Evidence is mounting for company leaders to treat gender diversity as a business-critical investment. Recently the European Sociological Review published a report on the gender pay gap that’s been making headlines. Conducted by University College London, researchers found women face a pay penalty of 45% as long as six years after giving birth.
One of Bubble’s very own parent advocates, a working mum and senior Communications Director, was shocked to realise just two years after giving birth to her first child she has already experienced a pay penalty on par with researchers’ estimates.
Prior to the pandemic, women were already more likely to take career breaks and experience difficulties rejoining the workforce. As business leaders are encouraged to reconsider their gender equality statutes, it’s equally important we recognise how much women do for businesses:
1. MIT economists estimate that shifting from gender homogenous all-male/all-female offices to working environments with evenly split gender populations can increase revenue upwards of 40 percent. (source)
2. According to a McKinsey report entitled ‘Why diversity matters’, EBIT rises by 3.5 percent for UK firms with every 10 percent increase in gender diversity within senior-executive teams. (source)
3. Another report published by the IMF determined that, for high-tech and knowledge-intensive firms, those in the top quartile for senior management gender diversity benefit from a 30 point increase in ROA. (source)
4. And within the tech sector, companies that are highly gender-diverse experience 5.4% higher annual returns on average compared to peers with less gender diversity, as evidenced in a report from Morgan Stanley. (source).
The effects of the covid-19 pandemic have in many ways been gendered. With women shouldering increasingly demanding childcare and family care responsibilities, working women are in need of progressive family support programmes.
