Webinar recording: International Women’s Day – #EmbraceEquity in business and beyond
Our insightful panel discussion on International Women’s Day centred around the panel’s lived experiences and their visions for a truly equal future. They discussed the barriers to businesses and society achieving full equity, their personal inspiration and how women can be championed in the workplace and at home.
There were some great questions from the audience during the session. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to answer them all, but the panel have noted their thoughts on a couple of the questions submitted online below.
International Women’s Day questions
Q: Have any of you returned to work post maternity leave/career break – if so what would be one thing you would do differently?
Alison: I have returned to work post maternity leave (three times) and I think that you have to do what works for you, your children, your partner and how you are managing the childcare. The one thing I might have done differently – although this was 25 years ago so they were different times maybe, but If it were now I would have asked my husband/partner to regularly leave work early – say once a week, or once a month to help out on a post school activity/make the dinner/pick up the children/help with the homework or something like that.
Q: What are professional firms doing to close the gender pay gap?
Nicky: Professional services firms are taking various steps to ensure equal pay regardless of gender. Some of these include:
- Conducting pay audits to analyse compensation structures and identify gender pay gaps.
- Implementing pay transparency to ensure that employees are aware of the pay ranges. This helps to promote fairness.
- Providing learning and development resources to help build skills and knowledge needed to advance careers which helps in addressing gender disparities for promotions.
- In the US, you cannot ask a person what salary they are currently on when they apply for a job, you offer a salary based on the role and the skills of the individual which is helping to close the gender pay gap and is a fair and equitable way of considering remuneration.