Are employers really committed to gender diversity?

It was something that was noticeable when I did a short article on the financial services sector just after the closing date for filing. Very few employers I looked at published any narrative and those that did often didn’t really do more than skim the service. It’s a shame and it shows that interest in real change is not a high priority, despite all words to the contrary. If you really want to change things then you need to understand what lies behind the figures and drill down. Moreover, as the bald figures often don’t tell the whole story – for instance, the gap can get wider if you employ more women at the bottom to increase female representation – there is even more reason arguably to provide an explanation.

Have we all become too used to some of the main reasons – not enough women in the middle ranks and above as women drop out or move sideways once they become mothers?  Does it all feel just too much like hard work for little reward? The truth is that it is hard and progress is slow.

Hybrid working has undoubtedly helped women, but many employers seem to be rowing back on the flexibility to choose options that suit particular individuals best and imposing a set number of days in the office a week. The carrot didn’t work so now the stick seems to be coming into play. The labour market is turning too, with more redundancies likely to be on the way. Moreover, whether hybrid and remote workers get sidelined is still something that employers need to keep a watch over. To be fair, many that I talk to do seem to be checking the data on this, but many others will not be doing so or will not have the capacity to do so.

In the face of slow or no progress on gender equality, fatigue can set in. It takes a lot of energy to galvanise yourself to keep going, particularly at the level of fury of some Twitter campaigns. It feels so much like Groundhog Day sometimes, although progress is undoubtedly being made in many places. It’s just that the barriers just keep shape shifting and the enormous challenges of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis always seem to hit the most vulnerable most. I’ve lost interest in all the ‘it will take 30/40/100 years for equality to be achieved’ stories – mainly because they assume that progress is linear. Maybe we need to believe that to keep going, but progress is never guaranteed. It has to be fought for continuously. That requires resilience and ongoing commitment.

Too often these days we focus on the new – the new trends, the new initiatives and so forth. But it is the ongoing, day-to-day work that shows the real evidence of commitment to change and should be celebrated and acknowledged more.

Employers can do their bit by publishing narratives and action plans, explaining their figures and how they have a plan to harness a variety of different initiatives and cultural change to ensure those women who want to can progress up the ladder. If they don’t bother to even do that, it kind of suggests that they are not really serious about diversity, which will have implications for their ability to withstand the next wave of changes in the workforce. What’s more they should be under no illusion that jobseekers are looking more and more at any data available. They will draw their own conclusions in the absence of any explanations. And the movement to make action plans mandatory will only grow stronger.