Women's History Month.....
….took place in March, with International Women’s Day on the 8th. The theme for this year’s Women’s History Month in the UK was to Honour Female Achievements at Work.
Who are the female achievers in your workplace?
Have you told them?
How about the notable female achievers in your industry or profession? Or wider society? For me, when I think of historical female achievement I think of the likes of Ada Lovelace, of the suffragettes, and of campaigners including Rosa Parks and Germaine Greer
For current notable female achievers in the public eye, I think of people such as Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Professor Hannah Fry, Malala Yousafzai and Sarina Wiegman. What’s great is that not only are female achievers being celebrated, they are becoming normalised.
But there is still a way to go in many workplaces. From pay gaps to promotion opportunities and career choices there is still work to be done to fully equalise gender differences. So, what can we learn from the current numbers and trends?
Initial evaluation of this year’s gender pay gap reporting by PWC shows the UK gender pay gap is narrowing but only slowly. Notably the research found women are on average still only paid 89p for every £1 paid to men.
But its not just pay where there are differences. We still see differences in diversity amongst senior professionals and Board members. We see differences in pension contributions, benefits and flexibility often as a result of having children and the societal differences in gender responsibility for childcare.
And that’s where much has to change – in society. For example, there’s a wide gender pay gap in the aviation industry – 33.5% in 2018, 28.5% based on partial reporting so far this year. However, pilots are generally paid much more than cabin crew….and boys grow up with the pilot ambition, girls more likely to aim for cabin crew.
How early does this stereotyping start? Just take a look in your local supermarket toy or clothing section....
This is just the fancy dress example – princesses for the girls, super heroes for the boys.
But you also see it in T-shirts choices, colour options, types of toys in each colour option, images on birthday cards, and so on.
And, we, as the adults, buy in to the stereotyping when we make our purchases, continuing the messaging about male and female roles in our society.
There’s so much gender messaging in society that research found children’s career ambitions are already limited by stereotyping by the age of seven!
I know we can’t tackle all of societies ills but we can be aware of the impact of stereotypes and related messaging and do our best for our children. And in the workplace, we can support initiatives that work to minimise the impact of gender differences, such as STEM events, job description wording reviewed to remove gendered language, reviewing promotion opportunities, improving flexible working uptake by both genders and more. If you want HR support on making a difference in this way, get in touch for a free, no obligation, chat on how I can help.
