Just following on from International Women’s Day (08/03/20), it has emerged that under half of the female employees claim opportunities are not made available to them because of their gender.
These findings come from Robert Walters’ report “Striving for Gender Parity”, which found that 41 per cent of women feel that opportunities at work are not available to them due to their gender.
Nearly three-quarters (70 per cent) of female employees have not been offered a promotion where they currently work.
Over a third (34 per cent) of women are “not at all aware” of what they need to do to receive a promotion, however, 21 per cent have stated they “could do with more support” to improve their understanding of how to progress.
Balancing work and family commitments seem to be a barrier to women being promoted with 35 per cent claiming this. Flexi-hours is more of a benefit to women (63 per cent) than men (48 per cent).
More than a third (35 per cent) of women feel that their management team is not demographically representative, with 21 per cent claiming they do not feel their company is committed to this.
This has led to 23 per cent of women feeling that lack of diversity in senior management is holding them back.
Also, 22 per cent of women say they lack confidence in the workplace, whereas only 13 per cent of men feel the same.
Chris Hickey, UK CEO at Robert Walters, said:
Women make up 47 per cent workforce and so for an organisation it seems counter-productive to not help unleash the full potential of half of your company’s talent.
This report highlights the very real reasons why women face barriers to progression, and what’s more the steps companies can take are simple ones – but they need to be done with meaning and follow-through, rather than as a tick-box exercise.
Robert Walters spoke to 4,500 female employees across the UK to get these results.
Interested in diversity and inclusion. We recommend the Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2020.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
