows to no-one in conviction that equality is a cornerstone of civilised society.

That said, there is a small group of women who have reached prominent positions in business who, by questionable career performances, may have jeopardised progress made by their sisters, thereby handing ammunition to the ever-present forces of chauvinist reaction. This, and several subsequent posts, will lay out their careers in an effort to prove the threat they pose to equality. There are, of course, plenty men who deserve excoriation (Fred the Shred at RBS; Richard Howson at Carillion, to name but two) but they are not the ones bumping against any Glass Ceiling.

The most recent example of a women promoted beyond her competence was all over the media this month. Like other contemporaries we will highlight elsewhere, Paula Vennells walked away from a car-crash contribution as CEO of Post Office Counters, with little show of contrition or regret before the media belatedly fell on her like a ton of bricks.

Educated at a private girls’ school in Manchester and received a degree in languages from Bradford, her career started as a graduate trainee with Unilever, whence she moved through a variety of retail business experiences with L’Oréal, then directorships in sales and marketing with several of the UK’s largest retailers, including Dixons Stores Group and Argos. She then became Group Commercial Director for Whitbread Plc and held.

Her political influence developed when she was a member of the government’s Financial Inclusion Policy Forum. Having been ordained as a CofE priest in 2006, she also became a member of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group for the Church of England. A member of the Future High Street Forum, she joined P. O. Counters in 2007 as Group Network Director.

As Chief Executive from 2012 to 2019, she oversaw what may be the greatest mass miscarriage of British justice ever seen. While the details of how it happened are still unclear. What is clear is that, in 2009, P.O. Counters contracted with Fujitsu to supply sub postmasters with a software package, known as Horizon, which turned out to be less than secure. After a few years, discrepancies in returns from sub-postmasters, resulted in over 700 being accused of fraud, over 100 jailed and careers, if not lives, ruined.

Although senior management was aware of flaws in Horizon, Vennells maintained that neither software, nor P.O. Counters management could be at fault. Despite the scale of outrage, she continued rigorous interviewing of victims on presumption they were guilty.

This policy continued after she left her post in 2019. She then served as a Non-Executive Board Member at the Cabinet Office between 2019 and 2020. After that, Vennells received her CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours List “for services to the Post Office and to charity”.

In April 2021, thirty-nine of the convicted former postmasters had their convictions quashed, with a further twenty-two cases still being investigated. More cases are pending.

Ominously, her membership of the CofE Ethical Investment Advisory Group was terminated in 2021, followed by her resignation as chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, directorships at Morrison’s and Dunelm and as governor of Bedford School. Just shows you how quietly lucrative such careers cam ne…if you’re not found out.

But it would take five years, an ITV dramatisation and widespread outrage for Vennells to apologise and return her CBE.

“The Post Office’s conduct under Vennells’s leadership is an instance of appalling and shameful behaviour“

—Criminal Cases Review Commission

#1093—611 words