Countless headlines this past year proclaimed that the pandemic has created a game changing acceptance of flexible working. What was previously a request commonly rejected as not being commercially viable, or, at best, accepted as a tolerated version of career plateau, is now being hailed as ‘the new normal’. Organisations in some sectors are making news by adopting home working as their permanent status quo. And yet, while this mindset change is a welcome one, we must approach any broader celebration with caution.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #ChooseToChallenge. It is well-timed. We face a real risk of being bewitched by the positive impact lockdown has had on flexible working and therefore, equality, and underestimating the immediate and, if we are not careful, long-term destruction of previously hard-won steps towards gender equality. We must, individually and collectively, resist the temptation of viewing the new engagement with the flexible and hybrid working model as a level-playing field achieved. A box ticked. A job done.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Report, How coronavirus has affected equality and human rights 2020, highlights the disproportionately negative effect the pandemic has had on women, in relation to access to paid work (and the high proportion affected by closures and redundancies), caring responsibilities and domestic abuse. Women of colour are even more disproportionately impacted. Now is not the time to be complacent.
So, what to do? In the equality space, we are often faced with a lot of talk and not a lot of practical takeaways. Let’s change that. Here are three suggestions for actions we all can take right now:
- Gender Pay Gap Reporting: Reporting obligations were scrapped last year and delayed this year. At RPC, we still reported our GPG stats last year and plan to do the same again this April. We do not view GPG reporting as a non-essential business activity. Female progression in the workplace is not a nice-to-have; it is critical to our future success. We choose to challenge you to report now.
- Domestic and economic abuse: The Women and Work All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Report, Women’s Wellbeing at Work: Toolkit and Annual Report 2020, highlights the sad fact that data from Refuge, which runs the National Domestic Abuse helpline, “shows more than 40,000 calls were made during the first three months of the COVID-19 restrictions as a result of lockdown and measures to limit movement, trapping many women at home with their abusers without access to safe spaces.” How can we challenge this tragic statistic? Leaders can ensure they are equipped to offer and facilitate support – logistical, financial, mental-health-wise etc, checking-in meaningfully with their teams, creating open lines of communication for their people, signposting organisations and charities supporting survivors. And we can all individually ensure we are listening to and looking out for each other.
- Caring responsibilities: The APPG Report also highlights research from the UCL Institute of Education demonstrating that among parents of school age children, mothers have been spending on average, five hours per day home schooling while fathers an average of two hours per day. Further surveys illustrate the mental health fallout from this extreme multi-tasking and the potential impact it has on women’s future career prospects. Women have disproportionately had to take annual leave and unpaid leave to help manage the juggle with many having to resort to a reduction in hours or leaving work altogether. Caring responsibilities falling predominantly to women is not news, but, for many, the pandemic has brought this fact into startling focus. Reopening of schools will not be a magic wand removing the impacts already being felt. Organisations need to think carefully about how they are addressing this impossible situation. These are unprecedented times that require unprecedented responses and levels of support. We challenge you to consider how you can support your colleagues with caring responsibilities: paid time off, flexible working, a compassionate approach to performance review and/or targets, additional benefits providing emergency childcare, managers who will let their team members decide how work has to work for them right now.
Despite the newly popular working from home model, gender equality is facing a potential set back. A worrying study by King’s College London: Unequal Britain: attitudes to inequality in light of Covid found that, of all the types of inequality between groups, the public are least concerned about income inequality between genders getting worse because of the pandemic. With this potential cognitive disconnect, it is going to take individuals and organisations to boldly challenge outdated ideas and be bold in building workplaces fit for the future. These are just three suggestions of places to start. You can take up these challenges or find your own ways to #ChoosetToChallenge. The important thing is that we keep challenging ourselves and each other.
Kelly Thomson is a partner and Rachel Pears is inclusion and diversity lead and internal employment counsel at RPC
