Proven strategies to advance gender equity at work

Published: 20 March 2024

Employers are recognising now more than ever that gender equity progress must be a top priority. The talent market continues to be highly competitive, states are increasing pay transparency obligations, and organisations are navigating increasingly complex societal challenges.

Unfortunately, the path to true gender equity remains elusive. In the US and UK, women made 84 cents and 85.7 cents for every dollar men earned in 2023, respectively. Research also shows that pay gaps continue to worsen deeper into women’s careers, and childcare responsibilities still have a significant disparate impact on working mothers, according to the Center for American Progress.

To make real, sustainable progress, employers must approach gender equity holistically, implementing strategies that remove known barriers to equal opportunity and support employees at every stage of the employee experience. This guide provides an overview of five these strategies to advance gender equity at work.

Recruitment practices

Inclusive practices that proactively address equity at every stage of recruitment ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity of success. In recruitment, employers can remove barriers, set the tone for future employees and improve the organisation’s employer brand.

To establish inclusive practices, first, clearly set out in a recruitment policy that the organisation is committed to applying its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy at all stages of recruitment and hiring. This includes carrying out screening, interviewing and selection without regard to an applicant’s sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity leave, or other employee characteristics.

The policy should also establish clear equity guidelines for the recruitment process. For example, everyone involved in the interview process—in and outside of HR—should be aware that candidates should never be asked questions that further or infer gender stereotypes. Candidates shouldn’t be asked about any of the following:

• Their marital status or marriage plans.
• Whether they have children or the ages of their children and childcare arrangements.
• General family commitments and/or domestic arrangements.
• Their partner’s occupation and mobility.
• Actual or potential absences from work for family reasons.

To limit the risk of discrimination, examine key stages of the recruitment process to ensure there are no discriminatory factors and take action accordingly.

Key stages include:

• Writing the job description.
• Sourcing candidates.
• Screening applications.
• Interviewing candidates.
• Negotiating compensation and offers.
• Onboarding.

The role of bias

Bias in the recruitment process, whether conscious or unconscious, or individual or systematic, is one of the most common barriers to equity at work. In addition to reviewing the process, ensure that all employees involved in recruitment participate in continuous training to understand how conscious and unconscious bias can affect the process, and how stereotypes influence decision-making.

Bias training will not only show employees how they can prevent it in their specific roles, but it will also build skills needed to identify bias in others (including bias in artificial intelligence recruitment systems) and intervene when necessary.

Career planning

Gender bias also influences leadership and manager decisions well after employees have been recruited and hired. Research shows these gender-based biases manifest in different expectations and assumptions related to their employees, and ultimately, negative career outcomes.

For example, studies have found that women experience a “motherhood penalty,” which impacts their promotional opportunities and income over time. One of these studies found that women are perceived to be less committed to their careers once they have children. Men, on the other hand, were perceived to be more committed when they had children.

Gender biases are pervasive, even among managers with some level of gender equity awareness. Research has also found that even when managers can check their gender biases in how they described employee traits and behaviours, they were unlikely to recognise bias in how they rewarded employees for certain traits and behaviours.

Creating the right environment for gender equity

Organisations must create an environment in which all employees are encouraged to develop and realise their goals and supported in these efforts. Opportunities to meet career goals must be offered to all employees, regardless of gender, pregnancy and maternity, gender identity or expression (including transgender status), or marriage or civil partnership status, as well as other employee characteristics.

Leaders must also ensure that managers are not just allowing all employees to participate in career development, but rather actively encouraging participation and making accommodations when needed to help employees with unique needs.

Important touchpoints that impact an employee’s ability to progress in the organisation include:

• Performance reviews.
• Learning opportunities.
• Mentoring.
• Promotion opportunities.
• Knowledge, skills and competency development.

Addressing gender equity in these career development touchpoints and collecting data on employee progress can help you understand how employees are progressing (or not) within the organisation.

Flexible work

Flexible work supports work-life balance, allowing employees to adjust their work to fit their home lives. In recent years, flexible work has become a norm, with competitive employers offering a range of flexible working arrangements, such as part-time work, hybrid work and job sharing, and clearly set out the process for making a flexible work request.

A flexible work policy

Every organisation implementing flexible work should adopt a flexible work policy, which helps shape the company’s flexible work culture and establish expectations of employees and managers. At the outset, make sure the policy emphasises the organisation’s positive attitude towards flexible working arrangements. A competitive flexible work policy will promote the practice as a norm, rather than an exception.

To be effective, a flexible work policy also needs visible endorsement from the board and senior management team. Profiling senior managers who work flexibly can help to dispel the myth that flexible working is not suitable for management roles.

There are many other steps you can take to encourage flexible work. For example, a flexible work policy can guarantee the availability of part-time work to all employees returning from maternity and paternity leave as a way of helping them balance their caretaking responsibilities with their career.

Individuals who work flexibly should not be disadvantaged with respect to accessing development opportunities or how their performance is assessed. Accordingly, once you’ve adopted and circulated a policy, put systems in place to ensure consistency between what the flexible work policy says and what happens in practice.

For example, if managers are measuring productivity by solely reviewing log hours or taking note of which employees work in the office the most (signs of presentism), a flexible work policy will have little impact as employees may fear that flexible work is career-limiting. To curb this, consider establishing clear, outcome-focused performance guidelines for managers.

Equal pay

Equal pay is one of the most effective ways to advance gender equity at work. And though progress on equal pay has historically been somewhat stagnant, significant events like the COVID-19 pandemic, heavily publicised equal pay efforts in certain industries and the rise of pay transparency laws have helped make equal pay a priority for employers.

Leveraging data for equal pay

Ensuring equal pay generally begins with a pay equity audit to establish a baseline for the organisation. Pay equity audits will reveal gender pay gaps and representation gaps within the organization. To begin the pay equity audit process, consider investing in powerful pay equity software that allows for:

• Customised analysis of pay data.
• Continuous audits.
• Scenario-based planning and strategy.

An accurate, in-depth pay equity audit (partnered with advanced reporting and analysis) will help you identify key contributors to pay or representation gaps and help you establish goals and action plans to improve equal pay in a sustainable and compliant manner.

Pay equity audits should be handled carefully and with buy-in from all relevant stakeholders. Audits generally involve highly sensitive information about the organisation. Without legal counsel, pay data will not be protected by attorney-client privilege. So, before conducting an initial audit, consider partnering with either internal or external counsel.

The impact of starting pay

Though pay adjustments and performance increases can help improve pay equity, poor initial pay decisions are often the culprits of unequal pay in an organisation, according to Littler shareholder Patricia Martin. So, in addition to leveraging data to advance equal pay, consider also taking note of the organization’s starting pay practices. This includes reviewing the following:

• How starting pay ranges are established.
• Pay transparency practices.
• Starting pay negotiation practices and outcomes.

Parental leave

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed much about how we work. One of the more difficult revelations was that mothers continue to take on the majority of childcare responsibilities at home… so much so that 2020 saw almost three-million women leave the workforce in the US alone. One of primary reasons for this exodus was the lack of childcare.

Even today, in a post-pandemic world, many organisations still struggle to retain and develop their female talent after they have children. This is particularly the case in the US, where only some states require paid parental leave.

Offering paid parental leave, and more importantly, building a culture that encourages employees to use their leave, can help employees feel supported and valued in the workplace. Parental leave has also been shown to do the following:

• Increase employee loyalty to the organisation.
• Improve employee retention.
• Support physical and mental health.
• Improve talent pools and recruitment outcomes.

Adopting an inclusive approach that supports both parents with parental leave can also help break down the male-breadwinner/female-carer stereotype. It also acknowledges and supports the unique needs of LGBTQ+ families.

Looking ahead

Advancing gender equity is certainly a long-term strategy. One which requires continuous effort and careful monitoring. Be sure to regularly review the effectiveness and impact of your organisation’s gender equity strategy using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

For example, ask employees for feedback via an anonymous questionnaire or include questions in the annual employee opinion survey. Also consider measuring key performance indicators, such as retention, productivity, performance and promotions.