Modern Women@work
More and more women are joining the global workforce. Moreover, over the past decades, women have made tremendous progress in the workplace. Not only, many highly educated women are breaking the corporate glass ceilings, but more are also taking leadership positions in many global companies. However, in a male dominated workplace, women face many challenges and more can be done to improve women's participation in the workforce.
While a lot of progress has been made for women to emancipate themselves in the workplace, the coronavirus pandemic has upended this trend. Women bore the brunt of the massive job losses, that resulted from the country lockdown and companies going under. Many industries, where women are highly active, have been badly hit. Despite all the economic stimulus, it will take years for the global economy to recover and for more women to get back and progress further in the labour market.
" However, traditional values and expectations of women within the family and society still persists."
Gender equality is Number 5 in the list of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Much improvement has been made over the last decades for women in the society. With better access to education and healthcare, not only women are more and more emancipated, but there is a higher participation of women in the workforce.
However, traditional values and expectations of women within the family and society still persists. Even in modern societies, women still face discrimination in the workplace and have unequal access to career opportunities. They are over-represented in the lower levels of the organisation, but are under-represented in managerial and top leadership levels. To make matters worse, the progress made by women in the world is regressing during the coronavirus pandemic.
More needs to be done to achieve gender equality - from the education of boys and girls to changing the societal norms of male and female roles. Having more women economically active in society brings about huge benefit to companies, society and ultimately, the country.
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The coronavirus pandemic has pushed companies to adopt remote working more widely. This was also aimed to enable flexible working and foster more work-life balance. However, the reality is that this new way of working has increased the pressure on working women. This is because most of the family responsibilities fall on women's shoulders and they are increasingly finding it very hard to juggle work and family responsibilities.
While career women have found a new sense of freedom by being financially independent, there are still traditional expectations that women should take care of the family first. With this pandemic, women have to take on more family responsibilities like looking after the family meals, the household chores, the children's needs and education and others. As a result, career women are more likely to quit their jobs to look after their families. There is a need for companies to look into the challenges faced by their female workforce so as to retain them within their talent pipeline.
Women have made great strides in the corporate world by taking on leadership positions. It has been shown that not only women have better leadership skills within the organisation, but the financial returns of companies led by women can be also higher. They are more communicative and collaborative, while focusing on the collective needs and wishes of their team members. Male leaders are usually more competitive in dealing with business matters. Moreover, they may be not only combative but also confrontational when dealing with issues.
However, women do not have an easy path to leadership position. They face the "glass ceiling" mentality with the traditional stereotypes of women doing lower ranking jobs; hence they face discrimination and have lesser opportunities for leadership positions. Besides, there is a lack of coaching and mentoring opportunities for potential female leaders. On top of all these, female leader role models whom women can aspire from are very much lacking in the corporate world, dominated mainly by male leaders.
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The coronavirus pandemic has upended the progress made by women in the corporate world. Women are usually the main care giver of the family. When the corporate world pivoted to remote working, the situation faced by women has in fact worsened. 65% of working women believe that it is the case. Not only they have to look after the whole family, children and parents being confined at home, but they also need to fulfil their work responsibilities.
Many career women find it difficult to balance work and family; and a significant number are feeling burnt out. Between family and work, working women are most likely to choose family over work. A third of the female workforce thought of quitting and many are unfortunately doing so. Moreover, lesser women are thinking of getting into leadership positions and only 42% consider themselves as ambitious, from 54% last year. (Survey data from CNBC and SurveyMonkey)
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