MORE women in top jobs is not such a distant dream according to one of Kent’s most accomplished and senior leaders.

University of Greenwich vice chancellor Baroness Blackstone told the bi-annual Women of Kent Luncheon that changes in social and professional areas are giving modern women far greater opportunities to surpass limitations than any generation before.

Speaking to an audience of more than 250 at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel, Hollingbourne, she said the high number of women now entering higher education was just one of the factors effecting these changes.

"When I first became an academic, there was a tiny number of women teaching at the London School of Economics. Today this is more likely to be 40 per cent or more," the Baroness pointed out.

Baroness Blackstone also highlighted the substantial increase in women entering university compared with 30 years ago. Figures today, she said, reach 60 per cent rather than the 25 per cent of the Sixties.

This, Baroness Blackstone said, showed the proportion of highly skilled women ready to fill top jobs in 10 or 20 years’ time would be larger than ever before.

The Medway-based university chief also pointed to changing attitudes towards work/life balance. With men now more willing to share in family duties, she was confident that more women would become judges, government ministers and top level executives in the future.

"This pool of talent will become more a lake, if not a sea or ocean," she said.

The Baroness said she believed it would take time for changes to filter through to all areas of private and public life but that she welcomed the progress made.

Baroness Blackstone said current generations could look to the future with optimism.

"A social revolution is taking place and both sexes will reach their potential as more and more young people in their twenties and thirties challenge traditional views of gender."

She finished by adding: "I think our granddaughters will make the most of their lives and will be a real match for our grandsons, who I think also will succeed in different ways to their predecessors."