The Secret Lives of MI6’s Top Female Spies
Helen Warrell’s piece in the Financial Times about women who work for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (aka MI6) is fascinating throughout. Warrell talked to three women who occupy three of the four directors-general positions in the agency, as well as women who used to work for the agency. It’s tough to find a single paragraph to excerpt in articles like this, but this passage is representative:
Recruiting and managing agents overseas was not always easy, especially when the template for the role was cartoonishly male. “Early in my career, it felt as if there were particular ways of behaving and getting things done which felt challenging,” says Kathy. “There was definitely some machismo around the idea of the lone operator.” Then, as now, bonding methods that worked in male-to-male relationships didn’t in female-to-male ones. “I would not necessarily sit up drinking whiskey all night with an agent,” she says, explaining that she had to make things work on her own terms, such as inviting people to her home, which immediately establishes a degree of trust. At one point, she took up golf in an attempt to build rapport with a prospective agent who was obsessed with the sport. It did not go well. “My golf teacher, on lesson three, just said, ‘This is not your game.’”
Kathy argues that, counter-intuitively, it is in the most conservative countries that women sometimes have the upper hand. “When you’re playing into a culture which is particularly male-dominated, women tend to be underestimated and therefore perceived as less threatening,” she says. “That’s been an advantage for me, because sometimes those individuals won’t necessarily see you coming. And it’s about their perceptions of SIS. They’re not necessarily expecting a younger woman to bowl up to them.” This element of surprise, she says, “can definitely be a secret sauce”.
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