Women in the workplace — the pay gap, the perception gap, and equality
The 8th March is International Women’s Day.*
I have mixed feelings about ‘Awareness Days’ — too often they’re used as a lazy marketing hook, paying lip-service rather than pushing for change.
Besides that, there are almost too many to keep up: in the UK, March is National Bed Month. This week? National Pie Week.
But we digress: this email is about how, for all the milestones, ministerial maternity leaves and movements of the last few months, the fight for gender equality in the workplace still has such a long way to go.
And equality isn’t just about the gender pay gap either.
McKinsey’s 2017 Women in the Workplace Report highlighted a host of areas in which women are underrepresented, under-promoted, and undervalued in the workplace — both consciously and unconsciously. It found women disadvantaged at every stage, in every industry, by the simple virtue of their gender: from the micro inequalities (tea-break gender bias is, unbelievably, still a thing) to the Big Four: recruitment, growth/training, leadership and support. Throw race into the equation and we have a whole other email.
Researchers also found that 63% men feel their company is doing ‘everything they can’ to improve gender diversity, compared to only 49% of women. In other words, many (but, to coin a hashtag, #notallmen) assume that in the quest for workplace equality, we’re already there. We’re not.
That’s why it’s worth marking ‘days like this’ — to ensure that the path to change isn’t hindered by a preventable perception gap.
The good news is, awareness and action are rising up in equal measure: from viral calls-to-inclusion, to EU-wide quotas and campaigns for flexible working.
And startups like Landit — founded and run by Lisa Skeete Tatum — are particularly exciting, recognising that for women “the challenges of advancement and engagement are more acute”. Landit has been called ‘the new LinkedIn for Women’, but the professional playbook is more than that — providing tools, expert advisors and help with personal branding in a membership based app.
But what can you do, today, right now?
Clue: unlike in Russia, it doesn’t involve flowers — and ‘making the tea’ definitely won’t cut it.
Start by making a personal or organizational commitment to gender parity, however large or small your sphere of influence. Every pledge makes a difference in the #pressforprogress
OR (and, preferably)
Encourage female colleagues (and bosses!) to set their day by the 79% Work Clock — which calculates the real-time effect of the gender pay gap. Assuming a 9–5, that means either clocking off at 3:20 pm or coming in at 10:20 am.
Anyway, Happy International Women’s Day for Thursday. Forward this to your friends, sisters, colleagues, and anyone else who believes in a fairer business world.
Evan
*Coincidentally, March 8th is also the day the New York Stock Exchange was founded. Two hundred (and one) years on, only 27 of the Fortune 500 companies are led by female CEOs. Proof that for however far we think we’ve come, we’re not there yet.
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