How To Prevent A Lost Generation Of Women At Work?

The first wave of the pandemic in 2020 saw a collapse in women’s employment. Since then, not enough of them have been returning to work. What explains this, and what can we do about it?

The first and most obvious reason is that women work disproportionately in sectors that were especially hard hit by Covid. Some, such as hospitality and retail, were affected by shutdowns. In others, such as health and social care, women were on the front lines of the crisis and working conditions became more stressful.

Our Resetting Normal Report for 2021 found that men and women had experienced the pandemic differently. Women were more likely than men to say they felt burned out (39% vs 36%), their mental wellbeing had declined (34% vs 29%) and they were anxious about returning to the office (46% vs 38%).

Another important part of the explanation is that in many societies women still bear the brunt of domestic care responsibilities. These increased dramatically as schools closed and families sought to protect elderly relatives from the virus by taking over more aspects of their care.

McKinsey and Lean In found in 2020 that US mothers in a dual-career couple were more than twice as likely as fathers to say they’d taken on at least an additional five hours of household chores during the early stage of the pandemic. In two-income households where one partner gave up work, this was a woman in 80% of cases.

The continued burden of caregiving responsibilities still holds many women back from rejoining the workforce. Societies need to think much more seriously and imaginatively about how to address the often-prohibitive costs of childcare and elder care.

Third, we need to devise better ways of delivering training programmes in digital skills that fit practically with women’s lifestyles. Podcasts are one example – for many women, they offer an opportunity to absorb information while also performing daily care tasks.

Some women are put off from digital roles because they imagine being isolated, working on their own with a computer. We need to emphasise that this is increasingly not the case – plenty of roles involve digital elements alongside a diverse range of other skills.

Last, but not least, more men need to ask themselves how they can be sponsors of women in the workforce. We are starting to see an attitude shift that mirrors the difference between the civil rights movement of the 1960s – which primarily involved black people fighting for their own rights – and today’s Black Lives Matter movement, which has led wider swathes of society to recognise their own need to change.

Being a sponsor goes beyond being an ally. A sponsor is someone who will talk about you when you’re not in the room. Women tend to do this for other women, and men can do it too – I know how much my own career benefited from having amazing male sponsors who made a conscious effort to speak up on my behalf.

Women had made decades of progress in the workplace before the pandemic set it back. For the sake of our daughters, we need now to get that progress back on track.