ON the morning of writing this foreword, I shared a positive article on Twitter about the dramatic jump seen in the number of women on the boards of large businesses in the UK.
A 50% rise in female leaders is good news indeed and, as I remarked, evidence that a government-supported, business-led campaign can make a real difference. I also commented that this was fragile, slow change, however, and that until employers in Jersey shared their gender-pay-gap statistics, it was very difficult for us to know how Jersey’s boards were faring in comparison – but more on these two points later.
In the Twitter observations that followed, one particular comment really resonated. A mother of a teenage boy commented that she was proud of her son because he stood up against his peers in a class history debate to say that ‘gender discrimination is alive and well’. His perception was based on seeing his own mum’s experiences over the years. Two things about her Tweet really struck me: 1) how brilliant and brave of a teenage boy to challenge his classmates, and 2) how concerning that young people might perceive that gender discrimination exists only in history books.
I can see how people might like to believe that the gender equality battle has been won. Thanks to the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment has been exposed and condemned very publicly and vociferously for several years now, and we have seen an increase in employers taking action to ensure that such misconduct is not tolerated within their workplaces.
In Jersey, almost 90% of working-age women are now ‘economically active’ and recent family-friendly employment legislation is leading the world in legally enabling both parents – not just the mother – to take the same amount of paid parental leave after the birth of a child.
In terms of education, with girls continuing to out-perform boys in all subjects by the end of primary school and beyond – and the gap widening – boys might be forgiven to think that the odds are stacked against them and not the girls.
Despite all this apparent progress though, my Twitter friend’s son is right. You only have to scratch the surface to see that we – like every other country in the world sadly – still have a long way to go before we achieve gender parity.
In local research carried out by The Diversity Network a year ago, we discovered some startling truths in terms of the experiences of many women in Jersey. Did you know that having caring responsibilities – which we know still largely falls to women – is perceived by those actively seeking work as only slightly less of a barrier to finding employment than having a criminal record?
Indeed, if you are a woman from a lower-socio-economic background, Jersey is probably not a very inclusive place to work – especially if you have child-caring responsibilities. There is much research coming from the UK to suggest that these women are likely to be disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and so their difficulties will only have increased since we conducted our research.
The picture is not pretty for women in professional occupations either. Jersey’s professional industries are made up of roughly equal numbers of men and women but, if you are a woman, you are half as likely to be in a managerial role as your male colleagues.
Our findings were echoed in research carried out in the Channel Islands by PwC for their Channel Islands Women in Work Index 2019, which ranked Jersey 20th out of 32 countries, six places behind the UK and Guernsey.
It is clear that once a woman hits working age, they are still being met with discrimination and barriers to career progression because of their gender, no matter that they may have outperformed their brothers and boyfriends at school.
This gender discrimination harms men too – and not just the fathers who would love to exercise their legal right to spend more time looking after their new-borns but are unable to because of stereotype and a very real fear that their careers will be adversely affected.
Gender equality is good for business and the economy: PWC’s latest Women in Work Index report shows that improving female participation in work across OECD countries could boost OECD GDP by US$6 trillion, while closing the gender pay gap could boost female earnings across the OECD by US$2 trillion.
Diversity at the top of our businesses and in government is proven to lead to better decision-making and Jersey PLC’s ability to adapt to, and perform well in, our uncertain and fast-changing times. Equality for women will help to create a more inclusive society that will improve equal opportunities for everyone – the Twitter mum and her teenage son both.
It is for these reasons that The Diversity Network, in collaboration with ValueMetrix, is this week launching The Diversity Directory – a platform intended to shine a light on the diverse talent across our business community and to make it easier for our government and industry decision and policy makers to ensure that they access and include diverse expertise in their conference line ups, in industry delegations and working groups and in the scrutiny of policy. Although the directory will initially be available only to women, we intend to evolve the platform to include other groups that are under-represented in these forums too.
So, this International Women’s Day, let’s take a leaf out of this savvy teenager’s book and choose to challenge. Let’s choose to call out the gender discrimination we know holds back progress to a fair and inclusive society. Let’s choose to challenge our leaders, in business and in government, by asking them the difficult questions – questions such as what is our gender pay gap and what are you doing about it? And let’s choose to challenge the complacency that will hold back many of our daughters from fulfilling their potential, and their daughters too.
For more information, visit diversitydirectory.org/ or thediversitynetwork-jersey.org.
