EDI Report shows no pay increase for women in the UK and Ireland workplaces

• Aparna Sreevalsan
• 13 October, 2023

ONE IN four women say they have not received a salary raise in the last 12 months, compared to 18.8 per cent of men, based on the 2023 Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Report by consultancy firm Robert Walters.

Professionals across the UK and Ireland shared their perspectives with the study, which examined disparities relating to diversity and inclusion.

Important conclusions were derived from a poll that over 6,000 professionals answered, identifying the status of EDI in the UK and Irish organisations.

Gender has been a prism through which to study professional experiences and job obstacles.

Other findings include:

• Of all parent groups, female single parents are the most likely to believe that lack of confidence is the primary obstacle to job advancement, with 24 per cent citing it as such.
• In contrast to 54 per cent of males in the same age range, only 38 per cent of female professionals aged 40-54 had ever attempted to negotiate for a better income throughout their career.
• If they were having mental health issues at work, 68 per cent of male professionals believe they would keep it to themselves.

Robert Walters partnered with other recruitment consultancies Censuswide, Walters People, and Resource Solutions for the study.

 

Women representation in the C-suite has grown in the US

THE NINTH Annual Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey & Company in association with LeanIn.Org shows, in the US women employees are more ambitious than ever, and workplace flexibility is fueling them.

Based on information from over 270 businesses and over 27,000 workers, the new research attempts to offer data-driven insights into the difficulties women encounter at every level of the corporate ladder.

Women now make up 28 per cent of the C-suite, the greatest percentage ever, and there has been significant advancement at the Vice President (VP) and Senior Vice President (SVP) levels.

Just six per cent of C-suite (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) members are women of colour, and they continue to be underrepresented at every level of the pipeline.

However, despite a few hard-fought gains, women’s representation is still falling short.

Other major findings include:

• Ninety-six percent of women say their career is important to them and 81 per cent are interested in being promoted to the next level same as men.
• Women remain highly ambitious and just as ambitious as men. This includes women who work hybrid or remotely—no drop in ambition.
• Women of colour continue to be highly ambitious, as the surveys have reflected in past years: 97 per cent say that their career is important to them, and 88 per cent want to be promoted to the next level.
• This year, for every 100 men promoted from the entry level to manager, 87 women—and only 73 women of colour— have been promoted.
• Nearly half of women experience micro-aggressions at work that call their competence and abilities into question.
• Nearly a third of women don’t speak up or share an opinion so they don’t seem difficult, compared to about a fifth of men overall. This is worse for women with marginalised identities such as women with disabilities and Black women and LGBTQ+ women.

 

Affirmative action opponent targets three more law firms’ diversity fellowships in the US

AN ANTI-affirmative action organisation in the US said yesterday (12) that it was thinking of suing three more law firms unless they changed the fellowships, they awarded to law students to increase diversity in their ranks.

The group’s litigation forced two large law firms to make these changes.

In correspondence, American Alliance for Equal Rights, a group led by Edward Blum—the activist who successfully challenged racial discrimination in college admissions practices before the US Supreme Court—stated that it was thinking of pursuing a similar legal action against Winston & Strawn, Hunton Andrews Kurth, Adams and Reese, and inquired as to whether any of these firms intended to alter their policies.

Based in New Orleans, Adams and Reese sent a letter later yesterday to Blum’s group informing them that they would not be continuing with their Adams and Reese 1L Minority Fellowship in 2024.

This summer the firm’s associate programme was available to first-year law students who were “members of racial and ethnic minority groups and other disadvantaged groups”.

According to Blum’s group, each company offered fellowship programmes that it considered to be “racially exclusive” in defiance of Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a Civil War-era law that forbids racial bias in hiring.

The non-profit had relied on that law for two earlier lawsuits against the law firms Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster, alleging their programs unlawfully excluded certain people, including white students, based on their race.

But later these cases were dismissed after the firms changed the application criteria to be race neutral.

At issue are paid fellowships designed in part to help major law firms recruit people of colour which major law firms have long struggled to add to their partnership ranks.

 

Covid inquiry reveals ethnic minority staff not heard on PPE during pandemic period in the UK

SOME BLACK and minority ethnic healthcare staff in the NHS experienced “structural racism,” during the pandemic period, UK’s Covid Inquiry revealed recently.

Some concerns over ill-fitting face masks were not taken seriously or listened to, the judge led inquiry created by the UK government to examine the handling of the 18 month or so crisis that started in late March 2020 with unprecedented nationwide lockdown.

As described by a black staff member, there were “stark” disparities in the treatment of black and ethnic minority patients and staff in the NHS, and it was noted that face masks were not fitted to the specific needs of those who wear headscarves or had beards.

Ade Adeyemi, general secretary of Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (FEMHO) said: “It was difficult to find the right PPE (personal protective equipment) and this gave us a sense of the lack of, again, the belief of what we were saying.

“That the system can pick up signals and noise and disruption in other areas but when there’s noise and disruption of black and Asian ethnic minority workers, it’s not heard, and it’s not responded to immediately.”

When asked if what he was saying might be categorised as “structural racism” by inquiry counsel Andrew O’Connor KC, Adeyemi said: “If it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

He added: “The evidence is very clear, both as patients, as service users of the NHS and social care system, and also as professionals both in a professional sense in a work capacity, the difference that we see with our white counterparts is stark and it’s been existing for many years.”

To ensure that PPE fits securely, Adeyemi noted that healthcare workers have contacted the organisation over poor face fit test performance.

According to him, it was because of these distinctions that FEMHO was founded around a year before to the pandemic, allowing for the sharing of information to solve an issue that “hasn’t been meaningfully, substantively addressed”.