Think Global women: key issues affecting women’s employment

EDI refers to equity, diversity and inclusion. Sue explained that originally E stood for equality but there has been a shift in focus to equity in recent years.

Equality is addressed by long-standing legislation that provides equal opportunity for minorities in employment. For example, in the USA, the Civil Rights Act dates back to 1964 and in the UK the Sex Discrimination and Race Relations Acts took effect in 1975 and 1976, with equalities legislation wrapped up in the Equality Act 2010.

Equal chance, equal access and equal share

Speaking first about the problems of pursuing an equality agenda for women, Sue explained that equalities legislation provides a basic underpinning prohibiting discrimination and this means that everyone has an equal chance to secure work roles. However, equal chance is like the roll of a dice – there’s an equal chance of a 1 or a 6 coming out on top. This does not recognise that the dice can be loaded.

In employment, women have, for example, fewer networks, mentors and role models and, as a result, less access to senior, career enhancing, employment opportunities. Taking action, such as guaranteeing women interviews for international positions, is not discrimination in women’s favour, but positive action which can give women access to roles that they might not have heard about though the male networks that predominate in organisations.

Assisting women to have equal access to employment opportunities only goes so far as they still need to achieve success in the interview process and actually achieve the leadership positions. Only this will give them an equal share of leadership roles.

Sue noted that this leads us to consider the notion of equity – which is about fairness. If women have less confidence they may not fare so well, even if they do gain access to interviews via positive action. To help women to compete on an equitable basis, support such as leadership training for women, can help level the playing field (or reduce the loading of the dice).While acknowledging the importance of promoting inclusive values in the workplace, Sue noted that we still operate within organisations where policies and procedures are important. As such we need to work within these frameworks. Sue suggested to delegates that they consider what they can do to help to provide equity for women in the workplace by recognising that not everyone starts from a level playing field.

Read related articles on our sister website Relocate Global

• DEI: trying to make sense of current negative press
• Equity, diversity and inclusion: terminology and implications
• International careers: are women assignees losing trust in EDI policy and practice?

Diversity, EDI, DEI and inclusion

Sue turned her attention next to issues relating to diversity. She explained that diversity refers to celebrating difference. She noted that the business case for diversity has historically been considered positive – that businesses benefit from diversity by reflecting their customer base and by harnessing new ideas.

She noted that EDI places its key emphasis on equity, whereas with DEI, the emphasis is on diversity. There has been negative press around the issue of DEI from the USA, following Trump’s election with diversity being blamed for shortcomings and failings in public services – most notably air traffic control – and diversity roles being cut from government funded departments and functions.

Sue acknowledged that while diversity can help to reduce group think and generate new ideas which industries might consider helpful to mitigating risk, she pointed out that some might consider that the opposite can happen – namely diversity can increase risk. To try to explain this, she noted that capitalising on diversity means listening to different points of view and this can result in conflict. Conflict can be messy, time consuming and difficult to manage. This might help explain why DEI is receiving negative press. Nonetheless, to truly benefit from diversity, she argued that ideas must be shared, listened to and all minorities included.

Pursuing diversity statistics alone is potentially a numbers game. Quotas, for instance, are not necessarily helpful. It is important to recruit the best talent for the business, not recruit simply to satisfy a statistical goal.

A diverse workforce on paper can provide statistical evidence of employing minorities but if they are found predominantly in the lower end roles (i.e. vertical segregation is in place) there is no inclusion in practice. Diversity statistics by themselves are not necessarily going to lead to business benefits. Inclusion is critical. Sue therefore suggested that delegates consider what they can do to make their workplaces more inclusive, such that minorities are listened to, and their ideas are embraced.

Horizontal and vertical segregation

Sue turned her attention next to the concepts of horizontal and vertical segregation. She pointed out that while we hear stories of successful women who are held up as role models of women’s ability to have choice over their careers (astronauts, famous sportswomen), she noted that women leaders, for example in FTSE 100 companies, are few and far between.

Women tend to be represented in feminine occupations. This is known as horizontal segregation. Girls and young women, particularly the less academic, often lack choice over their careers and they tend to be channelled into what are termed the 5Cs – catering, cleaning, caring, cashiering and clerical. She drew delegates’ attention to counter staff in high street banks and cashiers in supermarkets who predominantly are women. While women now comprise 50% of doctors, they are mainly in GP roles, not surgeons in hospitals. Nursing is still highly feminised. Caring occupations are also predominantly filled by women.

Feminine occupations tend to be lower paid and when occupations feminise, pay tends to fall. Horizontal segregation reinforces vertical segregation – namely the glass ceiling that persists and prevents women from reaching higher levels in organisations. Internationally, the glass ceiling is reinforced by the glass border. Women cannot reach top leadership positions because they cannot gain the international experience necessary for leadership roles – global mobility is horizontally segregated as male. It is also vertically segregated as women tend to hold lower and middle ranking international roles rather than the most senior international positions.

So finally Sue left delegates with the thought as to what they might be able to do to help to reduce 5Cs – namely women’s predominance in roles viewed as feminine – and to reduce horizontal and vertical segregation in global mobility.