What effect has the COVID-19 pandemic had on women in the workplace?
COVID-19 has had, and continues to have, a huge impact on labour markets around the globe 1 with resulting jobs losses for both men and women, but it is women who are being disproportionately affected.
This has been named the ‘she-cession’ by the media and it’s easy to see why.
Between July and October 202, a total of 15.3 million jobs were furloughed in the UK. 52% of these jobs were women, despite women making up only 48% of the workforce.1
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, mothers are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the start of the first lockdown and are also more likely to have been furloughed. Among those who are still working for pay, mothers spent less time on paid work throughout the day.2
Why have women been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Women tend to have more care-giving responsibilities. In a lot of families, there’s an assumption that the primary caregiver is the woman, so children might walk right past their fathers to go to their mothers for what they need.
Even before the pandemic, according to PWC’s recent report, Women in Work 20211, women spent 6 more hours, on average, than men on unpaid childcare every week. During COVID-19 women have increased their share of the burden and now spend 7.7 hours more per week on childcare than men – mothers experienced a 22% fall in paid work hours per day compared to a 16% fall for fathers between February and May 2020.
Women seeking work or in employment were disproportionately affected by nursery closures during the first COVID-19 lockdown. During the spring 2020 lockdown, 45% of mothers’ work hours and 26% of fathers were simultaneously spent taking care of children.3
In the UK, female-dominated industries, such as retail, hospitality and recreation bore the brunt of the lockdown restrictions.
What is The Talent Movement doing to help?
At The Talent Movement, we’re encouraging people to think differently. This isn’t just about helping organisations develop recruitment procedures that support equality, diversity and inclusion, but it’s also about helping more women see there are roles out there, which they may not previously have considered. It’s about breaking down the barriers and gender stereotypes and connecting forward-thinking employers with talented individuals, whatever their gender.
Part of our work in this area involves helping companies realise the worth of upskilling and retraining people who may not have worked in their sector, previously, but bring with them many transferable skills and fresh perspectives.
A report compiled in February 2020 4 highlighted the gender split across different industries in the UK, with 71% of employees in the Information and Communication sector being men, 74% in the Manufacturing sector and, in 87% male employees in Construction. The sector with the greatest disparity between the number of women and men employed is Engineering, with only 12% of practising engineers in the UK being women 5.
These sectors represent huge areas of opportunity for women.
Why is the Talent Movement so passionate about this?
We are here to challenge conscious or unconscious bias in hiring procedures.
In our society, there has been a long-held belief that you can’t be a career woman and a good mum – many working mothers still feel the guilt of putting their children into children into childcare, partly because of these societal views, and many employers are still reluctant to employ women who may be of childbearing age6. Perceptions are slowly changing but we believe this isn’t happening fast enough and there is still a bias in the way candidates are recruited in many industries.
We are working for all roles across all the sectors we support – manufacturing, engineering, construction, and tech – to be open to all candidates, non-binary, women, and men.
A talented individual is a talented individual regardless of gender. The most diverse companies have the most diverse ideas: ideas lead to innovation allowing companies to survive in difficult times and driving them forward ahead of their competition.
Recruit for equality
The Talent Movement provides an end-to-end recruitment service, from planning to placement. We also work with HR Leaders to ensure existing recruitment strategies are fit for purpose. To find out more about how we can help you recruit, email: kate@thetalentmovement.co.uk
References:
- https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/WIWI/women-in-work-2021-executive-summary.pdf
- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06838/
- Andrew, A., Cattan, S., Costa Dias, M., Farquharson, C., Kraftman, L., Krutikova, S., Phimister, A. and Sevilla, A. (2020), ‘Family Time Use and Home Learning During the COVID-19 Lockdown’, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Report R178, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/15038.
- https://uk.rs-online.com/euro/img/seo/infographics/gender_split/gender-split-refresh-data-final%20data.pdf
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/16/womens-engineering-society-100-years-inventors-suffragettes
- https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women-work-children-gender-pay-gap-a9074506.html