How global move to distributed workforces helps women to narrow historic employment gender gap

The World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2023” included figures from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) that promotes global labour rights, which showed that women face greater difficulties than men in their search for employment, and are less likely to be able to start work at short notice than men.

The report revealed, for example, that women are significantly under-represented in jobs involving science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM, which are well paid and expected to grow in scope and significance in future. It said that women make up almost half (49.3 per cent) of all workers across non-STEM occupations, but only 29.2 per cent of STEM workers.

The non-governmental organisation’s report said the ILO estimated that 473 million people fall within its “jobs gap” measure – which encompasses all the people who would like to work, but find themselves unemployed – with women having a much higher jobs gap rate of 15 per cent compared with 10.5 per cent for men. Factors such as the responsibility for unpaid care work worldwide falling disproportionately on women, and them also being discouraged from searching for job opportunities have contributed to this unbalance, it said.

However, many women are also making a conscious choice to prioritise their family rather than their jobs – and still enjoy successful careers.

Jane Lee, vice-president of sales in Asia-Pacific at the global human resources platform, Remote, previously worked for a company where being in the office was the norm. But her second pregnancy, four and a half months after the birth of her first, led her to reconsider her priorities.

“It was a very conscious decision and very personal journey to me,” she says. “I had never had a break in my professional career. It was a long, long sprint for 10 plus years. I had a realisation that it was probably the best time to take a momentary pause when I had incredibly young children at home.”

In May 2022, after a 10-month break, Lee joined Remote, which employs a team of 1,400 staff located in more than 100 countries. The company’s mission is to help make it easy for businesses to hire the best talent from anywhere in the world without being limited by an applicant’s physical location.

For Lee and other mothers with young children, such a work environment makes a world of difference. “My office at home is directly integrated with my home life,” she says. “So, when my daughter was sick the other day, I was able to adjust my day and physically walk out of my office to be able to take care of her for a couple of hours and then pivot back and readjust my day.”

Research carried out by Remote, which was published in its 2022 “Global Benefits Report”, showed that 32 per cent of women regard job flexibility as one of their most important work considerations compared with only 26 per cent of men.

Yet men can benefit from flexible work arrangements just as much as women, Lee says. “My male colleagues also lean heavily into remote working. They feel that they can be present, and go to their children’s football games or do something for themselves, like going to the gym.

“It’s not just about taking care of the family. You can take care of yourself, whether you’re a man or a woman, to be the best version of yourself – for your family, for yourself and for work.”

Remote work may also be a way to address the current gender gap involving women on the upper rungs of the corporate ladder. The World Economic Forum report included data collected from the LinkedIn employment social media platform showing that last year only 32.2 per cent of senior executive positions, such as director, vice-president and CEO, were held by women, even though they represented 41.9 per cent of the overall workforce.

However, a report by Pew Research Centre, published in the United States in 2022, found that women were about twice as likely as men – 19 per cent compared with 9 per cent – to say that working from home made it easier to advance in their careers. More than half – 51 per cent – of the women also said working from home made it easier for them to get their work done and meet deadlines, while only 37 per cent of men said the same.

Lee says without the need for workers to be physically in an office, they can be measured by their output. “Flexible working has empowered women, as they can excel in their careers when all these subconscious and traditional views ‘evaporate’,” she says. “They are measured on results, and that’s the way it should be when it comes to progression in your career.”

Distributed working also provides women with access to employment opportunities in countries which they might otherwise not be able to accept. This seems particularly important in light of the findings of a report, published last July by the United Nations Development Programme and UN Women – the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality – which revealed that fewer than 1 per cent of girls and women live in a country with high women’s empowerment and a small gender gap.

The study, based on analysis of 114 countries, also found that women’s power and freedom to make choices and seize opportunities remains largely restricted. Globally, women are empowered to achieve on average only 60 per cent of their full potential, and achieve, on average, only 72 per cent of what men achieve, representing a 28 per cent gender gap. But companies embracing distributed working practices can help to capture this untapped potential.

Although it is widely believed that remote working is more attractive to younger generations, Remote’s report also found that nearly a third of workers – including baby boomers, born in the years after World War II, members of Generation X, born in the mid-1960s and ’70s, millennials, in the ’80s and ’90s, and Gen Z, from the late ’90s to early 2010s – said their ideal was to work remotely full-time. More surprisingly, two-thirds of each generation said they wanted to work at least partially remotely.

“Workers want flexibility, and they want to move with their feet and not be tied to a desk in a specific location,” Lee says. “They want flexibility because they have their own life goals – so they have time to do things, without needing to sacrifice what they want to do, such as travelling to a new country to work for a few months while exploring a whole new culture.

“That kind of flexibility is what’s going to attract and retain the best talent. That’s what we’ve seen time and time again, not only from our own employees, but also customers that we work with.”