Supporting women in the workplace builds stronger, more resilient economies and communities
The pandemic put disproportionate expectations on Canadian women and gender-diverse individuals causing the loss of hard-won gains towards equality. This was the overarching finding of the UN Global Compact Network Canada's "Accelerating Systemic Change Toolkit: Gender Equity Solutions for the Workplace," a project funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) through the Feminist Response and Recovery Fund. Women faced increased pressures at home, at work and in their communities to carry the heavy triple burden of reproductive (caregiving and household responsibilities), productive (paid work) and emotional labour (supporting others).
To address these setbacks, regain momentum on the path to gender equality and help organizations and society thrive, the UN Global Compact Network Canada is working with a growing community of more than 200 companies to integrate the UN Global Compact Ten Principles into their core strategies. These principles, with a specific focus on advancing human rights, labour rights, environment and anti-corruption, guide their efforts to advance the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, including Gender Equality.
Within the UN Global Compact's "Forward Faster" initiative, gender equality is among five priority areas of societal change to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals that business is uniquely positioned to influence. The remaining four are: a living wage, climate change, water resilience and investment for the Goals.
"Accelerating Systemic Change" also highlights the need for businesses to adopt a gender equality mindset to ensure societal resilience in the face of crisis. "When the ground shakes in an earthquake, the fault lines appear along weakness in structures. It turns out that our workplace and societal fault lines in crisis are gendered," says Elizabeth Dove, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network Canada, the Canadian arm of the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative.
"While the COVID-19 pandemic as a crisis seems almost behind us, the speed and force with which women were tasked disproportionately with carrying out traditional burdens should give us all pause. Complex crises and periods of instability are becoming our new normal, including economic uncertainty, and extreme weather events from climate change. We cannot allow the strengths, perspectives, and agency of women and gender-diverse individuals to be swept aside in exacerbated economic and social inequities triggered by crisis. Not only is it unjust, but it is also impractical as their contributions are essential to forging resilient and adaptable teams, workplaces and societies."
Many women interviewed for the toolkit felt pressure to be overly empathetic, supportive, and accommodating to others' needs during the pandemic because, as women, they were seen to "naturally" possess these traits. In the workplace, the message, while not explicitly stated, was loud and clear: in addition to doing their jobs and meeting performance objectives, it was up to women to help colleagues cope with the personal stress they were dealing with even though women shared these same pandemic-related stressors and anxieties. Women in leadership positions not only had to be highly accommodating to their employees and do their best to take care of them, they also had to maintain organizational productivity and competitiveness.
At home, women, who were already taking on most of the childcare and domestic responsibilities because of existing gendered roles and norms, were tasked with doing even more because they were working remotely and didn't have to travel to work. This was equally true for women who did not have children or caregiving responsibilities. In this case, it wasn't employers but family members applying these extra pressures.
This was especially true for women who faced intersecting inequalities based on race, class, disability, education, and migration or immigration status. For example, racialized, immigrant and newcomer women were forced to deal with amplified socio-cultural expectations set by their families and/or communities that women should be responsible for domestic and caregiving duties, even during working hours.
A growing body of research shows that women's economic progress has been set back decades due to the pandemic. In Canada, the gender wage gap remains wider than its Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development peers. In 2023, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index placed Canada 30th out of 146 countries and 36th in the Economic Participation and Opportunity category, which includes indicators on labour force participation, wage equity, income earned, and the representation of women in management, professional, and technical roles. The rankings were a significant fall from 2018, when Canada was 16th overall.
This is a problem for women and society as a whole, particularly while facing the existential crisis of climate change. History has shown that women are at the front of community responses to natural disasters. They are leaders in disaster risk reduction, and contribute to post-recovery by taking care of their families and strengthening their communities. This is why it is critical to involve women in building climate resilience in communities. The UN reports that communities are more successful in resilience and capacity-building strategies when women are part of the planning process. We need women in leadership across sectors. Societal resilience depends on it. But this can only happen if intentional efforts are made to support women and advance gender equity, particularly in the workplace.
By taking steps to ensure greater equality for women, non-binary individuals, and systemically underrepresented groups, employers can build more crisis-resilient workplaces and societies. The UN Global Compact Network Canada's "Accelerating Systemic Change" toolkit offers solutions such as flexible work policies, paid parental leave and inclusive health benefits.
These changes are more easily made where there is equal pay for equal work and more equal representation, participation and leadership across all areas of business leadership. However, unless businesses and organizations take the necessary steps today, a UN analysis of progress shows it will take the world more than 169 years to achieve gender equality in terms of women's economic empowerment and participation.
"Without the intentional efforts of employers and workplaces to ensure support to women and gender-diverse individuals, the crises ahead will further expose the cracks in our gender equity advances and threaten our societal foundation," says Dove. UN Global Compact Network Canada is ready to support employers to build more supportive, inclusive workplaces. This is how we can redress the setbacks caused by the pandemic, regain momentum on the journey to gender equality and help organizations and society thrive.
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