According to the World Economic Forum’s annual Gender Gap Report[1], in 2020, the gender gap was set to close in 100 years. In 2021, in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, this number increased to 136 years and in 2022, the number was 132 years[2].
The UN takes an even more pessimistic view. On Tuesday, UN Secretary General António Guterres said that “Gender equality is growing more distant,” and puts it at 300 years away.
The latest report by Equileap, a gender data provider, confirms that progress is slow[3]. Equileap assesses more than 3,800 companies globally, based on criteria that focus on representation of women in senior leadership positions and across a company’s organisational levels, along with work-life balance policies and policies to address the gender pay gap and enable women to have the same opportunities as their male colleagues.
In 2023, the global average score increased from 37 out of 100 in 2022 to 41 out of 100 in 2023, but still, this is far way off from even an average (50 out of 100) score, let alone a good one.
“There are many contributing factors to this trend,” says Elli. “Some of these have to do with how recent global events have impacted women. The COVID pandemic and lockdowns put enormous pressure on working women around the world. Just look at ‘The Great Resignation’, where higher percentages of women left the workforce[4]. This trend has not been reversed.”
Additionally, the climate crisis has acquired a new urgency, following the extreme weather phenomena in many countries in the past few years and the report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that global warming is on a trajectory to surpass 1.5°C in the following decades and possibly 2°C[5].
“As a result, companies and investors are focusing on the E (“environmental”) rather than the S (“social”) part of the ESG discussion,” Elli adds. “Plus, the prolonged geopolitical conflict contributes to continued uncertainty and repeated cost increases for companies and investors.”
However, there is also something fundamentally flawed in terms of the language we use when we approach the issue of gender equality.
“Although a few years back the debate surrounding gender was dominated by SDG 5: Gender Equality[6], we have fallen back to addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as one category. This blurs the issues and leads to diluted, ineffective targets and policies.”
Diversity is about including people from different backgrounds and with different characteristics (e.g. age, gender, race etc.). This brings the focus to representation across a company or at the top. This is also confirmed by a report by Rights CoLab that reviewed 21 frameworks that contain explicitly labelled DEI metrics and found that the majority of them focus on representation[7].
As a result, company policies and reporting focus on representation, rather than actions to break the discriminatory practices that keep women from fulfilling their potential – and companies from accessing that talent.
“Empowering historically marginalised groups, such as women or ethnic minorities is not about filling in a quota in leadership and making the board more ‘diverse’,” Elli explains. “It is about breaking down barriers that these groups have been facing for decades, through unconscious bias training, gender-blind CVs, mentoring programmes and enabling policies.”
There are many ways companies can take action to put women on an equal footing with men:
- Signal a strong commitment to gender equality by singing up to the United Nation’s Women Empowerment Principles
- Start collecting gender/sex disaggregated data on retention rates, promotion rates and absentee rates.
We can only change, what we can measure.
- Support parenthood by providing paid paternity and maternity leave, beyond the legal requirement.
- Measure your gender pay gap, not only based on the UK legislative requirements, but also per occupation category.
There are also software programmes that can help to that.
- Implement unconscious bias training, gender-blind recruitment processes.
- Implement a gender audit, by bringing external companies to assess the levels of empowerment of your female
employees.
As with any purpose-led corporate initiative, progress on gender equality relies on more than well-worded messaging. It relies on strategic actions and policies, focused on women and their needs, and implemented at scale. Of course, it also relies on a company’s ability to measure progress and adjust policies if they are not yielding adequate results.
For more information about Gender Equality and steering your company towards solutions, get in touch enquiries@blacksun-global.com
[1] The gender gap measures the gap in terms of gender parity across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment). It is the longest-standing index which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2022 https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf
[2] World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2022 https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf
[3] Equileap, Gender Equality Global Report & Ranking, 2023 edition https://equileap.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Equileap_Global_Report_2023.pdf
[4] A Real-Time Look at ‘The Great Resignation:’ January 2022, February 11 2022, https://gusto.com/company-news/a-real-time-look-at-the-great-resignation-january-2022#Quits_by_Gender
[5] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Summary_Volume_Low_Res.pdf
[6] Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/
[7] What Is DEI? Market Signals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, August 15, 2022 https://rightscolab.org/what-is-dei-market-signals-of-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/
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