FEATURE


GENDER EQUALITY: NOT JUST FOR WOMEN


Grace Rothery, Head of UK Retail at Gazprom Energy, looks at the role of women in leadership positions and suggests there is an important role for men to play too.


Often discussions surrounding gender inequality take place in an echo chamber of female voices. On the surface, it makes sense for conversations on issues such as parental leave, carers leave and childcare to be led predominantly by women, since we are traditionally most affected by them. The reality is that we could have hundreds of women working towards creating an equal workplace, but men too need to be included in these conversations and given more flexibility and support to enable greater equality.


Working in the energy industry, it is easy to get disillusioned by the lack of female peers and role models, particularly when visiting industry events such as trade shows and award ceremonies. There is a lot being done at the moment to try to improve gender equality in the workplace and during my career I have certainly seen changes, not only in the number of women successfully progressing in their career and stepping into leadership roles, but also a shift in workplace culture and how we manage the work-life balance. However, there is still a long way to go.


It would be naive to think that these issues exclusively impact women when most of the time they apply to men as well. According to a new study by Ipsos Mori, in collaboration with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, three-quarters of men agree that employers should make it easier for men to combine childcare with work. In my position as a business leader, I am very conscious that we need to encourage flexible working for men, just as much as women, so that partners can support each other equally with caring and other household responsibilities.


The recent impact of COVID-19 has proven that many companies are able to operate with remote workforces when needed. Allowing and enabling employees to work from home has been proven to offer many business benefits, including but not limited to; attracting talent, improving staff engagement and job satisfaction, reductions in absenteeism, increased employee retention and progression, as well as boosting overall productivity. Encouraging flexible working to both men and women gives people the opportunity to spend more time with their children and in turn, it becomes more normalised for men to request flexible hours and apply for flexible job roles.


Although we are seeing an increasing number of women in leadership roles, the 2019 FTSE 100 report showed that


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CEOs are more likely to be called Stephen, or Steve, than they are to be a woman. This is something that is mirrored across businesses everywhere and is a point that is vital to this discussion because it demonstrates that the majority of decision makers in business today are male. Women cannot be expected to single-handedly break their own glass ceiling when ultimately, it is men who often possess the hiring and firing powers. As a company, we use an internal salary benchmarking and job evaluation methodology which allows us to be objective and reduces bias when it comes to promotions and pay.


“Most roles in business are about problem solving and the wonderful


thing about diversity is that different people with varied life experiences bring different types of thinking.”


One of the primary benefits of using a solid benchmarking methodology is that you can overcome some of the factors that often result in men being paid more than women. For example, men are generally known to demonstrate attributes like a preference for risk taking, initiative and self-confidence which makes them more likely to ask and push for a promotion or salary review. Using such a framework has helped us reduce the gender pay gap at most levels but there is still work to be done.


Women are all too often asked to lean into workplace structures that don’t necessarily hold a place for them, then people can’t understand why these structures don’t work for us. Factors impacting this could include inflexible working, male dominated team building activities, personal safety when working late and even how people view and value leadership – often traditionally masculine, authoritarian characteristics are valued higher than nurturing methods of leadership that are traditionally seen in women.


Most roles in business are about problem solving and the wonderful thing about diversity is that different people with varied life experiences bring different types of thinking.


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