Unemployment

5 Ways Companies Can Support Women’s Inclusion in Labour Markets

The pandemic is damaging the progress towards gender equality at work. According to the World Economic Forum’s (2021) Global Gender Gap Report, 5% of employed women lost their job compared to 3.9% of men, and less women were hired into executive or senior roles in 2020 as Broom (2021) clarifies.

Through my experience as the Founder of a solutions-based platform for gender balance at work, I got to know of initiatives that I think can help companies close the gap caused by the pandemic faster and potentially accelerate gender equality in workplaces as a result.

What can companies do to support women at work? And how can companies take gender equality to the next level beyond the pandemic?

Gender Diverse Hiring Practices: closing the gap between companies & candidates

Through my experience as a founder of a solutions-based platform for workplace gender balance in the tech sector, I regularly speak with companies about their challenge to hire more women. I work to solve the challenges that arise when hiring women in positions where they are underrepresented at one hand, and more specifically, with female job seekers who would like to get hired in those positions (for instance at top management level) on the other hand.

Even though there are less women in certain fields (where upskilling or reskilling of women is required*) or at top management level, we cannot say that there are no women available at all or say that companies do not want to hire more gender diverse teams.

Women, Work, and COVID-19: Why We Need To Rely On Sisterhood More Than Ever

2020 has been a year unlike any other. While the impact of the COVID-19 crisis is horizontal in a certain way (United Nations, 2020), as it affects the worldwide population from an economic, social and political aspect, it’s abundantly clear that it hits each one of us differently.

The impact of Covid-19 turns out to be worse for those who simply belong to certain categories: students of any age, fresh graduates, people living in underprivileged contexts, jobseekers, women (UN Women, 2020a). Being part of some of the above categories myself, I would say that I am quite used to feeling uncertain. We, people in our almost thirties (Hoffower, 2019) are living one of the hardest crises the world ever faced in the last few decades. But we also happen to be familiar with changes, agility, precariousness, not having long-term expectations: it’s just the ordinary for us. And yet, it is still hard to find daily motivation and cope with all of this. In many ways, knowing that we’re all in this together consoles me, and relying on people around me, especially other women, makes me feel better.