To mark International Women’s Day this year, we spoke to our Head of Research, Melanie Wilkes, about key issues facing women at work today, and what Government and employers need to do to improve job quality, security and flexibility for women across the country.

What does International Women’s Day - and it’s 2022 theme #BreakTheBias - mean to you?

Assumptions about women’s interests, ambitions and skills remain a real problem in our labour market. Many women feel side-lined when they have children or other caring responsibilities, particularly if they need to change their working hours.

It can be incredibly hard to progress in to work that is higher paid or has greater responsibility as a candidate looking to work part-time, and many carers don’t feel able to ask for the flexible working arrangements they need.

Research launched today from Business in the Community, The Prince’s Responsible Business Network, and Ipsos Mori found that nearly six out of ten women (58%) say caring responsibilities have stopped them applying for promotion or a new job, and one in five (19%) have left a job because it was too hard to balance work and care. The research also found that while 35% of all adults, and 44% per cent of working adults, have caring responsibilities, they are not spread equally. Women account for 85% of sole carers for children and 65% of sole carers for older adults.

I work a compressed week, which over the last few years has given me a huge amount of freedom. It’s allowed me to combine work with learning to drive; with counselling, and with studying for a degree. These days it means I can spend time with my Dad and get outside more often than I otherwise would, which means I feel much more on top of my mental health.

I’m not a parent or carer, but like many people, I really value being able to work flexibly. If we can move towards embracing flexible work as the norm for all workers, we’ll go some way to breaking the biases that hold back many women – especially mothers – in the world of work.

What are the key challenges affecting women’s progression in the workplace today? Has Covid-19 compounded these challenges or created new opportunities?

While there has been a sharp and welcome increase in the proportion of women in work over recent years, women are more likely to be in low paid and insecure work than men, we continue to face a pay gap with lower earnings and pensions savings, and are still under-represented in senior roles.

According to new research from the Living Wage Foundation, one in five women in work (20.4%) are paid below the real Living Wage (approximately 2.9m people) compared to 14% of men (1.9 million). As a result, jobs held by women account for almost 60 per cent (59.7%) per cent of all jobs paid below the Living Wage.

Successive Governments have taken steps to try and address this, requiring larger employers to report on gender pay gap data and introducing shared parental leave, but these measures haven’t delivered meaningful improvements in women’s opportunities and experiences at work.

While overall we haven’t seen the fall in employment among women we might have expected at the start of the pandemic, women are over-represented in many of the sectors that were worst affected: from hospitality to retail to teaching. Women were more likely to have absorbed childcare responsibilities during school and nursery closures, and as the TUC has highlighted, navigating this additional work alongside their job has had a concerning impact on mothers’ mental health.

What should be done to improve flexibility for women whose roles cannot be done remotely (e.g. those working in retail, health and social care)?

It’s important to remember there are many forms of flexibility. As we highlighted in our recent joint research with CMI, not all jobs can be done remotely, and remote working is not for everyone. Employers need to consider that for some employees, remote work can cause isolation or anxiety, and those without an appropriate workspace at home may need access to the workplace.

Allowing women more choice about when and how they work is hugely important in supporting us to stay in work and progress through our careers. For example, annualised hours contracts allow workers to increase their working hours during some periods of the year, and reduce them at others (such as school holidays) while offering continuous, stable pay.

What should Government’s top priority be this year, in terms of tackling gender inequality at work?

Can I have two?!

Improvements to our benefits system would help to ensure mothers and carers are getting the right level of support in and out of work. That should involve increasing the basic allowance of Universal Credit, and providing support for childcare costs up front, rather than in arrears.

Government should improve employment law, by providing employees and workers with a right to flexible work. At the moment, we have a right to ask for flexible working, but employers can refuse requests for a range of reasons, and Timewise Foundation have found that many candidates don’t feel able to ask for flexibility where it isn’t specifically advertised.

These changes could make a meaningful difference for women across the country, ensuring it pays to stay in work if that’s what they want to do. But more than that, by facilitating flexibility and unlocking childcare for women on low incomes, we would also be signalling that women’s work and careers are valued, taking a step towards breaking the bias.

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