Over recent years, many firms have worked hard to improve their gender balance. Even before the pandemic, achieving gender balance at the most senior levels of a firm – ie board and executive team membership, equity partnership and practice leaders – was still a work in progress.
With the pandemic and the deluge of new issues that executive leadership teams have had to deal with as they stare down new and harsh realities, it would be easy to lose momentum and sight of longer-term gender balance initiatives that were already underway; but losing momentum will mean losing ground and squandering earlier investments as firms emerge from the pandemic.
For some, the pandemic has shone the spotlight on issues that may not have been apparent to work colleagues pre-pandemic; from seeing more of a person’s homelife over calls – home set-up, partners, children and pets – to the challenge of juggling childcare and work, often simultaneously. And for many, the issue of domestic responsibility has still fallen disproportionately on women. Disrupted life has affected different people in very different ways.
The business case for achieving gender equality at the most senior levels has been made often enough with those organisations that have advanced strategies in place generally seeing the benefits of greater profitability, growth, innovation and a more loyal and stable workforce. It therefore makes sense for leaders to not only remain an active driver of gender balance, but also be hyper-vigilant to the risk of inequities and invisibility becoming more entrenched – it’s just makes good business sense.
For firms that want to continue to drive gender balance forward, here are some ideas:
The pandemic is showing that the issue of gender balance cannot be forgotten or go unaddressed, despite the urgency and importance of many other issues that are currently vying for centre stage. Firms that continue to address inequality and discrimination will see the rewards.
We would be delighted to hear your thoughts and continue the dialogue with you. We hope you’ve found this Insight to be constructive and thought-provoking. We share comments and ideas of a general nature, with the aim of helping firms contend with current challenges. As such, the content above is unlikely to be complete and comprehensive enough for a firm to re-imagine the future. Rather, it may be a beginning or a conversation starter, as each firm is different and the challenges each face are unique. If you would like to continue the conversation, then please connect with us for a confidential conversation at click here.