WEEKLY MYTH BUSTER:

Gender Gap 

The gender gap at companies may be narrowing, but there’s still a lot of daylight. Now, there is data to back up what most women (and many men) know at an anecdotal level. According to PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022, men in the workplace are more empowered than women.

The survey was conducted in March and April 2022 and drew responses from more than 52,000 workers in 44 countries, making it one of the largest workforce surveys ever conducted. The researchers wanted to know whether people felt empowered—or disempowered—at work. The study looked at four well-understood dimensions of empowerment drawn from academic research: autonomy; performance/job impact; meaning and belonging; and confidence/competence. By surveying workers on these dimensions (through a total of 12 questions) and then calculating the degree to which the dimensions were both important to people and present in their work lives, the study constructed a simple empowerment index, which was used to evaluate different segments of the workforce.

The research looked at the importance of the 12 factors in the index, the responses from men and women are highly similar—typically within a few percentage points of each other. For example, when asked about being fairly rewarded financially for their work, 71% of men and 72% of women said this was important. When asked about finding their job fulfilling, 68% of men and 69% of women said it was important.

These findings debunk some of the outdated ideas that men and women have different expectations of their employers and careers. That should be reassuring to companies that want to create the right employee value proposition.

However, when asked about whether these factors were present in their current job environment, men and women showed a significant split. In all 12 of the empowerment metrics of the study, men were more likely than women to say that those factors were present. As a result, the gap between importance and presence is bigger for women in every metric, meaning that women feel notably less empowered.

The biggest points of difference are:

• Being fairly compensated financially at work (among women, there is a gap of 34 percentage points between the share of respondents who say this is important and the share who actually experience it). 
• Choosing when, where, and how to do one’s work (gaps of 27 points, 22 points, and 22 points, respectively).
•  Finding one’s job fulfilling (20 points).
• Having a manager consider one’s viewpoint when making decisions (19 points).

When you empower women in the workplace, you allow them to have more control over their careers. By investing in training, mentoring, equality programs, education grants, and promotion into senior-level positions, you ensure their career growth, which is essential to creating long-term employees and a better work environment.



Source: PwC Global, Leadership Agenda, May 2022 issue, PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022.