25 Mar Gender Equality in 2022

Since at the beginning of March we celebrated Women’s day, we decided to gather some interesting facts and data about gender equality in the workplace.

Gender Gap

To start with, here is an image that shows the progress of women inclusion in different fields comparing the gender gap in 2018 and in 2021:

Image: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2021

As Sue Duke – Vice President, Head of Global Public Policy & Economic Graph, LinkedIn – comments in this article, “Our data also shows worrying signs that women are not fairly represented in the jobs of tomorrow. These are the jobs that are shaping the future of our economy and are likely to provide a large volume of employment opportunities. They include areas that are critical for our societies, such as the technology sector and the green economy. These jobs are often well-paid and our data shows that they are more resilient in times of crises than other jobs. Getting more women into the jobs of the future is critical and we cannot lose more time. We need to act now.”

To read more details, please download here the complete Global Gender Gap report 2021.

Women and the Pandemic

Here is a short video message on Women and the consequences of the pandemic by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. As you will hear, he helps us reflect on the how Covid19 limited or even reduced the progress that had been made. What could businesses do to improve such situation?

AI on the working lives of women

Businesses can certainly play an important role in women’s inclusion starting from the hiring process. And in this regard, here is an interesting study about the effects of AI on the working lives of women published in a joint collaboration between UNESCO, the OECD and the Inter-American Development Bank. As stated in the conclusion, this report outlines the opportunities and challenges that AI could present for the working lives of women. It does so by exploring the impact of new and emerging AI technologies on the skills employers will require, on how women look for and are hired for jobs, and on how jobs are structured through automated monitoring and oversight.

Women Face a Double Disadvantage in the Hybrid Workplace

Thinking about the new ways of working, here is another enlightening perspective. In this article from the Harvard Business Review, the author Martine Haas believes that “we can be cautiously optimistic about how women will fare in a flexible hybrid system, where they work remotely some of the time but in the office at least some of the time. On the other hand, though, there are pretty compelling reasons to be less optimistic about how women will fare in a fixed hybrid system, where they work remotely full-time while at least some of their colleagues are co-located. Especially here, leaders must be aware that women risk being doubly disadvantaged by working remotely in a hybrid system.”

How is your company contributing to women’s inclusion and helping reaching gender equality?

Gaia Urati