For the Girls: How to Support Your Female Employees
Alright, everyone. It’s high time we had a little chat about gender inequality — it’s still a thing. It impacts women every day, including in the workplace.The Covid-19 pandemic certainly didn’t do women any favors. Research shows that women were 1.8 times more likely to lose their job in the Covid economy. As of March 2022, two-thirds of all jobs lost since the pandemic began were women’s jobs. And in February 2022, there were 1.1 million fewer women in the workforce than there were in February 2020, while the male workforce remains similar in size.But the pandemic highlighted forces that were already in place. Without adequate support such as good childcare and equal distribution of labor, women were forced to make painful choices between career and family during that difficult time. You don’t recover from that overnight. Once out of the workforce, it becomes even harder to break back in.With that in mind, it’s incredibly important that you support the women you do have on your team. By tackling age-old issues like likeability bias and lack of benefits, you can foster a workplace that encourages female leadership and advancement. And when you have a more diverse leadership team, you’ll be more likely to draw in further diverse talent.To help you figure this out, here’s a candid, no-bullshit, non-exhaustive list of ways you can better support the female-identifying employees that work with you.