diversity

Successes and Failures – reflections on women’s progress in 2019

10 March, 2020 By WiC

Liz Walker, Commercial Director at Distinctly, reflects on the successes and failures for women in 2019.

Like any year, 2019 has been a mixture of successes and failures for women’s rights. This is true whether we are talking about the rights of women in employment, women in the wider UK, or for women worldwide. One of the truly positive notes to come from the December 2019 Westminster election was that this Parliament has the most female MPs in history, and for the first time, more than a third of MPs are women. On the other hand, women at intersections with other minority groups, for instance LGBT women or women with disabilities, are facing a more hostile working and living environment than ever before. For International Women’s Day 2020, while we need to celebrate the great strides that have been made, we must also discuss the room for improvement that remains.

Successes

Highest proportion of women in work ever

One of the most positive statistics this year was that in August, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced that the number of women in employment was at its highest level in history, at 15.46 million. This number has continued to rise into early 2020, with a new record already established at 15.61 million women in employment, equating to 72.4% of the women’s labour market. This continuing growth in women’s employment highlights that employers are becoming far better at hiring female candidates. Given that this growth in women in employment is credited with the growth in the UK economy that has occurred since 2012, this is a fantastic note of positivity.

Rise in working mothers

A major driving factor behind the growth of women in employment is that mothers are now far more likely to continue working, with approximately 72% of working-age mothers now remaining in paid work. While there is still a tendency for women who are parents to move from full-time to part-time work, this is still a positive trend, and has helped lead to a massive rise in the number of dual-earning families. This is believed to have been driven by a rise in flexible working opportunities.

1 in 3 FTSE 100 directors are now women

For the first time in history, 1 in 3 individuals on the boards of FTSE 100 companies are women. While this number falls behind target for the wider FTSE 350, this is still a fantastic growth given that only a decade ago women made up only 12.5% of FTSE 100 board members. With a growth in women in leadership roles, we can expect changes in wider workplace culture to continue at an ever accelerating rate. However, we still need to bear in mind that this is only the start of the change that is needed. The report also stresses the fact that some roles, such as finance directors, are still well below the 33% target, showing there is still significant room for improvement.

Failures

Statistics fail to show underlying problems

Unfortunately, while there are some very positive statistics for 2019, they fail to account for some underlying structural problems. First, women are still expected to be the primary provider of childcare, carrying out 60% more unpaid work than men, especially in terms of childcare provision. This is partly influenced by the fact that Shared Parental Leave, designed to allow parents to split the workload of looking after their newborn between them, has seen abysmal uptake. Only 9,200 new parents used the scheme in 2017/18, which was just over 1% of those eligible, highlighting the fact that cultural changes around childcare are far from complete. This has certainly not been helped by the fact that the cost of childcare for children under 2 has risen by 5%, meaning that in attempting to return to work, many women would actually be incurring a financial cost.

Similar socio-cultural issues can be seen elsewhere — for instance, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), women are still expected to undertake the majority of housework. This is believed to be a major factor behind many parents not taking up full-time roles when they return to work, even where it has a major impact on their pay. These underlying cultural problems are being slowly eroded, but they are still impacting the ability of working women to work in the roles they would like to, due at least in part to the need to balance their responsibilities as primary caregiver to their children against pursuing their careers.

Women are still facing pay-based discrimination, even in government

Mandatory gender pay gap reporting has now existed for companies with 250 employees and above for three years. Despite this fact, women are still routinely being paid less than their male colleagues, with little change to the 11% average pay difference seen over the past two years. Even women employed directly by the government, who purport to be looking to end discrimination against women, are failing to be paid an equal wage for the work they do. While 13 of the 18 government departments large enough to conduct reporting had managed to decrease their gender pay gap, one saw no change, and the remaining four saw an increase. Of the 18 departments, only one, the Department for Work and Pensions, had no reported gender pay gap. This raises serious questions about how the government could possibly hope to succeed in changing the private sector pay gap when it is busy failing its female employees.

Women in niche industries are still being failed by employers

Across the STEM and creative industries, women are still being left behind. While there are definitely positives, such as the number of women engineers doubling in the past decade, and 1 million women now working in STEM occupations, this shift has not been occurring consistently. In some sectors within STEM, women have actually dropped as a percentage of the workforce despite increased numbers, due to an even higher number of men entering these fields. A good example of this is Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) managers, where despite growing every year since 2015, the number of women in SET has dropped heavily as a percentage.

In fact, between June 2018 and June 2019, over 300,000 men entered STEM employment, compared with only 150,000 women. With men thus offering an even larger proportion of the overall talent pool, they are statistically more likely to receive promotions and pay rises, further contributing to the marginalisation of women in the STEM workforce.

This same struggle can be seen in the creative industries. Despite a 30.6% growth in the creative industries between 2011 and 2018, women still make up only 37% of the employees, with a growth rate of under 3% in the past 6 years. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of women in creative fields actually dropped, despite overall growth. Clearly, despite the fact that the picture across the wider workforce looks so positive, for women in STEM or the creative industries, there is a lot of work still to be done. As two major growth industries in the UK for the past decade, continued domination of these fields by men implies that — without major changes — gender imbalance in the UK economy is likely to persist for a long time.

See also Visualizing the data: Women’s representation in society (released by the UN)

Equality – The long and winding road with no end in sight

8 March, 2020 By WiC

On International Women’s Day 2020

Women in the insurance and financial services sector are effectively working 123 days, more than a third of the year, for free. That’s twice the average across all sectors.
There are still only 6 female CEOs in the FTSE 100.
Three quarters of women say their workplace makes it more challenging for women to advance their careers than men and nearly half of men agree with them.
Globally, the WEF anticipates the economic participation gap between women and men will take 257 years to close.

Women are still in the minority while representing 50 percent of the population

At the beginning of March The Hampton Alexander Review announced that it had sent letters to 63 companies asking how they intended to improve their gender diversity. The majority of these companies were FTSE 250 and 350, but the Review’s letters include 4 FTSE 100 companies, which despite having reached the 30 percent target of having board positions filled by women, still have all male executive committees. Moreover, men are still seven times more likely to be finance directors than women.

The Fawcett Society’s Sex and Power Index 2020 reported a “Dismally slow pace of change with stark inequalities continuing to thrive in the UK today.”

No matter what sector of business or society is considered, women are still in the minority whilst representing half of the population. Only 2 out of 12 Supreme Justices are female and in the Civil Service and Academia women account for around 30 percent of senior roles. In Parliament, women make up 34 percent of MPs and 27 per cent of Peers.

It’s a global issue

These UK figures are mirrored globally. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, reveals that gender parity will not be attained this century.

Drilling down into the facts and figures, it will take 95 years to close the gender gap in global political representation, with women in 2019 holding 25.2% of parliamentary seats and 21.2% of ministerial positions.

And in terms of global economic participation, the WEF anticipates the gender gap will take 257 years to close. Worryingly, this is an increase of over 25 per cent on its 2019 report. Yes, we’re going backwards.

Female FTSE 100 CEOs and the Pipeline

Returning to the UK and representation of women at the top of business, there are currently 6 female FTSE 100 Chief Executives. That’s the same number as two years ago and when one steps down, a female replacement is by no means guaranteed. More positively, the FTSE 100 insurance company, Admiral, announced on 5 March that Milena Mondini de Focatiis, who is currently head of UK and European insurance, will take over as CEO next year.

Whether women with the necessary skills, experience and ability aren’t in the workforce or whether those carrying out executive search simply aren’t looking for them, is a moot question.

Many senior women in professional services feel that the situation is no better, perhaps worse, than when they started work in the 70s and 80s. They now see women and men entering their professionals in equal numbers. Yet, for the last decade the percentage of senior roles held by women remains around 25 percent and when they look at the women coming through the organisation, there simply aren’t enough of them still in the workforce in their 40s to make a significant impact at the very top.

A Grant Thornton report released in 2017 revealed that the UK was in the bottom 6 countries in the world for female representation in senior management roles. This is nothing short of shocking.

It’s not surprising that senior and junior women alike are concerned by the low numbers of females progressing within their organisations. As we move towards the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the picture is pretty grim.

Retaining women beyond their late 30s is a significant issue. And women drop out not just because of what’s known as the “motherhood” penalty but for other reasons, too. Many of them to do with corporate culture. Of course younger women ask questions about how they will manage a career and bringing up a family, but they also talk about the barriers that still exist for women progressing their careers.

Workplace culture isn’t female friendly and men agree

Research published in 2019 by Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, backs up this view on cultural barriers. In a survey of nearly 6000 employees, split 53 per cent male, 47 per cent female, it discovered that 74 per cent of UK female employees said that their workplace culture makes it more challenging for women to advance their careers than men and, interestingly, 42 per cent of men agreed.

Interestingly, 81 percent of senior female employees said that their workplace culture presented career advancement challenges for women, yet only 72 percent of junior female employees reported those same challenges.

Surprisingly half of senior female employees report they face these challenges ‘always’ or ‘often’ indicating that “things get worse not better” as women progress their careers.

Young women and men enter professional services in equal numbers and are confident that they’ll compete with their male colleagues on an equal basis, but by their late 20s, early 30s the men begin to push back. The women are surprised and often for the first time realise that the playing field in the workplace, unlike that at school, university, graduate entry programme isn’t as level as they thought. In fact, they realise that not only is the playing field not level, they’re not even sure of the rules of the game.

The classic cartoon showing a group of men and one woman seated around a boardroom table illustrates perfectly one of the issues.

There isn’t a woman who hasn’t experienced saying something that goes unheard only to find that when a man says the exact same thing it’s lauded as a “great idea”. Not only is the woman not heard, the man gets the credit. It’s a double whammy that hits really hard.

Yet the Murrays Edwards research reveals that the commonly viewed challenges for women such as their being interrupted in meetings, not being credited for their work and men having access to informal networks and sponsors are ranked far lower than expected.

What comes at the very top are women being judged more negatively when they behave like men, and men and women being evaluated differently.

Emma Codd, Managing Partner for Talent at Deloitte, was Women in the City’s Woman of Achievement Award Winner in 2015. When questioned about her success in increasing the number of female partners at the firm by 18 percent in one year, Emma She said she had questioned every unreasonable reason “not” to promote women – for example saying

“She’s not quite ready” or “She has a two year old, she’s probably going to have another child” or “Her husband’s recently been promoted, she’ll need to support him”. These “reasons” are rarely, if ever, said about men.

However, effecting deeply embedded cultural change, that is societal as well as organisational, is difficult.

Will the situation improve?

The Women in the City Knowledge Bank features many of the reports that have been published in the last 10 years. These put forward the case for increasing the numbers of women in senior roles – but very little has changed. There have been initiatives, there have been programmes. All try to “fix” women, but women don’t need fixing so it’s not surprising that we’re getting nowhere fast.

The Women’s Business Council 2017 Report predicted that by 2024, the UK would need nearly 2 million new managers and if those roles were to be split equally between men and women, 1.5 million of those new managers would need to be women.

Currently, 73% of entry-level roles are occupied by women, yet only 34% of managers, directors and senior officials in the UK are women. In the 6 years to 2017 this proportion increased by only one percentage point.

These figures indicate the scope of the problem. It’s a very long winding road and the end is way, way ahead.

For more on this top, listen to WiC’s Founder, Gwen Rhys, debut CityNatters podcast

Gender parity will not be attained this century says WEF

13 January, 2020 By WiC

None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years.

Why gender parity matters

Gender parity has a fundamental bearing on whether or not economies and societies thrive. Developing and deploying one-half of the world’s available talent has a huge bearing on the growth, competitiveness and future-readiness of economies and businesses worldwide.

The index’s rankings offer an effective means to benchmark progress. They are designed to create global awareness of the challenges that gender gaps pose, as well as the opportunities that emerge when action is taken to reduce them.

Political representation on the rise, but is it enough?

Now in its 14th year, the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 benchmarks 153 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment. In addition, this year’s report examines gender gap prospects in the professions of the future.

The report presents a decidedly mixed picture. Overall, the quest towards gender parity has improved, ducking back under a century and registering a marked improvement on the 108 years in the 2018 index. Greater political representation for women has contributed to this, but overall the political arena remains the worst-performing dimension.

At the other end of the scale, it is forecast to take just 12 years to attain gender parity in education, and in fact, overall, gender parity has been fully achieved in 40 of the 153 countries ranked.

The “role model effect” reaps dividends at the top …

Drilling down into the facts and figures, it will take 95 years to close the gender gap in political representation, with women in 2019 holding 25.2% of parliamentary (lower-house) seats and 21.2% of ministerial positions.

Positively, the so-called “role model effect” may be reaping dividends in terms of leadership and wages. Improving political empowerment for women has, as a general rule, corresponded with increased numbers of women in senior roles in the labour market.

… but not lower down

In contrast to this positive progress in the lofty world of leadership, women’s participation in the wider labour market has stalled and financial disparities are increasing. Globally, the trend is towards a deteriorating picture in emerging and developing economies, which is offsetting the gains made in OECD countries.

Although education attainment as well as health and survival enjoy much closer to parity (96.1% and 95.7% respectively), one important area of concern is that of economic participation and opportunity. This is the only dimension where progress has regressed. Here, the figures are sobering, with a deteriorating situation forcing gender parity to a lowly 57.8%, which in time represents a massive 257 years before gender parity can be achieved.

The report highlights three primary reasons for this: women have greater representation in roles that are being automated; not enough women are entering professions where wage growth is the most pronounced (most obviously, but not exclusively, technology), and women face the perennial problem of insufficient care infrastructure and access to capital.

Working towards a better outlook for future jobs

Looking to the future, the report reveals that the greatest challenge preventing the economic gender gap from closing is women’s under-representation in emerging roles. In cloud computing, just 12% of professionals are women. Similarly, in engineering and Data and AI, the numbers are 15% and 26% respectively.

Gender Parity in Professions

To address these deficiencies, workforce strategies must ensure that women are better equipped (in terms of improved skills or reskilling) to deal with the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Diverse hiring is another area for improvement (reflecting the current situation that sees gender parity in an in-demand skillset but not equal representation), along with creating inclusive work cultures.

Best in class

The top country for gender parity remained Iceland (for the 11th year running).
The most-improved countries were Albania, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico and Spain.
Of the 149 countries ranked, 101 improved their scores on the 2019 index (this excludes the five new countries that have joined the ranking this year).
A further 48 saw their performance unchanged, while the top 10th percentile saw their scores improve more than 3.3% year-on-year.
A total of 35 countries have achieved gender parity in education.
In healthcare, 48 countries have achieved near-parity and 71 have closed at least 97% of the gap.

Could do better

Globally, gender parity stands at 68.6% and the bottom 10 countries have closed just 40% of the gender gap.
Political empowerment scores are poor. In terms of parliamentary representation, globally women have secured just 25% of available positions, a figure that slips to 21% at a ministerial level. At this level, there are nine where they have no representation.
In the past 50 years, 85 states have had no female head of state.
In terms of economic participation, the gender gap will take 257 years to close (compared to 202 years in the 2019 report).
Globally, only 55% of women (aged 15-64) are engaged in the labour market as opposed to 78% of men.
There are 72 countries where women are barred from opening bank accounts or obtaining credit.

There is no country where men spend the same amount of time on unpaid work as women. In countries where the ratio is lowest, it is still 2:1.

Trends

By region, Western Europe has made the most progress on gender parity (standing at 76.7%), followed by North America (72.9%), Latin America and the Caribbean (72.2%), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (71.3%), Sub-Saharan Africa (68.2%), South Asia (66.1%) and the Middle East and North Africa (60.5%).

These figures, however, mask several key trends, which have a significant impact on the time to gender parity. In North America progress stalled during 2019, while further south in Latin America and the Caribbean, several countries performed strongly over the course of the year.

How to get ahead

This year’s index highlights areas where policy-makers need to focus greater attention. At the federal level, greater political representation – and in some nations, any representation at all – for women is a pressing need.

Looking ahead, policy-makers need to take action to better equip younger generations – particularly in developing nations – with the skills to succeed in the world of future jobs. Increasing formal education attainment is necessary – and the strong gender parity in this area to be applauded – but it is insufficient to provide young men and women graduating from every level of education with the types of skills needed for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s job market. In this respect, gender gaps remain and are likely to become exacerbated unless addressed now.

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Visit our searchable Knowledge Bank for a range of reports and studies on gender diversity, leadership and related topics.

Step-change needed for women in senior leadership roles

13 November, 2019 By WiC

This year’s Hampton Alexander Review, published today shows the strongest year of progress since targets were first set in 2011:

FTSE 100 on track to reach the 33% target for women on boards ahead of the 2020 deadline o FTSE 250 made strong gains during the year and with sustained effort, will also meet the 2020 deadline
Last year’s challenge to “One & Done” boards is having an impact: there are 39 “this year, down from 74 with only 2 All-Male boards remaining

However, a step-change is needed for senior leadership roles below board level

50% of all appointments next year need to go to women, or the 2020 target will not be met.

The report shows that women now hold 32.4% of all FTSE 100 board positions, up from 30.2% last year and up from only 12.5% in 2011. The FTSE 100 is very close to meeting the 33% target for Women on Boards and will do so ahead of the 2020 deadline.

The report also shows that women hold 29.6% of all FTSE 250 board positions, up from 24.9% last year and only 7.8% in 2011. The FTSE 250 has had its strongest year yet and if the same rate of progress continues next year, the FTSE 350 will be on track to meet the 33% target by the end of 2020 deadline.

Not all companies are making the same efforts, and the gap between those working hard to improve gender balance and those doing little, is each year more obvious.

Only two All-Male Boards remain

Following successful campaigning and pressure from investors in the year, “One & Done” boards have reduced from 74 to 39 this year. This includes 11 new entrants to the index but 28 companies feature for the second year running. Only two All-Male boards remain, down from 5 this time last year and 152 in 2011.

Sir Philip Hampton, Chair of the Review said:

This is the penultimate Hampton-Alexander Report and we enter our final year with great momentum behind us, but we are still a long way from reaching the target for women in senior leadership roles below board level.

Denise Wilson, Chief Executive of the Review said:

There are over 900 women now serving on FTSE 350 boards, providing an ever-increasing pool of women with substantial board experience, yet only 25 women have been appointed into the Chair role, even fewer as women CEOs and showing little sign of change.

The very senior jobs were always going to be the hardest of challenges, however a stronger focus is now required at every stage of the appointment process to address the reasons why top jobs aren’t going to women”

Chris Cummings, Chief Executive of the Investment Association said:

Investors have been consistent in their demands for greater diversity. It’s not just a nice to have. The research is clear: firms with diverse boards and management teams make better decisions, drive innovation and outperform their less diverse peers.”

Melanie Richards, Deputy Chair at KPMG UK said:

Behind the numbers and trends are hundreds of individual stories. Women who have overcome barriers that they should not have had to overcome, with leaders and boards who have worked hard to remove those barriers for current and future generations.”

Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director general, said:

If all male boards are to become a thing of the past, firms must not take their foot off the pedal.”

She added that firms were “making less progress on the executive pipeline”.

We are still seeing too few women in senior leadership positions, whether as chief executive or running divisions.”

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Visit our searchable Knowledge Bank for a range of reports and studies on gender diversity, leadership and related topics.

Unpaid housework of 26 hours per week equals £11k per annum

30 October, 2019 By WiC

Whilst the number of women in employment is at its highest rate since records began, research by thinkmoney has uncovered that unfortunately, all isn’t as it seems.

After analysing the working patterns of Brits, their research has revealed that women make up two-thirds of all part-time roles. With part-time roles limiting employees progression, financial independence and retirement benefits – it is clear that there’s a part-time gender bias in Britain.

Morever, according to a recent study by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Brits are working two and a half weeks more, per year, than any other country in Europe.

While the average working week has decreased by 18 minutes over the last decade, at this rate it will take 63 years for British working patterns to match those elsewhere in Europe.

Key Findings

Women have more part-time roles than men – across all UK regions.

On average, women make up almost two-thirds (65%) of all part-time roles in the UK.
The ‘part-time gender bias’ is more prevalent in the North-East; women are responsible for almost three-quarters (71%) of all part-time roles

On the other hand, London has the least ‘part-time gender bias’. Women account for 51% of part-time roles (580k) whereas men make up a very close 49% (285k).

Revealed: Women Would Earn £11,009 From Unpaid Housework

With more women in part-time work, they naturally end up completing more work around the house – such as laundry, cleaning and for some, childcare.
However, this has led to women taking on 60% of all unpaid housework – each week women spend 26 hours on this, as opposed to men who complete 16 hours.
If women were to be paid for this housework, they would receive £11,009.

London workers put in the second least paid overtime hours in the country

London has one of the longest working weeks when adding together paid overtime and contractual hours (38.4 hours), but workers in the capital are only reported to work 176.8 hours paid overtime, along with the North East and South West. However, these figures only reflect paid overtime and it’s possible that the unreported, unpaid figures could be much higher.

Employees in South East work the lowest overtime hours

Workers in the South East put in the least paid overtime at only 166.4 hours (24 days). They work 62.4 hours less than Northern Ireland employees, or the equivalent of almost two working weeks.

The TUC estimates five million workers in the UK have put in more than £32 billion unpaid additional hours per year. So, overtime figures could be even higher than reported. Employees in Wales gave an extra £819 million of free labour in 2017.

Read about other geographical areas