Covid has had devastating consequences on everything, including the role of women in the workforce. In a report done by Catalyst, 63% of senior-level mothers said they needed to change their career goals during the pandemic, compared with 51% of senior-level fathers, 43% of non-senior mothers, and 36% of non-senior fathers.

Improve workplace dynamics between genders

Even so, things weren’t exactly peachy for women before the pandemic either. In a 2020 report by Kroll, 60% of females reported gender inequality being present in their workplace. Post-pandemic companies have the opportunity to drastically improve workplace dynamics between genders. How you ask? We’re bringing you three great places to start.

1. Track your company’s starting point and determine what you have to alter to achieve a gender-balanced workforce

“A willingness to change means leaders must examine their organizations’ results, acknowledge they are not acceptable and choose to do something about it. They must openly and publicly commit to embracing change.” -- Jeffery Tobias Halter, author of Why Women: The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men.

2. Work on improving workplace bias

While successful men are often liked more, successful women are typically liked less, which is a major problem in itself. More objective performance reviews are a great place to start. As the president and CEO of Catalyst points out “Women are too hard, too soft, but never just right. What that means is that women are seen as either competent or liked but not both.”

3. Focus on upskilling, especially on STEM education

Women represent 54% of workers in high-risk jobs for being automated, even though they represent less than 50% of the workforce. Next to this, there are far too few women in tech—to put it in perspective, only 12% of Silicon Valley startup engineers are women. Companies are waking up and realizing that if they want to reach their 50-50 gender targets, they need to start at the education level. “Accenture launched a STEM program for high school girls; after one event in Australia, the number considering a STEM career rose from 30% to 79%.” Talk about an exceptional accomplishment.

While we are in no way where we want to be in terms of a gender-balanced workforce, many companies around the globe have already taken significant strides to improve this. We have the tools needed to transform women’s roles in the workforce, all we have to do is take action.

Read the full article here.

Talk to us: How do you believe we can achieve a gender-balanced workforce? Let us know in the comments below, we would love to hear from you!