The Work Clinic

Gender equality is a vital component in achieving overall equality and diversity in the workplace. A decrease in the recruitment of ambitious young women will have far reaching consequences with long term effects in organisations. It is also disconcerting to see how young women are weighing up pay gap difficulties and issues around work – life balance that they may face so early on in their career and are avoiding putting themselves into that position.

In the 21st Century it is alarming that some workplaces still don’t embrace equality when dealing with issues such as pay, career progression and family friendly working practices; employers need to demonstrate a robust diverse environment where equality of opportunity is central. The Employers Forum on Age (EFA) believes that more research in this area is needed to highlight the discrepancies that exist so any shortfalls can be remedied, as the battle for equality continues. In short employers need to demonstrate a robust diverse workplace culture where equality of opportunity is central.

There is no doubt that some inequality exists in the workplace but my current experience tells me that the world is changing fast. Only last week I sat in a meeting with a female Commercial Director and the week before did lunch with a successful female Managing Director. In fact I also find that more and more women are getting pretty fed up of the politically correct climate where this issue raises its head. Talk to many women and they will indeed recognise the difficulties for the organisation to accommodate senior women on the board who have child care responsibilities simply because they appreciate the business would not survive with part time board members.

It is true that pressure must continue to sort out those short sighted organisations that run scared of promoting females. However can we steer away from all the doom and gloom talk that females may as well not bother applying for senior roles as we may simply be talking ourselves into a climate of men ruling the world. If female graduates are put off from applying for roles because of the gender gap then they may as well give up right now!

We have found that clients are much more concerned about recruiting the best talent – in my experience, the issue of gender just doesn’t arise and the majority of firms we deal with are very meritocratic in their approach.

According to Elements' recent snapshot survey of 121 female finance professionals, over two thirds believed that they have the same career opportunities as their male counterparts. Of these respondents, the great majority felt that, not only are there more women entering the finance field than ever before, but that work life balance is an issue for both genders – not just women.

It’s important to ask whether fewer women are applying or whether these recruiters are hiring fewer women from the same number of female applicants. Either way, though, it seems that these big employers are missing an opportunity to cream off the best talent. Women are the majority of graduates across Europe and much of the consumer market, as we show in our new book. Companies with greater gender balance at the top are more profitable. Progressive companies understand this compelling business case and are recognising they have to make themselves more attractive to women as consumers, employees and leaders. They know they will be the winners in the competition for talent and market. It’s time for 21st century realities to break into boardrooms across the country and impact their balance sheets.

My new book, co-authored with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, 'Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the emergence of our next economic revolution', is published this month by Wiley.

The key to maintaining high levels of female graduates is working closely with relevant clubs, societies and networks. Accenture hasn’t experienced a drop in the recruitment of female graduates in recent years and attributes this to continued hard work with women’s groups at pre University and University level stages. Accenture uses these opportunities to showcase a broad range of women who have been successful in their chosen careers with the company. This is an effective way to promote careers in consulting / working in the city and ensures that potential prejudices about career opportunities for women are addressed.

While the fall of 3.5 percentage points in the appointment of females is something we need to watch, the figure does tend to fluctuate up and down, year on year, and this could simply be affected by the mix of businesses that complete the survey.

Overall, the actual numbers of women (as opposed to proportions) employed by respondents rose from 8,020 in 2006 to 10,390 in 2007. The time to get concerned is if the trend year on year is in a downward direction, which has not happened since we started recording this data four years ago. As females now make up more than half of students in Higher Education it is important that companies monitor these trends and the real benefit of the AGR Graduate Recruitment Survey is that it allows companies to do this.

Sexual Equality still has a big distance to go the reason for the drop in numbers is difficult to say. It could be an anamoly. But its most likely a lack of confidence that women feel hence the reduction in applications.