This second article of a two-part series explores what the future of work may hold for women in light of the impact of the pandemic and increasing automation in the labour market.

Introduction - women in the workplace

In the first article of this series, we explored the historic and current challenges faced by women in the workplace. Our second article focuses on the future. The pandemic has brought about unprecedented change at unprecedented speed. Much has been written about the impact of the pandemic on global economies, jobs and livelihoods. More recently, however, more is being understood of the unequal impact of the pandemic, particularly on women.

Covid-19 and women in the workplace

Impact on women’s employment

More women work in sectors that were forced to shut down during the pandemic. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that women were a third more likely to work in a sector that was shut down by the pandemic than men. In terms of job losses, research by McKinsey published in July last year estimated that female jobs were 1.8 times more vulnerable to the pandemic than male jobs, with women making up 39% of global employment but accounting for 54% of overall job losses. LSE’s statement on gender inequality cited that 64 million women had lost their jobs globally during the pandemic.

For the jobs that remained, women in the workplace were again disproportionately impacted by the use of the furlough scheme. Leading economists found that women were significantly more likely to be furloughed than men who were doing the same type of job. Fascinatingly, they also found that 75% of furloughed men had their wages topped up by their employer (above the 80% provided by the government) compared to only 65% of women.

In addition, research by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership identified that women who were furloughed were more likely to be furloughed for longer periods. In July 2020, 31% of women furloughed at any point during the pandemic had worked zero hours since March, compared with 20% of men. The burden of unpaid caring responsibilities may go some way to explain why women in the workplace were more likely to be furloughed and remained on the scheme for longer periods of time.

Impact on women at home

At home, the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities by increasing the amount of unpaid caring undertaken by women. Last year, during the first month of the first UK wide lockdown, ONS data showed that women were carrying out over 60% of childcare duties. Kantar Public research published this year found that 71% of women said they were the ones most responsible for childcare or home-schooling when schools were closed.

This contradicts popular opinion. In a survey, 64% of respondents said they believed childcare should be equally shared when there are two working parents at home. The gender pay gap (17.3% in 2019) exists because women tend to occupy lower paid roles than men, and may go some way to explaining why more women stepped back from their working roles if they were not the main breadwinner in their household. 90% of single parent families are also headed by women, many of whom may have struggled to continue working while home-schooling with support and childcare from others cut off or unavailable.

Post-pandemic challenges for women

With experts predicting there won’t be any degree of old-style “normality” until Spring 2022, only time will tell how and when recovery will play out and what that will mean for women.

Will there be jobs for women to return to?

A Women and Equalities Committee report earlier this year recognised that the sectors which have been singled out for government investment are those in which women are traditionally underrepresented, such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and construction. Meanwhile, the Fawcett Society’s Coronavirus Crossroads report stated its fear that many jobs in female-dominated sectors may not ever return given the huge financial hit of the pandemic. World Economic Forum data suggests the pandemic has increased the time needed to close the global gender gap from 99.5 years to a breath-taking 135.6 years.

New ONS data has also shown that the number of unemployed women aged 65 and over has tripled since the onset of the pandemic. It is too soon to tell whether this will become a long-term trend or to easily predict the underlying factors.

Women returning to the office

With many organisations planning a hybrid approach to returning to the office, it is unclear what this will mean for gender balance. The huge shift towards remote and flexible working has been welcomed for opening up opportunities for women, but some commentators have expressed concerns over the unforeseen impact on gender equality. Joeli Brearley, founder of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed told the Guardian of her concerns where workplace choice is left entirely down to staff, saying that “those with caring responsibilities or with disabilities will tend to stay at home and other employees will likely go into the office”, potentially resulting in fewer promotions or pay rises given they may not have a close relationship with their manager.

While hybrid working is the new buzz phrase for 2021, it is not as straightforward as allowing staff the opportunity to work from home for a half a week. A standalone policy without training for managers and work on the underpinning organisational culture may result in unintended consequences.

Flexible working concerns aside, a new report by Deloitte paints a bleak picture of female satisfaction in the workplace. It found that 51% of women were less optimistic about their career prospects than before the pandemic, despite more than 80% reporting increased workloads. 57% of women planned to leave their current position within the next two years.

Difficulties of childcare for women

The childcare sector, a necessity for working mothers, has been badly hit by the pandemic with many providers reporting they fear for the future. Research from Childcare.co.uk last year found that a third of those polled believed they may have to permanently close their services in the next six to 12 months, with 81% reporting operating at a loss. The TUC last year called for the government to prevent a large-scale collapse of the childcare sector and, a year on from the beginning of the pandemic, many providers remain in serious difficulties.

As our first article in this series explained, history has shown the importance of suitable childcare with the number of nurseries having increased during the second world war to support working women. Lack of provision, together with the gender pay gap, means it is predominantly women who bear the burden of childcare. As we enter the post-pandemic era, funding for childcare has never been more important.

Future of women in the workplace

Impact of technology on women at work

Technology has an enormous part to play in shaping women’s role in the workplace over the coming years and the pandemic has only accelerated this trend. As the McKinsey’s 2019 Future of Women at Work report identified, both men and women could experience significant improvements in their working lives as a result of technology, spending less time on repetitive routine task such as data processing and physical manual labour. McKinsey’s Future of Work after Covid-19 report went on to find that the pandemic may cause companies to adopt automation and AI technologies faster, especially in work areas where workers are in close physical proximity. Many surveyed companies reported that they were increasing their investment “somewhat or significantly”.

Technological advances, most notably the spread of automation, are nonetheless likely to be disruptive. Last year, the World Economic Forum reported that the workforce is automating faster than expected, displacing 85 million jobs in the next five years, although the so-called “robot revolution” will also create 97 million new jobs. Many of the job losses will occur in office and administration areas such as self-serve checkouts, online sales and automated book-keeping processes, which are largely female domains. McKinsey reports that women are more likely to need to change occupations after Covid-19 than before. The same report estimates that between 40 million and 160 million women may need to transition between occupations by 2030. It also notes that women may be at slightly less risk than men of losing their jobs due to automation, and have a slight advantage compared with men in their positioning to gain jobs. It is, however, hypothesised that this is because so many more women than men work in healthcare.

Indeed, the occupational segregation witnessed over centuries of women in work looks set to continue into future years. Even in mature economies with high female labour-force participation, gender differences exist within occupations and sectors, suggesting that “deep social and cultural norms influence where women (and men) work”.

Furthermore, entrenched gender biases are seeping into the technology solutions that are currently being built. For example, the introduction by Amazon of an AI powered tool to automate the recruitment of top talent was found to be detrimental to female applicants. A 2019 Unesco report also noted the detrimental impact that virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa have on perpetuating gender bias. The report stated: "Siri's ‘female’ obsequiousness - and the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women - provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products".

Despite these challenges, technological advancement brings opportunity. Pervasive use of social media amplifies the voices of women who continue to suffer issues related to #MeToo movement, forcing governments and business leaders to act and champion change.

Technology makes entrepreneurship more accessible, enabling women to launch and nurture successful business ventures of their own. A NEXT study found that women were twice as likely to open a small business during the pandemic than men. The McKinsey report mentioned above argues that “women must be more engaged in technology - more access, more skills, and more participation in its creation - to thrive”. It points to a survey by McKinsey in Indonesia which found that “women-owned micro, small and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs) generate 35 percent of e-commerce revenue, compared with only 15 percent of offline MSME revenue”.

However, despite technology breaking down many barriers faced by women and opening up new economic opportunities, they remain less mobile and flexible than men. Arguably this is because they spend more than 1.1 trillion hours a year on unpaid care work, compared with 400 billion hours for men.

Role of government for women in the workplace

There is always a tension between the roles of the government and employers in building a fairer future of work. Pressure on both government and businesses to prioritise equality and “good work” has increased as a result of the pandemic. A recent report by Deloitte found that regulation by government was the “most influential external factor behind an organisation’s and its workforce’s ability to thrive”.

The Fawcett Society and others have called on the government to focus on “building back fairer” to address inequality gaps that have widened as a result of the pandemic. Their report identified ten areas requiring priority intervention, including further equal pay legislation, affordable childcare and flexible working to be a “day one” right. Alongside this there are increasing calls to reform the shared parental leave regime, the take up of which is currently very low.

The much-anticipated Employment Bill, omitted from this year’s Queen’s Speech, had been promised in December 2019 but the pandemic caused it to be delayed. The government currently has no firm timetable for its introduction. The Bill was expected to contain several legislative proposals aimed at supporting women and countering discrimination. Notably, these included extending redundancy protection to pregnant employees and those recently returned from maternity leave. This would rectify the current gap in protection for those at a particularly vulnerable point in their working lives, where only those on maternity leave are given priority for any available alternative employment.

In addition, a new right proposed for the Employment Bill would entitle all workers to request a more stable and predictable contract after 26 weeks’ service, and there would also be a potential new right to compensation for cancelled shifts at short notice. This would support the high proportion of women employed on these types of contracts. The Conservative election manifesto also promised to consult on making flexible working the default position unless an employer had a good reason not to allow it. The government is also considering removing the current 26-week service requirement for making a flexible working request.

Despite the Employment Bill being shelved for the time being, it appears the government will be launching a consultation on flexible working this year. Other plans such as a week’s leave for unpaid carers, while welcome, are unlikely to have a major impact on the practicalities of juggling childcare and elder care commitments while actively participating in the labour market.

Finally, the government has committed to introducing a new duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, alongside considering new laws that would make employers liable if third parties harass their employees and possibly extend the time limit in which to bring discrimination claims. There is no indication of the timetable for implementation, but employers should consider these developments in the context of their wider commitments to fairness and tackling inequality in the workplace.

Employers’ role in shaping women’s work experiences

Equality and improving the position of working women is not all down to government intervention. The role employers have to play in shaping the work environment is increasingly important and has never been under so much scrutiny.

The pandemic has accelerated the shift in the relationship between employers and their people, with organisations increasingly expected to take the lead on societal issues and respond with purpose. Our Future of Work Hub recently hosted a virtual discussion with Margaret Heffernan, the inspiring thinker, author, entrepreneur and CEO, which considered the shifting employment “deal”. The importance of organisations being “truly regenerative” was emphasised. They should be organisations “that are concerned for people’s health, for the health of society, for the health of the environment so that communities can be hopeful for everyone in them”.

Some businesses are stepping up to embrace wider societal issues and tackle inequality, as seen by the support for the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter. Employee and brand activism is increasingly encouraged, with some organisations even creating an “activism manager” role to demonstrate commitment to societal good.

In our recent Future of Work Hub podcast with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox (the CEO of 20-first, a global consultancy specialising in gender balance), we considered the importance of reframing the conversation around gender balance. There needs to be a move away from categorising this as a “women’s issue” to making it a high priority business priority, with leaders being judged on their gender balance measures to bring about lasting change.

With employees and wider stakeholders increasingly holding employers to account over their wider social impact, employers can play an important role in shaping women’s experience in work.

Concluding remarks - women in the workplace

Back in 1984, Karen Oppenheim Mason observed that occupational segregation was unlikely to disappear or even lessen appreciably unless there were “major revisions in our ideology of gender and the division of labour between the sexes”.

The pandemic has served as a timely reminder of the (often overlooked) structural inequalities that women face when it comes to their participation in the workforce. It has also highlighted that broader imbedded societal norms, especially in relation to caring responsibilities, continue to represent material barriers to the involvement and progression of women. If the pandemic is to be an agent and accelerator of change, it is important that governments and employers recognise and respond to these issues.

Addressing these structural inequalities will not only require government intervention that focuses on reskilling women to succeed in new roles in the changing economy. It will also entail a meaningful commitment to investment in retaining women in the workforce through affordable childcare, a system that encourages both parents to take time away from work to look after their children, and changes to protect flexible working. Additionally, employers need to act cautiously and deliberately to ensure hybrid working provides a flexible environment in which women can thrive and progress, rather than one in which they struggle to survive with competing demands.

The economic recovery and continued economic growth depend on the active participation of women in the workforce. Here’s hoping the spotlight shone by the pandemic will mean we start to see a concerted push towards the major changes that are required in the coming years.

This second article of our two-part series was written by Helen Coombes, Practice Development Lawyer at Lewis Silkin LLP.

Click here to read the first article of this two-part series.