Gender Equality Initiatives

Working from home reduces the motherhood penalty by 77%. Seventy. Seven. Percent. A new study from Italy found that when mothers can work from home, they're less likely to reduce their hours and more likely to continue progressing in their careers. Which, when you think about it, is hardly shocking. It's much easier to stay on track at work when you're not spending two hours a day commuting, frantically trying to get to nursery before it closes and operating with the logistical complexity of a mid-sized military operation. But there's more.. Fathers' flexibility matters too. Some people insist on calling it the "parenthood penalty", but mothers and fathers do not experience parenthood in the labour market in the same way. Mothers take the financial hit. Fathers generally don't. However, when fathers have access to remote work, mothers' financial losses after childbirth are significantly smaller. Why? Because childcare, school pickups, sick days and life admin stop being Mum's problem by default and start becoming a shared responsibility. The researchers found that a father's ability to work remotely has almost as much impact on a mother's earnings as her own ability to do so. The report goes even further. It estimates that if all jobs that could be done remotely actually allowed people to work remotely, the lifetime gender earnings gap would shrink by 30%. Thirty percent. Just by letting people work from the place where they also happen to keep the tiny humans alive. Imagine that. https://lnkd.in/eBjMe3NM

LinkedIn asks you to post today to celebrate "a woman who's made an impact on your career." But these kinds of posts, even earnestly written, tend to leave us feeling hollow. If we're looking for real progress towards fairness and equality at work, here's what to do instead: 🪴 Did you know that if there's only one woman on a shortlist of qualified candidates, she has a whopping 0% chance of being hired? Simply expanding shortlists to include more than one woman (and for that matter, people from historically marginalized communities) helps counter biased decision-making. 📋 Standardized process can be a surprisingly easy way to mitigate bias. Structured interviewing, standardized skill-based assessments directly related to job tasks, and standardized scoring rubrics can make comparisons across candidates more fair and substantially reduce subtle gender discrimination. 🌻 Incentivize flexibility for ALL workers, not just women. In a vacuum, harmful norms may arise that imply these arrangements are only utilized by those who "don't value their careers as much," penalizing workers of all genders. Celebrate senior leaders, especially men, who model greater flexibility and wellbeing so that all workers are licensed to do the same. 🔍 Conduct a pay equity audit, seeking to examine not only outcomes like total compensation, but also distribution of candidates across roles. If men and women in the same role are getting paid similarly, but women are dramatically overclustered in low-paying roles, you've still got a problem. ❤️🩹 Create an anonymous and/or informal process to report and addressing discrimination and harassment. A lower-stakes way to address harm, in addition to training bystander intervention and modelling respectful communication, accountability, and timely feedback from the top, can mitigate daily harms for all workers. Some folks hesitate to push for these practices because they feel more committing than just posting on social media. They're right — because with more effort comes more impact. So reach out to a few of your colleagues and advocates within your workplace to work together on pushing for these changes. Ten posts in isolation pale in comparison to the impact ten peoples' collective organizing might have on your workplace and everyone in it! Remember: International Women's Day is a chance for us not just to celebrate women, but to sharpen our advocacy alongside women, to build a future that's better, brighter, and more fair for all of us.

“Until men can bear children and breastfeed, you can give them all the time off in the world - it’ll still be mum left holding the baby.” OK Celia, I want to take this moment to say (respectfully but firmly) that is nonsense. Yes, there are biological differences. No one’s denying that. But that’s not the point. The more important point is this: if we never give men time, space, or the expectation to step up as equal parents, then of course mum ends up holding the baby; both literally and figuratively. What enhanced paternity leave actually supports dads to do is: • Bond with their child, which is an essential foundation for long-term involvement and better outcomes for everyone. • Support their partner’s physical and emotional recovery after childbirth. • Learn how to parent independently, rather than being the backup to mum’s default. • Rewire their brain through hands-on caregiving, building empathy, confidence, and connection. This isn’t about erasing the role of mothers. It’s about sharing the load. Because here’s the real issue: 80% of the gender pay gap is driven by the motherhood penalty, and as long as fathers aren’t supported to take an equal role in caregiving, women will continue to pay the price at home and at work. That statement isn’t just outdated, it’s damaging. It limits dads, exhausts mums, and reinforces the inequities we are trying to solve. So no, it’s not enough to say “men can’t breastfeed.” They can feed. They can comfort. They can co-parent. And they can absolutely hold the baby...if we give them the time and expect them to use it. Let’s stop debating the bare minimum and start imagining what shared care really looks like. #EqualParenting #PaternityLeave #ParentingOutLoud #CareWorkIsWork #GenderEquity #CloseTheGap #ModernFatherhood #ParentalLeave

A new study of NIH grant terminations shows that women—especially early-career researchers—have been disproportionately affected, despite already receiving less NIH funding overall. On average women had 57.9% of their grant terminated, while men had 48.2%. Among doctoral students and assistant professors, 60% of terminated grants were led by women. At these critical career stages (graduate students, postdocs, assistant professors), women led a majority of the projects that lost funding—raising concerns about long-term impacts on the research pipeline. These cuts risk reshaping who gets to participate in science. When early-career researchers lose support, it can mean stalled projects, lost opportunities, and in some cases, leaving academia altogether. https://lnkd.in/geDaxFDa

Have you ever been told you are too quiet? Maybe you don’t speak up enough so, “people worry about your leadership skills.” Or, you don’t advocate enough for yourself so, “you aren’t taking control of your career like a natural born leader.” If so, this article is for you. Maybe you’ve received feedback that there is concern over your analytical skills and “quant chops.” Or, there is some general, yet vague, feedback that leadership worries, “you lack that killer instinct.” Or, maybe it’s the opposite and you are “too bossy” or “too opinionated.” Have you heard any of these things?  I have over my career. Instead of letting them control my path, I got upset, then angry, then curious. I decided that none of these descriptions were really a good read on me, or my leadership potential, and I decided to change the perception. You can too. I’ve interviewed hundreds of women in senior leadership over the years and one thing is clear: we’re navigating a constant push and pull. Be strong, but not too strong. Be likable, but not too soft. Show your ambition, but don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Women aren’t just doing the job, they’re doing the extra work of managing how they’re perceived while they’re doing the job. We wrote this piece for HBR because it’s important for women to know how to not only subvert stereotypes and shape how others see them, but to do it without losing themselves in the process. Too many of us think there is nothing we can do when we hear feedback that doesn’t feel quite right. Sometimes, there are actions we can take. I love this piece so much because it says we don’t have to be victim to the stories about us or around us, we can do something about it.   1️⃣ Craft a counternarrative – Instead of internalizing biased feedback, reshape how people see you by aligning your strengths with what the organization values (on your terms!). 2️⃣ Use positive association – Enthusiasm and future-focused language can subtly shift others’ assumptions  and build trust. 3️⃣ Turn feedback into power – Don’t immediately accept or reject it, investigate it. Use it to understand what success looks like in your environment, and then find authentic ways to express that in your own leadership style. So if you’ve ever felt like your success depends not just on what you do, but how you’re seen…you’re not imagining it. Especially in times of economic uncertainty and shifting priorities, it becomes even more pronounced. And while there are no one-size-fits-all strategies, when women take control of their story, they open doors for themselves AND others. Let’s stop contorting ourselves to fit outdated models. We can rewrite the models themselves. Let me know what you think. https://lnkd.in/gcCSE7XW Colleen Ammerman Harvard Business Review Lakshmi Ramarajan Lisa Sun

A woman working 8 hours a day in corporate is paid in thousands on average, while a woman working almost 8 hours at home gets paid nothing. 👉Is managing a house not working?  👉Does work done at home require no skills?  👉Is raising children and managing the elderly not a full-time job? It definitely is. But that's considered a mandatory thing to do and not a work that women do at home. As per reports, on average, women in India spend 7.2 hours a day cooking, cleaning, and caring for their household members (children, elderly, sick or disabled). I totally understand that women are the wheels for tomorrow's existence, and apart from the economic aspect, women are the torchbearers of social growth. However, the disproportionate responsibility of unpaid care work on women results in gender inequality and time poverty, which impacts their ability to progress. Now, by being vocal about shared responsibilities at home and equal participation of women in economic, social, and political sectors, we are advancing towards a more equal society. But to achieve this in the truest form, we need to give due respect for the unpaid care work that women do at large. The World Economic Forum report released in 2023 estimates that at the current rate of change, the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity will take 131 years to close. That's a massive gap, and we need to speed up. 3 changes I believe need to be brought out are: 1️⃣ Normalize men taking on an equal share of household and childcare duties. We can start teaching these values right from our home to our boys. 2️⃣ About 82% of the total number of working women in India are employed in the informal sector. Measures like minimum wage coverage, maternity leave, health insurance, and old age pension schemes should be worked on. 3️⃣ Speak up when we see or hear gender stereotypes that reinforce women's role as primary caregivers and men as breadwinners. Whether it's cooking, cleaning, or childcare - every work is "real work". While the gender gap may seem daunting, change starts with each of us speaking up in our daily lives and taking action to get 1% closer to our goal of gender equality. What are some ways you think we can increase the value of unpaid care work? #womenempowerment #unpaidwork #genderequality

My article in The Quint. “Societal norms and cultural messages often reinforce the idea that men are the primary breadwinners and public figures, while women are primarily responsible for domestic duties. When women challenge these traditional roles, it can disrupt deeply ingrained patriarchal beliefs. The case in Kolkata seems even more nuanced as it is an example of greed, corruption and crimes playing out over a woman’s body because she “dared” to question. We of course don’t know the truth yet. Whatever it is, the answer is to let women fill theses spaces. We shall double down on our work on shifting social norms so that more and more girls feel empowered to step up, seek out the world and work outside of homes, have dreams and aspirations of careers that help them be seen out there, playing, relaxing, taking buses, entering markets, eating in restaurants, giving political speeches in crowded chowks; being doctors, engineers, pilots, wrestlers, plumbers, ward councillors in large numbers. We have to equip our girls with a strong sense of self, of being masters of their own decisions and lives. We have to train institutions to provide safety nets and implement in all sincerity laws on sexual harassment in workplaces, provide services that help women seek stigma-free, and essential mental health counselling at workplaces. We have to make sure police procedures are free from corruption along with swift and accurate investigations and meting out sentences take priority. And lastly, we have to train men on how to treat their female colleagues as equals, with respect and how to ask for consent before they can pay random innuendoed compliments. Only then, “into that heaven of freedom,” will the women of my country thrive.” #genderequality #genderequity #norms #masculinity #violenceagainstwomen #genderbasedviolence

When men step into caregiving roles, they begin to understand the systemic barriers women face daily. Globally, women perform over three times as much unpaid care work as men, totaling 12.5 billion hours every day. Valued at minimum wage, this equals $10.8 trillion annually — more than three times the size of the global tech industry (Oxfam). In countries where caregiving is shared and publicly supported, #women are freer to pursue economic and leadership opportunities. In Iceland, both mothers and fathers are entitled to six months of paid parental leave at 80% of their salary under a “use it or lose it” policy. This has led to more women returning to the workforce after maternity leave. Combined with heavily subsidized childcare, these policies help reduce the “motherhood penalty” — a major driver of gender inequality that accounts for 80% of the gender pay gap (World Economic Forum). In 2020 alone, over 2 million mothers left the workforce, contributing to a sharp drop in women’s labor force participation (ILO, via WEF). But when governments and families share the responsibility of care, women are empowered to stay in the #workforce, lead, and thrive. Transforming norms of masculinity and investing in shared caregiving are not just #gender issues — they are economic necessities. Only by sharing care can we build a future where everyone has the freedom and #opportunity to lead. #economicempowerment

I speak with a lot of people about gender equality. Sometimes people ask if “things are better for …. women who’ve made it to the top, the next-generation women who grew up thinking they could be anything, women with elite credentials, etc." Unfortunately, research mostly shows that the answer is “no”--gender inequality is at play at every level of organizational life, from early career to the C-suite. For example, I listened to a very interesting webinar hosted by Russell Reynolds Associates about their research study: Time to Tell a Different Story. They used media as a proxy for public sentiments about CEOs and tracked 20,000 news articles, covering almost 750 CEOs across FTSE 100, S&P 500, and Euronext 100 companies. What they discovered is that, even at the CEO level, patterns of language describing and telling the story of women differs from those for men. Here is one pattern from their study: The media tend to use very different adjectives to describe women CEOs versus their male equivalents. Based on the proportion of mentions across media, men were twice as likely to be described as ‘innovators,’ whereas women were 72% more likely to be described as ‘inspirational.’   Research at the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab also showed gendered, and often disadvantaging, language patterns in performance reviews. (https://lnkd.in/gG2zy8vX) So, it’s not just the media. These patterns reflect societal norms and can lead to disparate outcomes for strong performing women. What can you do? First, you can catch gendered language patterns. Here are a few: 1️⃣ Using more people-oriented skills for women and more task-oriented for men (see RRA research) 2️⃣ Using more doubt-casting language, such as “seems to” or “managed to”. For example, instead of saying “They produced outstanding results” using “They seemed to produce outstanding results. (Do a doubt-check. See this post I wrote: https://lnkd.in/g_655tc2) 3️⃣ Using or not using stand-out language. Notice if your industry or role has some terms that indicate stand-out impact. Then notice if you only use those words to describe certain kinds of people. 💡 🌟 Once you catch these patterns, then you can find ways to remove doubt, equally use task-oriented and people-oriented descriptors and try stand-out language for all top performers. While language often reflects societal norms and stereotypes, a strategic use of language can help set the conditions for folks to succeed. https://lnkd.in/gEJJRsXS #words #language #performancemanagement #media

The gap between policy and culture. I remember going in to an organisation where the policy was 6 months equal parental leave but some dads had been told that if they take more than 2 weeks, it’s career suicide. This was a company that advertised their policy proudly on external job websites and did press releases for the media. Policy is key, of course. But real change happens when the policy is supported by culture change work. That means: 💡Leadership commitment from the very top. 💡Training for line managers. 💡Clear assurances that taking leave won't affect pay, bonuses or career progression. 💡 Performance measures that don't penalise caregiving. 💡Phased returns to work. 💡Coaching and ongoing support for parents and managers. 💡Creating a workplace where dads can be Parenting Out Loud by normalising male caregiving There are 171 organisations on our Equal Parental Leave list. But the real leaders are those where dads actually take the leave because they know they'll be supported. Those organisations are the ones seeing the greatest benefits in recruitment, retention, wellbeing and gender equality. A big shout out to Jonathan Reeves who won a tribunal after losing his job for taking the 26 weeks paid paternity leave his organisation offered. Because of the stigma of the litigation, interviews were cancelled, job offers withdrawn and prospective employers heightened their scrutiny, despite his credentials ⁠and sought-after experience. The tribunal heard that Reeves, who had been rated a top-quartile performer between 2011 and 2019, had applied for 417 jobs since his dismissal, reached the interview stage for 43 roles and secured only two fixed-term contracts. Another big example that yes, things are largely moving in the right direction, but there still is a deep entrenched belief that childcare is women's work and men should prioritise work over everything else. Well done to Jonathan for challenging this. It' an experience mothers have to go through far too often and the more we stand up against it, the more we will move towards a world where mums and dads can be equal caregivers and share the load in a way that works best for that family. We have worked with organisations to help them go beyond policy and create a culture where dads can parent loudly at work and be equal parents at home: www.parentingoutloud.com And register for the Working Dads' Summit, the largest national conversation on working dads, taking place on 11th November, here: https://lnkd.in/ecxrNb3q #ParentingOutLoud #WorkingDads #PaternityLeave