Coronavirus: Could this be a turning point for better gender balance in business?

This article by Joy Burnford originally featured as a post for Cityworks Expert Advice in May 2020.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is predicting it will take 202 years for the economic global gender gap to close. We want to see this tipping point brought forward.  WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report showed the UK went from 15th to 21st in a year, and its founder Klaus Schwab said "This year’s report highlights the growing urgency for action".

At the start of this year, My Confidence Matters launched a campaign, inviting people to take action towards gender equality (#2020actions). The goal was to encourage 2,020 people (men and women) to commit to do one thing to bring the workplace closer to gender equality.

Simon Gallow, former Development Director at UN Women UK, supports our campaign: “One of the most important things businesses need to do is to reframe the narrative around gender equality so that we move away from considering it to be a women's issue to be solved by women. In reality, it affects everyone including men, whether it’s their wellbeing, their choices as fathers or their job opportunities for the future. If we reframe the narrative to include men, then in reality everyone truly benefits.”

Unfortunately, the campaign came to a rather abrupt halt in March, when everyone’s focus – quite rightly – turned to managing through the crisis and survival during these unprecedented times. So much changed overnight.  Organisations had to set up remote working for their employees, alter vital systems and processes, and parents were suddenly expected to educate their children from home.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives pretty much dropped off the business agenda and unsurprisingly the Government Equalities Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission withdrew the requirement for companies to report their gender pay gap.

Over the past couple of months, like many others, my colleagues and I have been juggling ‘home schooling’, cooking, cleaning and running a business. Whilst this has meant a pause in our #2020actions campaign, it has also given us time to reflect on the impact this crisis might have on gender balance in business more broadly.

Last year, My Confidence Matters carried out a survey of 2,500 people and produced a report called ‘Career confidence and the path to leadership’. In the survey women said that the two most significant things that had had an impact on their career choices to date were 'Health and well-being' and ‘Lack of flexible working’.

Coronavirus has spread one thing we were not expecting: the immediate shift by organisations to enable employees to work flexibly, and from home.  We know that many organisations will not go back to traditional 9-5 office work, and many will want to keep this new flexible business model alive.  So, once we move on from 2020, could this crisis be a catalyst for the flexibility we’ve been begging for and give women and men more opportunity to find balance in their home and work life enabling them to be better at both?

Or is there a more fundamental cultural shift that needs to take place? This is a subject we’re passionate about and we’d love to hear your views as we explore this further with new research over the summer.

Flexibility is certainly not the answer to a more gender balanced organisation, but by ensuring employees are given a choice in how and where they work, it is a step in the right direction.

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