If we are not careful, the progress we have made toward parity could regress.
COVID-19 has upended the lives of us all. It has impacted how we work, where we work, and our work-life balance. However, as we learn more about the effects of the pandemic, there is increasing evidence that women have been disproportionately affected by these changes.
Although it is a long road toward achieving gender parity in the workplace, in 2019, the discussion was framed around successes on that front. Slowly, the number of women in senior leadership positions was growing and we could hear the glass ceiling beginning to crack. Then came 2020.
When the pandemic swept across the world, many people lost their jobs. Based on the employment demographics at the time, 43 percent of those affected should have been women. Instead, 54 percent of those who experienced job losses were women.
In part, women have been more disproportionately affected because they are more likely to have jobs that have been more negatively impacted by the pandemic. Women represent a large share of the workforce in the food and retail industries. But this is not the entire story. When we zoom into STEM sectors, we see a similar pattern of job loss.
In Australia, the country’s scientific and technical service industry recorded many job losses. But again, women were disproportionately affected. The industry recorded job losses of 4.8 percent for men and 6.3 percent for women. It is believed that women were affected more because in that sector, women tend to have short-term contract work as opposed to senior positions, which are more secure from layoffs.
Early research on the impact of the pandemic suggests that there are also issues rooted in an unequal division of labor within households. Stay-at-home measures led to an increase in unpaid care work done in households, which women are disproportionately responsible for. Even before COVID-19, women spent 21 hours a week completing domestic duties and caring activities, while men only spent 10.5 hours a week on average.
Stay-at-home orders have increased homeschooling, child supervision, meal preparation, and general housework. This increase in unpaid labor is compounding existing gender disparities.
Meanwhile, at work, employees are facing greater pressure to address the challenges raised by the pandemic. But few workplaces have adjusted their work-life balance policies to accommodate the increase in unpaid labor that their employees are performing. Employees are expected to keep up with pre-pandemic levels of productivity, which in many circumstances is unrealistic. This is leading to feelings of exhaustion and burnout among all staff, but more strongly among women.
These challenges are encouraging many women to consider leaving the workplace. The pressure is felt most greatly by mothers. When surveyed, 18 percent of mothers were considering leaving the workforce or taking a leave of absence, compared to 11 percent of fathers. If you look at parents with children under 10, that number rises to 23 percent in mothers, compared to only to 13 percent in fathers.
This Is Not a Just a Women’s Issue
The implications of losing women in the workplace will have impacts far beyond gender equality. McKinsey & Company is projecting that global GDP growth will be $1 trillion lower in 2030 if nothing is done to counter this gender-regression pattern. Conversely, taking action now to address these challenges could result in a $13 trillion uptick in GDP by 2030.
The key areas that we need to begin investing in are education, family planning, maternal mortality, digital inclusion, and unpaid care work. Investing 20 percent to 30 percent more in these regions could help women remain in the workforce. This amounts to 1.3 percent to 1.7 percent of global GDP, which is substantial. However, the economic benefits are projected to well exceed the cost of social spending by six to eight times.
This economic advantage is not limited to the world economy. Companies with more diversity are more profitable. A 2019 study found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were more likely to see above-average profitability. In fact, companies with more than 30 percent of executive positions held by women outperformed companies with lower representations. Representation in the workplace benefits us all.
How to Support Women in the STEM Workforce
As it stands, women represent only 28 percent of the STEM workforce. Within engineering alone, that number drops further to 13 percent. We need to continue to grow this number and ensure that COVID-19 does not threaten the modest growth in gender parity we have already achieved.
This requires leaders to be more diligent when making decisions in this volatile pandemic-stricken economy. The temptation is to act quickly and make decisions on the fly to respond to the ever-changing landscape. But this ad hoc response can unintentionally support implicit biases.
Despite gains in gender parity, senior leadership positions are still dominated by men. During these trying times, companies are depending on their employees for counsel and support. It is also natural for them to prefer to call upon staff that they are comfortable with, can relate to, and have a rapport with. Thus, they need to be more intentional when choosing a confidant lest their implicit bias guides them to choose someone like themselves.
The best way to counteract this natural tendency is to adhere to skill-based assignments. Develop a protocol to ensure that the best-qualified person is being called upon for counsel or an assignment. Integrate this approach into core practices to ensure that even during stressful times, your company continues to value and promote diversity.
The increased flexibility in where we work can also get men more face time with senior leadership than their female counterparts. Because men generally have fewer unpaid work responsibilities, they can go into the office or work during nontraditional hours. This makes them more accessible to their bosses.
It is best practice to have similar work-at-home schedules for all employees. Allowing workers who do not have to be concerned about childcare to continue to come into the office unintentionally gives them an advantage. The employees working from home are more likely to be left out of the loop. That can inadvertently create a “VIP Club” of people who still work from the office.
Implicit bias does not just affect large-scale work decisions. A lot of rapport is built, and informal work is done, during side conversations. These are the brief conversations that happen before or after meetings while everyone is milling about. If leaders follow their natural inclinations toward chatting with those like themselves, they can unintentionally give those employees an advantage.
This can be countered by ensuring that all employees are given opportunities to access leadership for informal chats. Deliberately scheduling in this time is more important now that many meetings have gone virtual. Employees working from home have less physical access to senior leadership and can be left out of the loop.
The key takeaway is that it is important to carefully assess how the impacts of company decisions affect diversity. Output, skills and merit must continue to guide promotion within an organization. Wavering now may have a lasting impact on the direction and diversity of our workforce.
We cannot afford to let COVID-19 compromise the progress we have made in STEM workforce diversity. The future of women in STEM fields is in the balance. We need to act now to mitigate the impact. During these trying financial times, we mustn’t be tempted to reduce funding to equity programs. And we need to be deliberate and intentional in our workplace practices to fight implicit bias. Trillions of dollars of our future economy are at risk.
