Let's Talk About Gender Balance (Again)
I took a break from social media for the second week of March because the internet was a tough place to be a woman. It still is, but the space I took was necessary because it gave me time to reflect on my own experiences and feelings about being a woman, a woman in business, and a woman who runs her own business. It's also women's history month, so I'd like to reflect upon some things here. Strap in, it's a long one.
Equal pay still does not exist
In the freelance/self-employment/sole trader world, everyone has a different rate for their work. No two creatives charge the same as there are regional differences. Particularly in the UK, where London rates can be higher than those in the North of England. This is to do with the cost of living, and other factors. It's standard in a lot of countries and can often be seen in the different 'living wages'.
But one thing is for sure: freelancers who identify as women often undercharge and overdeliver. This is true across most of the creative industries, as we have a tendency to undervalue ourselves and our skills, and often lack the confidence to price accordingly. This takes time, feedback and a lot of self-motivation to do. I've been doing this for four years now, and I still wonder if my prices are 'too high' even though I've never really been told they are.
I was once told that if a woman charges the same as a man for a service, it seems like it's much higher. No real reason, just because. In Ireland, in 2020, the gender pay gap was 14.4%. In the UK in 2020, the gender pay gap in 2020 was 7.4% for full-time employees, but for all employees it was 15.5%. This difference is due to the fact that women fill more part-time jobs, which have lower hourly pay rates.
Performativity is a problem
March 8th is International Women's Day, which is great. It's wonderful, go women. We're amazing. But - and this is a big but - in the professional world, it's a bit of a performativity exercise. I've seen a lot of companies and corporations roll out their female employees and say, 'Look at us! We hire women, we have great women in leadership roles!' Simply hiring and promoting a woman to a senior position doesn't prove you're a company that cares about women. Your long-term celebration of your employees does this.
Hiring, upskilling, HR policies on discrimination, all matter more than highlighting your staff members one day a year. I want to know your overall policy on equality, what you do to combat bias, and what your real hiring policies are. Are your senior management teams balanced? When conducting interviews are the interviewers balanced? What steps are you taking to ensure your organisation acts upon the things it pays lip service to? Are you actively celebrating the work done by your female employees yearly?
There is nothing that grinds my gears more than companies simply hopping on a social media bandwagon to prove a point for one day, only to completely ignore the issue at an organisational level later on. Now, of course, not all companies do this, but it is something I've seen. Similar to the large organisations sponsoring enormous floats for Pride Parades, just to be seen. If you care about your staff, eradicating gender bias, and increasing gender balance in your organisation, do it all the time. This is something I care about, so I ran a three-month blog series highlighting the bias faced by many women in the workplace.
CEOs and founders are often men
My job means I work with founders, CEOs and key stakeholders in businesses. I also deal with marketing managers, graphic designers, etc. The list goes on. However, when I'm brought in to do a branding project, and develop the tone of voice for a new company, 99% of the time, the company has been founded and run by, men. I don't know why, maybe it's the confidence thing again, but there we have it.
Specky Scribbler was founded by me, and therefore I'm a founder and CEO, CTO, COO... I'm every C-level executive in one. I don't actively portray myself as such, but I think that's more because I don't have staff. I have started to call myself 'Founder and Chief Copywriter' but that's only in the past year or so. To be honest, I think that is more descriptive and accurate to what I do than any other C-level term, considering I am a copywriter. But I digress.
For decades, women often struggled to justify a promotion because they might be a 'risk' by choosing to get married or have children. I've heard stories recently of hiring managers asking women their ages and if they wanted to have children (which, by the way, they're not allowed to ask). This is changing, but not very fast, as many management roles are still held by men. And roles they've held for many, many years. The best thing we can do, all of us, as a society, is to actively make changes in our lives/ways of working.
One thing you can count on is that I will still continue to highlight these things, and will try, as best I can, to work with companies who align with my values and don’t simply pay lip service to issues.