A senior guy from the US moves to London to head up the UK operation. In his first week, 12 men come to his office to tell him who they are and what they do for the company. Not one woman does the same.

Is that why there are too few women at the top of law firms – because ‘nice girls don’t ask’?

This was the conundrum posed by Professor Susan Vinnicombe of Cranfield University when she gave the Association of Women Solicitors Fiona Woolf lecture last week. The lecture, ‘The myths of women and leadership’, questioned why there are just five CEOs of FTSE 100 companies when, research shows, women are every bit as ambitious and experienced as men, and often better educated.

Vinnicombe demolished myth after myth around women and leadership roles. One is that ‘women aren’t interested’ in getting to the top of the tree. Vinnicombe referred us to a study of women directors on FTSE 350 executive committees showing that 80% of them would like to be elevated to a non-executive directorship on a FTSE 100 corporate board.

Another myth is that ‘women haven’t got the right work experience’. This she dismissed with research into the work experience of new FTSE 100 directors from 2001-2004. The figures show women’s experience outstripping men’s in financial institutions, management consultancy, the law and other work areas. Men narrowly beat women in accountancy experience.

A third myth is that ‘women don’t take risks’, and her refutation of this was wideranging. It was ‘journalism at its worst’, with hacks picking and choosing the statistics to suit their argument. It was the ‘glass cliff’, where women are only given board positions when a company is in trouble and they are sure to fail ‘because of successive male failures’. Women are ‘risk aware’, Vinnicombe said, rather than ‘risk averse’. Men want to fix the deal here and now over drinks or dinner, whereas women are more likely to sleep on it and sign the contract in the morning.

And as for women leaving the profession ‘to become full-time parents’, research published in 1996 shows women move on because of a ‘perceived lack of career opportunities [and not for] family reasons’.

So is the problem really all down to ‘nice girls don’t ask’? Are women slow to blow their own trumpets, unlike males who like telling the world how great they are? The answer to that question is ‘probably’. Yet more research shows that when women have 30-minute interviews for high-flying jobs they are mostly unsuccessful. When the interviews are extended to 45 minutes, however, many more of them land the job. The explanation, Vinnicombe suggested, is ‘women take longer to get to promoting their own strengths.’

Let’s close with another anecdote, this time one told from the floor by retired solicitor Elizabeth Cruickshank. The anecdote encapsulates all the stereotypes: families are women’s work, men bring home the bacon. ‘I was talking to husband and wife solicitors,’ Cruickshank said. ‘The wife was pregnant, but both hoped her firm would be understanding.’