Many organisations have been trying for years to address the issue of ‘lost women’ in the workplace, but these efforts have gone largely unrewarded. While the boardroom is becoming more balanced, women are still under-represented at almost all management levels across almost all companies.
First used by Lord Davies in his 2011 report into the representation of women on corporate boards, the term ‘lost women’ refers to those who drop out of the workplace or don’t fulfil early career potential. The problem is a persistent one, and I struggle to explain why. Of course, many women have children just as career opportunities are opening up, but maternity is only part of the story. Women without children also miss out on promotion compared to male colleagues, while some women with children have hugely successful careers. We need a deeper understanding of barriers to women’s success at work - and must then adjust or even scrap what we’re doing if it’s wide of the mark.
Earlier this year, I became Chair of Opportunity Now, the Business in the Community campaign that’s been driving towards gender equality at work for over 20 years. In this role, I am involved in Project 28-40, calling for 100,000 women in the UK and Ireland to tell their stories on a scale never attempted before.
We have designed the project to allow women to give candid feedback: we want to hear both good and bad experiences of workplace culture. The campaign will focus on women in the 28-40 age range as this is the ‘danger zone’, when career progression typically slows down relative to male peers. However, Project 28-40 is keen to hear from other groups too: older and younger women and women who have already left the workplace, as well as men. We want to know about the issues that affect your careers, the nature (not just the level) of your ambition, your experiences around maternity, and societal attitudes you have encountered. If you decided not to return to work, we'd like to know your reasons - and whether you'd like to resume your career at some point. If so, what could companies do to make that possible?
This survey’s unprecedented scale will enable us to draw a complete and nuanced picture of life at work for women today and highlight interventions that would trigger genuine change. It’s vital that those recommendations are then acted upon. I’ve been greatly encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response of organisations who are members of Opportunity Now. More than 75 companies and public sector bodies, including some of the biggest employers of women in the country, are actively promoting the survey to their workforce.
The timescale for the project is aggressive: after twenty years of effort based on what we already understand, we’re in a hurry to improve that understanding and accelerate the pace of change. This is an opportunity for women to say what they would like to see improved – so please do sign up. It takes just 15 minutes to complete the basic questions (though feel free to spend longer if you have suggestions that you think would have real impact). The survey, found online here, is open for a month, closing Sunday 15th December. We will launch a report of the headline findings and recommendations in April 2014.
Please spare any time you can to participate - only through your feedback can we better understand the barriers women face and the way to push these aside once and for all.
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Guest posts
It's time to listen to women about their workplace experience
53 replies
MumsnetGuestBlogs · 27/11/2013 13:04
OP posts:
WaitingForPeterWimsey ·
27/11/2013 19:35
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