Harmful trend | COVID-19 was devastating for gender equality - will it continue?

It’s safe to say that in 2022, ensuring that gender diversity and inclusion is at the top of the people agenda is a mandatory requirement for all businesses.

The days in which those in the TA space can fall back on the concept of the inherently biased ‘cultural fit’ as a key driver in their recruitment and retention strategies, only to reflect what is statistically likely to be a white and male senior leadership team, are long gone. In short, there’s really no excuse for failing to ensure that the workforce you serve is an equal opportunity space.

Yet, we aren’t where we need to be. In fact, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, gender equality and inclusion within the workforce has slipped; McKinsey data states that, whilst women make up 39% of global employment, they also account for 54% of overall job losses throughout the past few years. McKinsey’s report, titled ‘Diverse employees are struggling the most during COVID-19’, published in the throes of the pandemic back in November of 2020, notes several key findings for why these statistics are so shockingly regressive.

Childcare and the female experience in COVID

Childcare, perhaps one of the key talking points of the pandemic, impacted working parents in a significant way; schools across the globe closed, childcare became increasingly hard to organise (in fact, 41% of respondents to a recent survey said that there is a waiting list of six months or more at their local childcare provider and one in five parents (19%) say they have experienced the closure of their local childcare setting in the last 12 months) and, as the data shows, women were disproportionately affected by the societal expectations for care to fall under their remit.