Where are all the women?

It’s not news that the watch industry is dominated by men. However, a report unveiled at the end of last year compiled by Watch Femme, the Geneva-based non-profit association that promotes female voices across the watch world on women in watches concluded the inevitable – women are underserved at every level from CEO to consumer.

Aside from a lack of visibility, one thing did beg a question, especially after seeing content produced at a recent microbrand event where every single founder interview was male: why are there no, or rather so few, female-led microbrands in our industry? Fashion and jewellery – industries that could be considered ‘watch adjacent’ – have plenty, why is the watch world so poorly served?

“It’s true that women founders and designers are few and far between in the world of microbrands, and I think that’s explained by representation in the watch industry at large,” says Sarah Baumann, recently appointed COO at Christopher Ward and one of the few women occupying a senior position in a UK watch brand. “To create a diverse pipeline of founders, you need to have healthy diversity all the way up, but particularly at senior levels and over a number of years.”

Diversity is somewhat of an issue in the watch world and not just gender diversity either. However, to focus on the latter, women are being failed consistently. Take the easiest route into finding out about watches – the media. Broadly speaking men are first made aware of watches, or used to be, before the rise of blogs, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, through magazines. Even now, if you look purely at print media, magazines such as GQ and Esquire carry numerous watch articles on a monthly basis as well as rounding out the year with bumper watch supplements.

Of course, this is facilitated by advertising – the symbiosis between it and editorial is well documented – which is why the front of most men’s magazines have runs of well-designed double-page watch ads with an aesthetic carefully curated for maximum appeal. Women have none of that access. There is precious little proper, informative watch editorial in women’s titles, the knock-on effect of this is few adverts, let alone ones for which a marketing agency has actually put in any thought, which in that wonderfully circular way advertising and editorial work, means few watches on the product or style pages.

This, as Dr Rebecca Struthers, co-founder of Struthers London, author, and the only person to be awarded a PhD in horology, points out, has a direct effect on women thinking watchmaking or running a watch business is a viable career option. “There is a lack of support we get from a lot of the mainstream watch press and the lack of acknowledgement we receive from other watchmakers too,” she says. “I’m so tired of seeing male watchmakers I know who slide into my DMs [‘direct messages’] asking for support, which I do, and share all our contacts etc, then whenever they’re interviewed their inspiration is a list of men. I can only remember one guy namechecking me as an inspiration which meant a lot! Press support seems to be limited to a few amazing journalists such as Tracey Llewellyn [global editorial director for watch magazine Revolution] rather than a concerted effort by the industry as a whole. Publications themselves should really be getting around a table to look for bias in their reporting.”

Independent watchmaker Fiona Kruger agrees. “Before I started my journey into horology, I didn’t think watches were ‘for me’,” she says. “This was more about how they were presented and talked about rather than not seeing other women in positions within the industry. The messaging didn’t resonate with me at all. It seemed like an exclusive world (and I mean that in the sense of a closed ‘club’), all about status, which I didn’t relate to.”

Representation aside, probably the greatest barrier to women wanting to set up microbrands is access to financing across the board. According to British Business Bank, the government-owned economic bank that helps businesses in the UK access finance, for every pound of UK venture capital investment, less than one penny went to all-female founder teams in 2019 (with 89 pence in the pound going to all-male equivalents). The view of women as risk-averse was cited as a contributing factor as many investors see risk-taking as part of a successful financial strategy.

“Women are underserved at every level from CEO to consumer”

“I’d say the struggle of setting up a business and accessing finance is a major factor as watchmaking companies are expensive to set up,” says Struthers. “They also usually take time to turn a profit so require an even higher degree of faith and understanding from lenders/investors.” This is something with which Baumann agrees. “Building a successful microbrand is far from easy,” she says. “We have a thriving scene here in the UK – as evidenced by British Watchmakers’ Day. It’s growing a new audience and helping to ignite people’s interest in both wearing, understanding and collecting watches, which can only be a good thing. But it’s not an easy undertaking, as all microbrand founders will attest, with a complex and expensive supply chain and a specific and small talent pool.”

This may feel like an impossible situation for women wanting to set up a watch business, however, there are chinks of light. The presence of high-profile women such as Struthers, whose book charting a history of humanity through timekeeping, Hands of Time, was featured on Radio 4, gives young female watchmakers someone to whom they can aspire.

Sarah Baumann too is proof that a female perspective is valuable at boardroom level, while at the major players, the likes of Carole Forestier-Kasapi, head of movement creation at TAG Heuer; Anne-Gaëlle Quinet, head of complications at Audemars Piguet, and Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG)-winning watchmaker and founder of Maison Alcée, Alcée Montfort, show that getting your head around how a balance wheel works isn’t just the preserve of the hairier sex.

“It’s an interesting question to consider what innovation and change more female founders and senior leaders would bring to the watch industry,” says Sarah. “In my experience there’s no doubt that women and other underrepresented communities bring new perspectives and tangible results to businesses – even when their primary audience is male.”

Baumann has a point. The watch world need only look at fashion, jewellery, and even her previous industry, advertising, where the inclusion of more women on creative teams led to blue liquid being retired to advertise sanitary products, to see how expanding the pool of talent can be revolutionary. What Sarah seems to be saying is that the watch world’s future could be bright, especially if it’s more female.